ReveNews
Affiliate Managers Don’t Get It: Communication Is Still Key
OK, some do, but by and large most affiliate managers I’ve worked with or have attempted to work with are either a) lazy b) a few fries short of a Happy Meal or c) so uninterested in their jobs that it shows. Of course the same can be said for any segment of any industry but we seem to have an overabundance of this phenomenon in affiliate marketing.
Communication is increasingly becoming a concern for affiliates and affiliate managers because affiliate managers are, for the most part, unable or unwilling to move beyond the email only paradigm.
Need an example? Shawn Collins posted yesterday about his frustrations of affiliate approval emails from CJ landing in his spam folder. If you are anywhere near involved with affiliate marketing, you know who Shawn Collins is and you would be remiss if you didn’t jump on an application to your program submitted by Shawn. That should be the case for any affiliate, in reality.
Nonetheless, one of the affiliate managers of the programs Shawn mentioned showed up on Shawn’s blog and left this mind-bending comment:
Shawn,
I’ve been attempting to contact you through various channels. Long story short, I am unable to reach you. Will you please attempt to contact me via email. I would like to discuss an affiliate proposal.
Long story short? Come on. Let’s look at the long story:
1) Shawn’s email address and phone number are on his blog. If you don’t hear back from him after a few days after sending over an automated approval email, give him a call or send him an email personally. He’s very good at answering personal emails as are most affiliate marketers.
2) Shawn is very active on Facebook. Ever heard of it?
3) Shawn is very active on Twitter. Easy to contact him there.
4) Shawn has a (very prominent) affiliate blog. Leave a comment there.
5) Shawn is on Pownce
6) Shawn is on Plaxo
7) Shawn is on MySpace 
Shawn has a consulting site with all of his contact info.
9) Shawn runs Affiliate Summit. Again, lots of contact info on that site.
10) Ever heard of Google? I got 4 pages of sites that give me Shawn’s contact info.
There’s more, but I’ll stop there. In this day and age, with our plethora of social networking tools and platforms, it is unreal that an affiliate manager or any business person would pull the “I am unable to reach you” card. If you can’t reach someone, you’re not trying hard enough to quote Peter Shankman.
So, the moral of the long story short… if you’re an affiliate manager and you want to grow your program then perform due diligence and pursue the people who apply to your program if they look like good leads. That little extra effort you might have to make to contact someone via Facebook or MySpace (or God forbid the telephone) might actually increase your commission this month.
I’ve done and still do affiliate management… and it’s the little things that make all the difference between success and failure in this business and every business.
Nice post, Sam.
This time around, the affiliate revolution will be televised: http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/an-affiliate-done-wrong/
Mr. Harrelson,
This is a great article, but I feel I must tell you a few things about my circumstances that I feel justify my communication with Shawn yesterday.
The fact is that I have no working telephone in the office due to tech. issues that have gone unsolved for over a month despite my desperate attempts to solve the problem. I will admit that I did not exhaust all of my options before contacting Shawn via comment posts on his blog. Facebook is blocked on my computer due to Websense filters, as are many other sites, I’ve never heard of Twitter, I was unable to locate Shawn’s e-mail address for some reason, probably cause I’m ‘a few fries short of a Happy Meal,’ never heard of Pounce or Plaxo, and I had not thought of using Google to locate Shawn’s email, which I will admit falls short of my potential. But, hey, that’s why guys like you write articles like these, to help us ‘newbies’ out.
I had called Shawn on my cell phone, which he undoubtedly received after we had solved the Freedback error that was preventing me from contacting him via the channels you mention above. In example, his affiliate blog.
I am EXTREMELY new to affiliate marketing, and will admit that I fall short of the plethora of information you seem to have on affiliate manager communication with potential publishers.
Shawn, I really appreciate all that you did for me yesterday in solving the issues I mentioned.
I absolutely agree, Mr. Harrelson, communication is key, which is why I was so concerned with the fact that I could not contact Shawn via my normal channels. Being new to all of this, I thought I was doing the right thing by bringing the Freedback error to Shawn’s attention, and other users able to view comments on his blog.
Thank you for your time, your understanding, and your concern,
Matt Ziaja
CJ Affiliate Program Manager
Communications Solutions Integrated
AIG Travel Guard
In addition, Mr. Harrelson, your square, pretentious, and alienating article took my comments completely out of context.
