The August 2009 issue of the FeedFront Magazine, one that is also going to be distributed at the upcoming Affiliate Summit East in NYC (where I’m speaking), is already out, and available in its entirety at Scribd.com. I have an article in this issue too. It is entitled “4 Characteristics of Successful Affiliate Program Managers” and you may find it on page 61 by following the above-quoted link.
In this article I quote some interesting data based on two decades of leadership research by such well-known theorists of leadership as James Kouzes and Berry Posner. As it is obvious from the title of it, the focus of the article is on the characteristics that shape an effective affiliate program manager. The most important of the top 4 characteristics is honesty. Here’s an excerpt from that article:
… it is honesty that is the greatest and the most valued [by people surveyed across the globe in the course of twenty years!] characteristic.
No matter whether it is a military leader, a president of a country, a CEO of a corporation, or an affiliate program manager, people want to be confident in their leaders; and confidence is always dependent on the leader’s integrity. Most frequently integrity gets challenged when an affiliate program manager commits a mistake. We need to remember that it is okay to commit mistakes. It is how we deal with them that shows who we really are.
You may read the whole article here, and if you’re not receiving this magazine in the mail yet, I certainly encourage you to subscribe to FeedFront, which is distributed free of charge (within the USA). Every issue of this magazine is packed with useful information for marketers working across the affiliate marketing spectrum: from affiliates to affiliate program managers, from merchants to employees of affiliate networks.