Every single day I get emails with questions related to affiliate program management. Some folks are looking for a free advice, while others are willing to pay for it. Whichever group you fall into, this post should help, as today I’d like to bring you both free ways to get this advice, and a few paid ones as well:
5 Free Ways:
1. Ask me — If you have a good question (please be concise and to-the-point!) the answer to which will benefit others, as stated earlier, I will happily answer it for you in my blog for free.
2. LinkedIn Group(s) — While many LinkedIn groups are being badly abused by a very specific type of spammers (the folks that mass-post in every single topical group they can find), for affiliate management questions, there is a closed, closely-moderated LinkedIn group — the Affiliate Program Management one. We have over 1,500 affiliate managers aboard, and many of them are happily sharing their advice there.
3. Forums — Nearly every major affiliate marketing forum has an area where you can ask your questions, and some even have affiliate manager-specific sections. ABestWeb has an Affiliate Manager’s section, Affiliate Summit has their Affiliate Q&As section; while for Europe-specific questions there are also a4u forums.
4. Merchant ABCs — A series of videos and podcasts by Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare discuss topics important for affiliate program managers and merchants.
5. My Free Guide — You may also find a free compilation of my answers to various affiliate management-related FAQs here.
3 Paid Ways
6. Books — With a very modest investment, you get answers to your affiliate program management questions from A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing (2007), as well as from my newest Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day (2011). The second book contains only about 20% of what the first one has. So, no they don’t overlap much.
7. Affiliate Management Trainers — A fairly new gig by Sarah Bundy created to fill the need for professional and personalized affiliate management training. They do both training and consulting, and you may learn more about them here.
8. Affiliate Management Days — World’s first affiliate manager-centric conference [more here]. The first one is just around the corner (happening in San Francisco on March 8-9, 2012), and in 2012 we will have two of these — on on the West Coast, and one on the East one.
As always, if I have missed an opportunity that belongs to this list, do chime in with it! The “Comments” are all yours.
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