Matt
Matt-
Please…call me Sam.
Thanks for stopping by. In the end, blogs like this are all about learning and sharing info. So, hopefully this will help other affiliate managers realize that they can do more to contact affiliates and vice versa.
And let’s not play naive, Matt… you don’t have to be an affiliate marketing veteran (or have anything to do with affiliate marketing) to understand that there are multiple ways to contact people these days. My point is that if you explore those other options within the context of affiliate marketing, your program will only benefit.
Sam
I absolutely agree, Mr. Harrelson. However, how are affiliate managers going to benefit by seeing my name, the company I work for, and a link to the comments I’ve posted when they can already see them on Shawn’s popular Web site? After all, “If you are anywhere near involved with affiliate marketing, you know who Shawn Collins is,” and should know where to locate his blogs.
Communication is key, Mr. Harrelson, perhaps you should have communicated with me before you chose to comment on my comments. You could have done so through any sort of channel you wish. Even e-mail, I don’t mind.
Please re-read my response regarding my limited communications options, so that you may begin to understand my temporary situation.
Also, thank you for the free advertising.
Matt
Matt, you work for CJ?
All in all did Matt comment here and I am sure that he also communicated with Shawn. Those are steps in the right direction.
Matt also did admit that he made some mistakes. Everybody makes them and everybody makes more mistakes on a bad day. Playing the “you should” and “I would” game does not help anybody. I am sure that Matt learned a great deal during the last few days alone and won’t make those mistakes again. Mission accomplished!
Matt, don’t mind Sams bluntness, this is actually a trait of mine and he did not sound like the Sam I know (stop imitating me Sam
). Maybe he has a bad day today. 
Cheers!
Welcome, Matt, to blogging where people’s mistakes and un-educated actions or opinions are routinely criticized without much real intent or purpose.
I’d like to remind everyone that none of these kinds of exchanges would happen on the phone or in the flesh. It’s all too easy to fire off text-based rants that, in fact, seem to be the glue that bonds affiliate marketing professionals over the last few years. Seems sad to me as most affiliate marketing pros deserve more. Yes, even those who are new.
Thanks, Jeff, it’s great to be here. *)
Thank you, Carsten. That makes a guy feel a whole lot better. There are no hard feelings.
Matt
@Carsten
You should have seen me in the classroom as a teacher on my bad days!
@Jeff
I don’t care to see your nail scarred hands and I’m not even going to go there with you.
The point of the post was not an attack on Matt or anyone else but to use an example to make the point that affiliate managers (and affiliates) can do a better job at communication with all of the tools available to us today.
@Sam: Oh oh.. (I think) I am glad that I didn’t
If that’s the point then why aren’t we talking about the problem and figuring out a way to address it in a less combative, whiny manner?
I offer an answer for your consideration (in the face of your attempts to characterize me as some kind of evil-doer, Sam):
Affiliate managers don’t ‘get it’ because they’re being all but prevented from communicating with affiliates thanks to affiliate networks. Networks which have questionable value beyond “here is where affiliates live” in an age where anyone can pick up the phone and hire someone like Brook Schaaf, Shawn Collins or Linda Woods and have FULL access to those same affiliates.
Rather than beat up some newbie through a blog that echoes Connie Berg’s last half decade of complaints let’s have real discourse or none at all!
Glad you could come clean up the discussion and start us on a path of “real discourse,” Jeff.
To your point, I do agree that the networks communications systems are completely impotent and need an overhaul.
However, if you do have the name of an affiliate (or an affiliate manager in the reverse case) it’s not too hard to Google (or Facebook or Twitter, etc if you’re so inclined) that person and find all the contact info in the world on them when you need (or should) get in touch.
Jim, I am sorry I did not answer you right away…
Answer… no.
If you would prefer that I call you to tell you “No,” I can do that.
Matt
Matt – you’ve been Kirsched.
Performics- Translation, please?
I get that you are referring to the author, but I have know idea what she is all about. Negativity?
@”Performics OG”: Let’s not revisit that here.
Let’s stay on topic and have a productive discussion about communication needs and practices in affiliate marketing or the comments for the post will be shut down.
Yeah, well said. I think having an alternate contact method is critical. When I was managing the program at Wyndham Vacation Resorts, I never fail to provide my tel # and also a physical address in every email (not that I expect to receive any snail mail
Another good method that one mentioned is IM (Instant Message like AIM, MSN Msgr or Yahoo Msgr).
