Member Avatar for Shoryuken

I've constantly stuggled with the issue of how much time to devote to helping out the very inexperienced online marketer. How much hand holding should I do before forcing the person to do something on their own.

I think I'm doing all I can, but I always want to do more and more importantly do right for our program and all the other affiliates in it.

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raised a common tradeoff: scalable support vs. doing the heavy lifting for every new partner. The goal is to get beginners to a few quick wins without building identical campaigns or absorbing all the manual work. The following practical framework keeps support efficient, prevents cannibalization between affiliates, and sets clear boundaries so effort is focused where it matters.

Start with a one-minute intake form that classifies skill level and intent (casual tester, committed starter, or experienced). Deliver a tailored "starter pack" by tier:

  • For casual testers: a single-click landing page on a per-affiliate subdomain plus a unique promo code and tracking ID so conversions aren’t mixed across partners.
  • For committed starters: the above, plus 3 short videos (login/account basics, placing your first ad, reading campaign results) and a 48-hour checklist to confirm account access and tracking.
  • For those needing one-on-one help: a paid or limited free onboarding call limited to defined outcomes (login, first test ad, and basic tracking).

Small operational changes remove repetitive support requests. Automate password-reset and send an initial “did you log in?” email 24 hours after signup. Provide canned support replies and a troubleshooting checklist for login problems (check spam, reset link, confirm affiliate ID, try another browser, clear cache). Use per-affiliate landing pages and unique codes to avoid everyone copying the same creatives or bidding for the same conversions.

Set clear SLAs: free support covers onboarding checklists and self-serve resources; deeper campaign work is an upgrade. Add weekly group office hours and a peer-mentor rota so experienced affiliates help newcomers. These measures preserve program integrity, reduce hand-holding, and get new affiliates earning faster without pushing identical strategies onto the entire network.

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Member Avatar for etechsupport

Its not clear, are you helping someone for online marketing or getting your work done by that inexperienced marketer ?

Member Avatar for Shoryuken

I'm the affiliate manager helping people brand new to the online marketing world.

Sometimes, they don't even know how to log into their accounts with the password I email them.

Member Avatar for Dani

Ken runs an affiliate program. Affiliates use PPC, banner ads, etc to sell his product. However, he's saying that they often need a ridiculous amount of hand holding. IMO being an affiliate is like a [EMAIL="work@home"]work@home[/EMAIL] job. It's not your job to launch their business for them, though :) I suspect that the best method is to write a VERY detailed, step by step tutorial on how to get started, what to expect along the way through the whole process, and exactly how to get from knowing nothing to being a successful affiliate. You can point all new affiliates to the tutorial and I am sure they will appreciate the effort. It will also help to get new affiliates off the ground and earning money quicker. A slightly more advanced tutorial could be written to help existing affiliates optimize their ad campaigns, finetune their efforts and generate more revenue and conversions. Remember, the tutorial only needs to be written once. But it will help over and over again.

Member Avatar for etechsupport

"To write a VERY detailed, step by step tutorial on how to get started" CSCgal, its really a good idea.

Member Avatar for Shoryuken

I've thought about this many times. The stumbling block is what method to suggest.

If I write a VERY detailed guide to setting up a ppc account then I may have hundreds of people bidding on the same words in Google and getting horrible conversions.

If I write a VERY detailed guide to creating a blog then I've got hundreds of identical blogs out there, not good.

If I write a VERY detailed guide to creating a website from scratch then people will get frustrated cause they have to put so much work into it and wait upwards of possibly 2 or 3 months to see their first sale.

The idea is a good one, but how to implement it is much like rocking a rhyme that's right on time. It's tricky.

Member Avatar for Dani

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Don't write a guide specifying which keywords to use. Instead, write a guide specifying how to come up with the best keywords. In other words, write a VERY detailed guide to how to create good keywords, how to know when a keyword is not performing well, how to tell whether a keyword has too much competition, and so forth. Then let your affiliates optimize their own campaigns, and they will each take them in separate directions.

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