GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 15 - January 2011

To truly excel, an affiliate manager would seek to develop the same level of under- standing of the numbers relative to his/ her affiliates business. Affiliate man ag- ers need to understand that affiliates have costs too, and by understanding this we can work to improve their margins. What advice do you have for someone just starting in the industry? Love the industry you are in first, as it is an amaz- ing place to be. Once you have that love and passion, you will want to progress. Channel that desire aggressively into hard work. It is also important to identify people whom you respect, listen to the advice that they give you, and apply to it to your work and your actions. Ask people’s ad- vice when you aren’t sure what to do, as ultimately you will be respected more for it. Never be arrogant or pretend to know things that you don’t. Finally, to quote a genius, don’t be afraid of the occasional error: “If you don’t make mistakes, you don’t make anything!” How long do you give yourself for re- sponding to e-mail? And what e-mail management tips can you offer? It varies and I base it on the urgency of the content in the e-mail. I also employ something called the three-minute rule. Any e-mail that takes less than three minutes to re- spond to I deal with then and there, as it’s quicker than categorizing and flagging for a later date. Nothing ever leaves the main inbox until it is completely closed. The main inbox is a hotbed of ongoing negotiations, problems and projects. I then work through my e- mail based on category and priority. How do you go about building trust with your affiliates? I always encourage phone use within my team and employ phone calls at every available opportunity. Given the global nature of our business, it is dif- ficult to always be available for face-to- face meetings. However, scheduling calls where you can with your affiliates, both proactively and reactively, assists in the creation of trust. Affiliates will (a) know that you have time for them, (b) know that you are answering any questions they di- rect at you on the fly and not using canned responses and (c) get to know you more personally by the conversational nature of a spoken dialogue. Besides trust, what are the keys to build- ing successful relationships between af- filiates and affiliate programs? Timely payments, an intuitive platform, good, straightforward reporting, and useful and necessary updates and roll-outs on a con- tinuous basis. Do you gamble yourself? Were you an on- line player before getting into the indus- try? I used to a great deal more prior to joining the industry. I am now satisfied to a certain extent simply by working with all of the main gambling products every single day. I still visit the casino regularly and play poker when I can. You have something in common with GPWA Times Magazine Managing Editor Vin Narayanan: you typically have a lot of applications open at the same time on your computer. For those who can’t under- stand the beauty of working with 14 to 16 applications open, please extol its virtues. When I switch my PC on in the morning I don’t set out to open as many applications as possible. As the day progresses, priori- ties shift and the application toll increases. If I have started something during the day and yet have not finished it, and some- thing else takes precedence, I leave the original task open to ensure that when I am wrapping up the day I am fully aware of the progress made with each of the tasks I started during that day. Then I can choose whether to stay and do them based on individual importance or push them back to the next day. What is the last book you read? Did you enjoy it? The last three books I read are Affiliate/Affiliate Manager: A Study of Mutually Beneficial Co-dependency with a View to Long-term Profit, How to Win Affiliates and Influence Retention Man- agers and Awaken the Superaffiliate Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your SEO, Promotional, Metaphysical and Financial Destiny. So those books don’t actually exist at the moment (and consider the above printed paragraph copyrighted!), but I spend a lot of time reading factual books rooted in overall business and management in- sights, as well as insightful, life-affirming books when I can. To be completely hon- est some of this stuff makes me cringe, and some of it is absolutely invaluable. Either way, I wouldn’t want to list the titles here for the aforementioned reasons! If anyone reading this has any recommendations on these subjects please e-mail them to me. The last fictitious book I read was The Stand , by Stephen King. It was absolutely epic and its terrifying apocalyptic narra- tive is highly recommended for fans of the genre. Affiliate Manager Interview Series