> anyone can pick up the phone and hire someone like Brook Schaaf, Shawn Collins or Linda Woods…
Thanks for the plug, but I’m retiring from the affiliate management game at midnight tonight.
I’m focusing on Affiliate Summit and being an affiliate.
Quoting Jeff Molander:
“Affiliate managers don’t ‘get it’ because they’re being all but prevented from communicating with affiliates thanks to affiliate networks. Networks which have questionable value beyond “here is where affiliates live” ….”
I should have saved some of my earlier posts today, because I think this is the 3rd time I am posting this…. but, what exactly does this blog have anything to do with “the networks” and their value.
Seems quick to blame “the networks” for an issue that “they” had nothing to do with.
I have one other point… I disagree with Shawn on his original blog post. SPAM filtering is the responsibility of the person receiving the email… not the sender.
I have now just commented on Shawn’s blog via proxy of Revenews.
> I disagree with Shawn on his original blog post. SPAM filtering is the responsibility of the person receiving the email… not the sender.
In the case of my example, I received a portion of the e-mails in my inbox, but not many of them – all came from the same network mail server, but the sender’s e-mail was specific to each company.
So I think the network had fine deliverability, yet the content in some e-mails was triggering SPAM filters.
I agree that the recipient should be taking care to white list people with whom they have a relationship, but if I’ve never received an e-mail from a given company, I cannot white list them.
It’s not that hard to test e-mails to see if the content raises red flags, and I think the onus should be on the merchant to get this first time contact delivered.
To avoid even more spinoffs. Brian and Shawn are both right regarding email deliverability. I rely on spam filters as much as everybody else in this industry and my email addresses are getting older and older (my oldest is over 13 years old!!!). Guess how much spam those emails are exposed to? Good and intelligent email filters are a big selling point for me.
Without a filter would I spend the whole day doing nothing but email (mostly deleting stuff). I got my filters trained pretty well by now that there are only very little false positives (1 in 10-20K emails may be). This comes at the price of letting 20-50 spam emails per day through.
Tightening it up would mean to increase the risk of false positives. Not good. I don’t blame anybody for having my first email getting caught by a spam filter. That is probably my fault, because of accidental triggers in my email message. It is a different story when it comes to a known contact.
….
Shawn, I am not surprised that you give up one of the hats. You could have performed in a circus already as jongleur of hats while typing on a keyboard, recording some video and watching the 4 kids and the dog and… hehe. Being an affiliate is more fun anyway, right? Uh, I have to update my site and remove Shawn Collins Consulting from the list of recommended OPMs
“… what exactly does this blog have anything to do with ‘the networks’ and their value.”
Hi, Brian. I realize that this comment — like most of mine — will be dismissed and left un-challenged but since you’re asking I’ll martyr myself.
For years now I have listened to (primarily CJ) advertisers and affiliates register a single complaint over and over and over. They repeatedly put ‘communications’ at the very top of the problem list. If a network doesn’t exist to facilitate good communication I don’t know what it exists to do (uhh… track and report!). Hence, I have suggested for years now that affiliate networks are broken in terms of being “solutions”. They offer great tracking and reporting. They offer poor (to say the least) business development tools.
My partner and I conducted research on the subject before launching our venture. We found that a shocking majority of affiliate managers use Excel sheets and notebooks (that’s right, paper and pen) to manage communications processes with affiliates. A small percentage use Act, Goldmine or Salesforce.com. Small enough to, in our eyes, represent a business opportunity.
Back to your question.
While I view SAS (your network) as being different from the others for many reasons, networks operate under a scenario wherein they gain nothing by providing improved communications tools. It’s not their fault of course. Today, networks are more interested in competing with their affiliates (hence, search services… hence, buying affiliates) rather than providing their advertisers with a more efficient means of connecting with affiliates. Why is this?
Simply stated, affiliate networks (like LS, CJ, DCLK-Performics) have given up. They have told advertisers two things:
1) Let us run search for you
2) The affiliates able to send volume come in limited flavors (search, coupon, loyalty/incentive shopping)
I should say — search affiliates being in direct competition and offering the lion’s share of the volume. If you beg to differ (which you always have) I ask you to please share some data or conduct a bit of research. I’d be interested as I view SAS as being so different from the other networks. I’m sure others would love to hear too.
