Ever Get on the Other Side of AM?

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mstef

mstef

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Dec 11, 2008
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Hey,

I keep thinking about how easy it seems for these companies that take advantage of affiliate marketers time and skills. If they are willing to pay us $X they must be making $XX from each sale. Has anyone ever tried to be on the other side of affiliate marketing (have affiliate sell shit for you)? If you're good at AM you would most likely just do the marketing yourself and avoid having to pay commissions but it seems like having everyone do all of the work for you could be a nice break?

Just curious as usual...
 


They deal with everything that has to do with running a business though, they're the ones who have to deal with payouts, faulty leads, hireing people, answering phones, running around for offers, complaints, competition, build reputation etc... not that this is excruciating work but it's all up to what you can put together. I'd rather be an AM to tell you the truth.
 
zimok said:
They deal with everything that has to do with running a business though, they're the ones who have to deal with payouts, faulty leads, hireing people, answering phones, running around for offers, complaints, competition, build reputation etc... not that this is excruciating work but it's all up to what you can put together. I'd rather be an AM to tell you the truth.
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and AM is NOTHING like running a business... no dealing with payouts, no getting cut for faulty leads, no outsourcing/hiring people, no answering phones, why would a merchant "run around for offers"? no complaints, and deff NO COMPETITION... :rolleyes:
 
Hpwandrew said:
and AM is NOTHING like running a business... no dealing with payouts, no getting cut for faulty leads, no outsourcing/hiring people, no answering phones, why would a merchant "run around for offers"? no complaints, and deff NO COMPETITION... :rolleyes:
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Indeed, not as easy as it sounds.
 
Makes sense and I figured that too..was just wondering if anyone ever considered giving it a shot
 
I used to do affiliate management.
It's the same process of selling.

The product is "promoting your offer".
The audience is "affiliate marketers out there".

You apply the same principles in recruiting the affiliates as you do when selling acai to fat lazy bitches. (oh, and the managers crack jokes about the affiliates in about the same way as you guys crack jokes about the aforementioned fat bitches, or whoever your customers are)

And once you start getting the affiliates on board, you need to keep the fuckers motivated. Even though you know that 99% of them will never sell anything, but will bug the shit out of you with stupid questions and the missing cookie paranoia.
 
Funny, I'm actually giving some advice to the marketing manager at the Lort Smith Animal Shelter at the moment.
They're thinking of starting up an IM campaign on one of the Australian networks. While it's making me think of all of this shit from the other side, it does make me realise how most traditional businesses are amazingly unaware of online marketing.

It does make me realise that there's good money to be made (or would if I wasn't doing this pro bono because I've gotten half my pets from them) in consulting medium sized businesses on their online marketing strategy.
 
bcc423 said:
I used to do affiliate management.
It's the same process of selling.

The product is "promoting your offer".
The audience is "affiliate marketers out there".

You apply the same principles in recruiting the affiliates as you do when selling acai to fat lazy bitches. (oh, and the managers crack jokes about the affiliates in about the same way as you guys crack jokes about the aforementioned fat bitches, or whoever your customers are)

And once you start getting the affiliates on board, you need to keep the fuckers motivated. Even though you know that 99% of them will never sell anything, but will bug the shit out of you with stupid questions and the missing cookie paranoia.
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I love it. It's so true. I'm working as an aff mgr now and that's just what it is like.

The truth is most aff managers look at the super affiliates in awe with a "how the fuck do they do that?" kind of jealousy. Anyone who has worked in sales in a company knows that you're always in the middle. You have your bosses and you have your clients, who you also are also responsible to. It can be a constant juggling act trying to keep so many people happy.
 
jman4663 said:
Anyone who has worked in sales in a company knows that you're always in the middle. You have your bosses and you have your clients, who you also are also responsible to.
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Exactly why being the affiliate is worth the lower margin. You get to cut out all the bullshit. Another month or two left to pad my bank account and I'm telling the man to piss off.
 
