After the initial shock wore off, you'd be quite happy to have it in your possession, right? :-)



Well, in a manner of speaking, such a genie exists. She exists in the form of an ?affiliate manager?.

An ?affiliate manager? is someone who oversees the operations of an affiliate program in exchange for compensation.

And, out of all the traffic ?tools? on the market, the affiliate manager is the one that you should be using daily in your business if you own your own product.

Why?

The bottom line is: more traffic, which results in more revenue for you.

But, specifically, there are 3 reasons why you need an affiliate manager...

1. Recruiting.

Your affiliate manager can recruit new affiliates into your program for you. Instead of you spending time trying to find (and then convince!) affiliates to join your program, your ?affman? can do this for you while you focus on other things.

2. Rewarding.

Everyone knows that simply getting people to join your affiliate program is not enough. It takes a lot of effort to get passive affiliates to become (and stay!) active. An affiliate manager is responsible for motivating your team to remain involved in your promotions.

3. Running.

Beyond getting affiliates into your program and making sure they stay active, your affiliate manager can ?run? as much of your operations as you want her to. Here are just a few things my affiliate manager (props to Nicole!) does...

* Creates training materials

* Write follow-up mailings

* Communicates with affiliates

* Answer affiliate support questions

* Monitors contests and incentive programs

* Posts to our blog

* Clerical stuff (creates rebrandable files, etc.)

* Circulates content (article directories, etc.)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Perhaps the best part of hiring an affiliate manager is the fact that it doesn't have to cost you a penny in out of pocket expenses. That is, you can setup your agreement to be performance-based: you pay the affiliate manager a percentage of the overall revenue generated through her efforts ... the more revenue she brings in through the affiliate program, the more she earns.

Now, the question is ?

** Where do I find an affiliate manager? **

There are actually quite a few ways to find quality (emphasis needs to be on ?QUALITY!?) affiliate managers for your program. Let me share just one...

One of the easiest ways to find an affiliate manager is to visit your favorite affiliate marketing (or internet marketing) forum and post a request asking for recommendations or responses for your needs.

You can do this in two ways -

1. Post a PUBLIC Request.

That is, you post a message for everyone to see, with brief details on the position you have available and that you are seeking recommendations or interest to explore further.

2. Post a PRIVATE Request.

The other option is to identify those participants at the forum who appear to have experience and/or knowledge in affiliate marketing who might be good affiliate manager material. Then, you would simply contact them privately to see if there is interest in discussing your needs.

Running your own affiliate program is a tremendous traffic generation tool, but it has a lot of parts. There are many different activities that are involved in successfully running an affiliate program, and hiring an affiliate manager to oversee your operations is a great way to free up your time to work on creating additional products and other ?creative? work.

A good affiliate manager can bring in affiliates, train and motivate them, and run your operations for you. Her efforts bring in the traffic; your efforts turn the traffic into orders.

It's the closest thing to a traffic genie in a bottle that you'll find. Rubbing is optional. Using this strategy isn't.