So — networks have given up. They are now being trounced in the area of social networking. The list is long: eBay’s RadicalBuy, mPire’s WidgetBucks… even PopShops can be included. Affiliate networks, what have you done for advertisers lately?!
We’re now watching as Amway/Quixtar gets in on the action with its Fanista.com — an entertainment category affiliate marketing play. Talk about innovation!
So I suggest to you that affiliate networks are a long way away from providing both elementary value let alone any kind of occasional innovation. Respectfully, to suggest that affiliate networks aren’t failing at facilitating good communication between affiliates and marketers is to be living a fantasy.
I simply do not know any advertisers that feel otherwise. Most I know feel abandoned and locked out of communication (contact information) or enslaved to a proprietary email system that hasn’t done the job since day one. In fact it’s been abused by advertisers to the point of affiliates ignoring all communications.
Hence we continue — year after year — to hear of these insane stories about complete lack of communication between affiliates and advertisers. I grow tired of it. We all do but we keep on hearing the stories. Why? What’s the point? Why doesn’t someone create something new… better?
Hey — my partner, David, and I see this as a business opportunity. If we’re wrong and there really isn’t a need for a better means to communicate we’ll just call it a day
Jeff… your post is actually full of interesting conversation – so this isn’t a dismissal… but it also doesn’t answer the question that I asked.
The blog was about an individual merchant not being tuned in to the affiliate space enough to recognize Shawn and further not using any of the myriad of contact options that Shawn has available. I’m not being critical of the merchant in question… that was just what the post was about.
It wasn’t about networks.
I found the introduction of the standard “Blame it on the networks” response to be out of whack with what we were talking about in the post. It was relatively opportunistic in that you took a post that was about “communication” in general and turned it into a conversation about your product and how it solves all these problems even though we weren’t talking about those problems in the first place.
Arguing the merits of networks is not wrong, and as you know I’m usually quite happy to participate in the conversation. Promoting your solution isn’t wrong either… and as I said you had some good points in the post. But just lazily blaming “the networks” for every problem no matter how far they actually are from network control is just … well, lazy.
If you want to hold a discussion on the value of networks in general… lets do it when and where it is appropriate to the conversation.
Brian…
Yes, it was opportunistic. Am I to be ashamed that I took a post discussing communication to be an opportunity to further discuss the issues — issues relating to a company I’m involved with? Aren’t you here to do the same?
Come now, Brian, this isn’t a “conversation about your product and how it solves all these problems.” There is nothing about anyone’s product being discussed. I am not promoting and challenge you to demonstrate what words constitute promotion.
Does sharing market research and saying “we see this as a business opportunity” constitute some kind of in-appropriate behavior? I’m quite surprised at your stance on my suggesting there’s a company out there that is attempting to address the communications issue (without naming it no less!). I’m not even including it in my post URL.
Sam’s post is about communications — and even includes a link to Shawn’s gripe about CJ’s emails ending up in his spam filter. Isn’t that network communications? Aren’t networks facilitating communications between affiliates and merchants?
Finally if I am making such a fool of myself why the need to jump in and suggest that I’m off-target? If I’m off target won’t Revenews readers just scroll past me and roll eyes? What is *your* agenda, Brian?
For the sake of examining your motivations… let’s assume that I actually AM blatantly peddling my wares in a place where it’s in-appropriate to do so. Now then… why are YOU so anxious to make sure I’m called out?
In my personal opinion this entire thread is angry, mean-spirited (to the point of attacking individuals ranging from inexperienced to vintage) and defensive. Some day perhaps that will change.
Jeff,
I’m not in a position to tell you where you can post, etc… I said your post was opportunistic, not wrong.
My point was simple – the original post had nothing to do with “the networks”, who were then blamed for the problem.
Shawns spam folder has nothing to do with networks either. He chooses to use a spam filter and does so at his own risk of missing emails… Should I blame the post office because I regularly throw away my mail without looking at it?
My agenda? I just get tired of the ubiquitous “blame the networks” post because I think it is overused by a myriad of folks. Like I said, I am open to discussions of value, communication, etc… This just struck a nerve with me because it was (I felt) out of left-field to start discussing network shortcomings when they clearly had nothing to do with Mark not recognizing Shawn.