Hpwandrew said:
and AM is NOTHING like running a business... no dealing with payouts, no getting cut for faulty leads, no outsourcing/hiring people, no answering phones, why would a merchant "run around for offers"? no complaints, and deff NO COMPETITION... :rolleyes:
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All very true I suppose. I was thinking more along the lines of always having to chase around and depend on people when running the network. Don't know, maybe it's not as hard as I cut it out to be. Good point.
 
I ran a biz op business last year and it's a fucking pain in the ass compared to AM. Dealing with customers, refunds, payouts, it's a nightmare. Not to mention you're stuck with one offer that you HAVE to make work. In AM something doesn't work or stops working, you move on to the next thing, no baggage or thousands of customers to offer customer service still.

Running an offer vs doing AM... pff not even close.
 
I'm an affiliate manager as well but I disagree with the above, I know exactly how the super affiliates do it, and I'm not jealous because I do quite a bit on the affiliate side myself. It's a lot of fun actually.
 
dahunter said:
I ran a biz op business last year and it's a fucking pain in the ass compared to AM. Dealing with customers, refunds, payouts, it's a nightmare. Not to mention you're stuck with one offer that you HAVE to make work. In AM something doesn't work or stops working, you move on to the next thing, no baggage or thousands of customers to offer customer service still.

Running an offer vs doing AM... pff not even close.
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Spot on. I ran an ecommerce site that dropshipped. Less headaches than a bricks-n-mortar, but still a pain in the ass dealing with all those amazingly stupid customers. Plus being stuck with the one product line/niche.

AM is way better.
 
Boomstick said:
Exactly why being the affiliate is worth the lower margin. You get to cut out all the bullshit. Another month or two left to pad my bank account and I'm telling the man to piss off.
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I've been on the merchant side of the game for years and I can tell you Boomstick is spot on. Being an affiliate is the way to go. Dealing with procurement issues, finance, logistics, customer service etc etc. Lots of headaches. You would be suprised how little a lot of merchants actually make on transactions - especially in certain verticals. They need to keep the CPAs as high as possible so that the offer gets pickup (often times barely breaking even on the initial transaction with the hope they can retain the new acqusition). Think about it...after you pay for marketing, cost of goods, shipping costs, merchant fees, employee salaries, benefits, other fixed expenses like office leasing, phones, computers etc...there isn't a lot of margin left.

Anyways, because of all that, I've decided to join the ranks of being an affiliate full time within a week and a half. Less headache and all you need to focus on is promoting offers profitably. If something doesn't work, move on to another offer. That level of agility doesn't exist in most companies that deal with a physical product, because of the logistics involved in launching a new channel / product.

My 2 cents.
 
dahunter said:
I ran a biz op business last year and it's a fucking pain in the ass compared to AM. Dealing with customers, refunds, payouts, it's a nightmare. Not to mention you're stuck with one offer that you HAVE to make work. In AM something doesn't work or stops working, you move on to the next thing, no baggage or thousands of customers to offer customer service still.

Running an offer vs doing AM... pff not even close.
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That's a good point actually.
 
I have the best of both worlds with the t-shirts I design and sell on cafepress.
They have an affiliate program set up with CJ that is all taken care of for us.
We just need to recruit affiliates to sell our shirts and cafepress absorbs the affiliate commission :)
Every month cafepress pays me and CJ pays the affiliates, all the accounting is automatic and I dont have to deal with anyone personally.
I also affiliate other peoples shirts and work from that side.
 
I own an online jewellery store which I like to think of as my steady backup, I sell really great products my customers all love, yet I am unable to make any profitable advertising campaigns for it. today for example I spent $138 on advertising and sold $140 worth of items.

I made an adwords campaign for it and google called me up and offered to optimise it for me (something thats never happened with the other 50 affiliate campaigns i have in adwords). Again, just lost money from it.

I am good at lead affiliate campaigns such as dating stuff.. but just cant get this shit to work, I basically rely on word of mouth advertising (had a guy come over yesterday and buy $300 worth of items). I would be more than happy to deal with refunds\exchanges\customers, I have made over 400 sales so far and its not stressful or hard work, maybe 20 minutes work a day preparing items for postage. Problems are I cant afford to purchase enough stock at this point to make it worthwhile getting it on an affiliate network, I lack a wide range of styles and sizes. someday though... someday
 
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