I also never even remotely implied that you were making a fool of yourself. On the contrary, I said that your post was full of interesting and conversation worthy ideas… I just didn’t think that this post was the right topic for them.
“If I’m off target won’t Revenews readers just scroll past me and roll eyes?” That was my first reaction, because I saw what was coming hehe. Anyhow, the post is hijacked now anyway, so lets make the best out of it.
Matt is hopefully still subscribed to the comments to learn even more industry insights, problems and some dirty laundry as well hehe. No need to respond Matt, just read and do some Google searches for names and things mentioned here and links that might be provided (like the ones in this comment hehe).
Networks and the communication problem. Okay.
The technical issues (spam filters etc.) were already covered, also the 101 check list about Web 2.0 communication channels and also who organizes the largest industry event for the affiliate marketing industry, which is btw. the perfect place for nice and clean conversation and discussion, because people tend to be less “jumpy” if they talk to somebody face to face instead of eMail, forums, blogs or IMs.
That CJs attitude of keeping publisher data a secret from the advertiser is so yesterday (where it was already outdated as well), is an open secret and I don’t know anybody who ever said a good word about it. There are only two types of people out there, the ones who criticize it and the ones that don’t say anything. The later ones are CJ employees and the rest is virtually anybody else who has to deal with the Commission Junction affiliate network.
Why they did not change this to this day is beyond me, but I am sure that it does not help with long term customer retention (it might works short term).
Here is an example where the sh*t hit the fan because of screw ups the on networks and advertisers side. Perfectly mistimed, ending with the end of a good and promising affiliate relating ship as a consequence.
The second example shows the same network acting very professionally and forward thinking. This reflects good on them and the advertiser and everybody is a happy camper.
Now those examples are only for advertisers at the CJ network that are fortunate enough to be CJ Vantage customers. Well, fortunate enough to have somebody sign the monthly check for this special treatment. As a CJ Access advertiser does the world at CJ look at very different.
The only good thing about CJ Access and the complete lack of transparency about who the heck your affiliates are and what they are doing to drive traffic to your site is that this is a free and advanced test for:
1) Learning how to work like a private investigator or cop to find out the entire communication and background information of somebody, based only on one or few web site domains that might or might not are actually the sites where the traffic will/does originate from.
2) Learn how to create the ultimate and record-high-converting one time marketing offer in form of the free automated welcome email for publishers that you just approved. Your email must be crafted to perfection to get as much as possible publishers respond to it and to provide you with all their contact data voluntarily before they even started to promote your offers.
3) Learn how to find somebody who knows or learn for yourself, how to write an intelligent website scraper that is able to emulate human behavior to the extend that you can scrap content from the CJ admin pages multiple times per day without triggering any red flag at the CJ.com webmaster team.
Okay, this is a bit cynic and this comment would have made a good blog post all by itself, but then I thought… the heck, let Sam take the heat, if things get out of hand hehehe (just kidding).
Cheers!
Oh.. I almost forgot 4.) Learning how to develop an (highly accurate) instinct with little or no false positives, for being able to tell that the traffic pattern that are supposedly originate from a specific publisher site does not match what you would expect by looking at the publisher site specified in the affiliate account for that PID, without having any hard facts available to backup what you know somehow.
Cheers!
One thing I just noticed on here was that CJ was referenced as being the sender of e-mails I didn’t see – just wanted to clarify that my post doesn’t ID any particular network.
CJ was brought up by somebody else in the comments for my post, but I wasn’t talking about them.
> Brian Littleton wrote: Shawns spam folder has nothing to do with networks either. He chooses to use a spam filter and does so at his own risk of missing emails… Should I blame the post office because I regularly throw away my mail without looking at it?
I agree that the post office shouldn’t be blamed in your example. The marketer trying to get your attention should test their mailing, so that it attains an optimal response rate.
I am pretty late to pick up this post, but regardless what every body says in the comments, I agree for 100% with the title:
“Affiliate Managers Don’t Get It: Communication Is Still Key”
Many times I read posts from affiliate marketers that are getting unsolicited emails from affiliate managers that “want” them to promote their product, not only the emails are not personal at all, but even worse, it is hard to not see that these “affiliate managers” did not do any kind of homework or are not interested at all in their jobs. As an in house affiliate manager after a trade show (and after giving my business card to too many people) I receive many emails from affiliate managers asking to promote their product promising me high pay outs with out even knowing if I have an affiliate website, or even without looking at the information on my business card (such as title, company…..)
Affiliate marketing (and affiliate management) is not a job but a life style..
Any body who is not interested in changing their lifestyle to suits the affiliate marketing’s lifestyle, please leave it over to guys like Brook, Shawn, Sam, Stephanie and many others…
P.S.
I like the signature tag from Matt Ziaja:
Communications Solutions Integrated
Apparently he didn’t have a good solution to contact Shawn when all this started a few days ago..
Cheers, see you in Vegas!!
Great comment, Jesse. Another way of looking at it: Affiliate marketing doesn’t scale. The problems we tend to see within the realm of “communicating” are all focused on one concept:
Scale.
Affiliate managers are tasked with one goal: increasing revenue/sales/leads.
But they’re given clumsy tools like Outlook or proprietary e-mail systems to get the word out about their offer. The result is 95% of affiliate managers using spammy, ultimately in-effective recruitment and communications techniques. Why? Because, IMO, affiliate marketing is work and AM’s are often pulled in many different directions — have multiple responsibilities. They don’t have time.
When it comes to getting a program up and running affiliate managers have, for years now, been hand-cuffed by this situation. At the end of the day they don’t have a SYSTEM to help them get the job of:
- Locating / Targeting
- Courting
- Negotiating
done. They need to do these 3 things in a streamlined manner — one that helps them with their most precious resource. Time.
“Affiliate marketing doesn’t scale unless you use my product!” Great pitch, Jeff.
This conversation has nothing to do with the (tired) arguments of online or affiliate marketing’s inability to scale in the traditional brick and mortar sense. The post nor Jesse’s on-topic comment allude to that.
Again, the point of the post is about affiliate managers (and affiliates) doing due diligence to make sure they are doing the most (and best) for their programs, offers, sites, etc. There are incredible tools out there (available for free) in the social media space that help affiliate managers do the job of increasing sales/revenues/leads if they are savvy enough to realize the potential in using them and see past the Luddites who argue about their inefficiencies.
That has nothing to do with the network-centric affiliate industry’s ability to scale.
Thanks Jeff,
I partially agree with you:
Yes most of us are given clumsy tools, but with the targets (increasing revenue/sales/leads)comes responsibilities, with responsibilities comes expectations (from the upper management). In order to full fill the expectations I believe no body should be afraid to ask for tools (or budget for tools). It is our job to speak up if we are not able to manage a program as we want if we don’t have the tools or resources. If targets are set too high it is our job to bring the target setters back to reality, set new expectations.
One of the big things seems to be recruiting in all the posts that I read, but I never read any thing about activating or nourishing the existing affiliate basis. It seems to me that too many are focussed on new (untested) affiliates and not on affiliates that chose to (previously) apply to their program.
Shawn recently had a post about a company he just joined because he liked their product as a user and use to recommend it any way to friends and family, well after a few days of not producing sales they expired him!!! as many of the comments on that post say: foolish…
Look at your current basis and find ways to help them sell for you. Grab the phone and review their website, meet them at Affiliate Summit or many other events around, don’t simply expire to tell you boss you did something today (cleaning up your program)….
This reply is intended for any affiliate manager reading.
Cheers.
Isn’t it enough that you’ve alienated someone new to the affiliate marketing scene, Sam? You need to kick it up a notch by putting words into my mouth? That’s ok, though, because this is Revenews and this is blogging.
Just trying to keep us on track for “real discussion,” Jeff.
Sam -
Jeff doesn’t like to be challenged when he tries to push his service.
Brace yourself for Jeff 2.0 cuz now you’re the enemy.
Hi Jesse,
Quote: “One of the big things seems to be recruiting in all the posts that I read, but I never read any thing about activating or nourishing the existing affiliate basis. It seems to me that too many are focussed on new (untested) affiliates and not on affiliates that chose to (previously) apply to their program.”
Your needs were understood and a solution was delivered that hopefully solves your problem. This is a principle that was also mentioned in that post by the way
.
Cheers!
Carsten
I agree with you guys 100%. I am the owner of a Network that feels as though communication with affiliates is not only key but the most important part of our company and beliefs. We were affiliates before starting this network and have have had plenty of affiliate managers that just seemed like they didn’t care about us and we were sick of that.