Confessions of a Teenage Affiliate Manager Drama Queen

**Marit VS** · 18 December 2012, 11:07 am

So, I have 'officially' been an affiliate manager for almost 3 months and despite being in the industry for over 5 years and thinking 'hell yeah I can do this!', I wanted to share some of what I've found funny along my travels.

And not just because it's funny, but because I would love to hear anyone else 'newbi' mistakes and I feel that people only share if you embarrass yourself first. (Yes, I want to share in my embarrassment, is that so wrong?)

Affiliates like to talk. This is not a problem as I love a good natter, but have now figured out to leave a LARGE margin between calls. Nothing worse than having to cut an affiliate mid flow, or worse, miss a call.
SOFTWARES!! LIST THE SOFTWARES!! Mostly in my first couple of weeks, I was getting all muddle up with which gaming software was on which Casino - especially as we currently have 5 and we are adding another 6 in the next few months. No one should have to deal with an affiliate going "Hum... Actually you're wrong, the software on your casino is...". I now know them all by heart and can recite them in my sleep. (stupid Betsoft/BetOnSoft - why did they have to name two basically the same??)
Formatting is Key. If affiliates can't open the document you send them, how are they meant to post your promotion? Penance for this mistake? replying to each affiliate who wrote back to me to kindly tell me what a dope I am, and one by one, giving them the details. Long. Afternoon.
Happy Clicky Revenue Share. After negotiating with an affiliate for a fair revenue share, I mistakenly gave them 10% more than agreed, and only noticed this a month later at payday. Shamefully had to swallow my mistake, speak to the affiliate, and explain. Thank-fully, a good sense of humor fixes all wrongs.
Never ever ever ever ever drink a 'mystery' drink offered to you by an affiliate. You know who you are Mr Neil Mitchell and the Chilli Vodka.

Anyone else have some good stories from their early days as affiliate managers?

Or an affiliate manager doing or saying something funny to you? (no name shaming please! just funny stories)

**Renee** · 18 December 2012, 8:51 pm

LOL Mez those things aren't actually that bad. I think most newbies go through at least one or two of those.

To put it into perspective, when I first started in 2005 I didn't even know what an affiliate was until 2 weeks after I started. And I had been replying to emails etc during those 2 weeks. I had NFI what job I had. After 2 weeks all the bosses went to a conference and I was there to fend for myself. I learned really quickly then and I can tell you, I have never seen the word **** used more in one email, ever. You're lucky you haven't gotten to the stage of affs swearing at you yet, and hopefully that wont happen. Not even swearing with you, but at you. Daily basis for me now, kinda starting to get used to it. Not really.

I have accidentally written the wrong name on an email before (sometimes it has been Dear Renee, wtf was I even thinking about? Myself obviously).
I have also accidentally replied to an email from an aff with a personal email that I thought was intended to someone else.
Sent internal emails to affiliates before just because their name happened to be the same as someone in the office and their email address came up first when I typed the name in.
The list goes on really.

Funny stories?
Well, I think we all know the one about me dancing with someone at an aff party and my boob falling out for a blond haired chap to be standing right there warming his hands like he is about to get the said boob in his hands. Did I mention he looked like a serial killer?

Being hit on by an aff at my first conference while his wife was standing right next to him. She was a lot bigger and meaner looking than me so I was a bit scared.
Being cornered multiple times by the same aff at a party and telling him if he doesn't stop cornering me I'll beat the fk out of him. Maybe I was a lot meaner than I think I look because it seemed to work.

Wetting myself from laughing too hard twice in about 5 minutes. You don't even want to know why I was laughing.

Laughing so hard I cried at someone in the bar who spilled scotch on his crotch and was telling us louder and louder that he thinks he pissed his pants. That was hilarious.

Playing "accidental entry" with some affiliates in London and having the exact same scenario at the end of each hypothetical from one, making it the most hilarious game I've played. That game never gets old.

All the saffas laughing at the way Aussies say "car park" and being astonished when I can pronounce it just like them.

I will keep thinking

I'm sure I have a lot more.

**CityGuard** · 18 December 2012, 10:39 pm

For myself, I think the most frequent silly blunder that I make is writing "I've attached the details." But then leaving off the attachments. I end up sending lots and lots of emails with attachments, so I think I end up leaving them off at least once a month. I usually catch it a split second after sending.

Outside of work I seriously love Gmail because if you have the words "attached" or "attachment" in a message, and that message doesn't have any attachments on it, Gmail asks you if you meant to attach a file before it sends.

In terms of Renee's comment about accidentally sending internal messages to external recipients, I've definitely been the recipient of messages like that (although not from Renee). In most cases I just let the sender know if went to the wrong person, and otherwise ignore it. But in one case the mis-send was actually really helpful and ended up being constructive for the program.

And I think my favorite mistake was an affiliate manager sent me some "new" banners asking me to update them. I wrote back that they were the same banners we had up already. Then in response to me pointing out they were the old ones, the affiliate manager sent a correction, oh, accidentally sent the wrong ones, here are the correct banners - but the correction email also had the old ones. So it took another correction to actually get the intended replacements. It seems like a really easy mistake to make, but it had me laughing for a while that the "correction" repeated the same error.

And, Marit, if Betsoft and BetOnSoft are too closely named, here are some other naming delights:
Gamesys Ltd. / Gamesys N.V. - Two gaming site operators and software providers that have absolutely no connection with one another.
Affiliate Edge / Affiliate Edge - In addition to being the affiliate program that we all know and love, Affiliate Edge is what Boss Media calls their affiliate tracking interface.

**Marit VS** · 19 December 2012, 2:11 am

Originally Posted by Renee

Well, I think we all know the one about me dancing with someone at an aff party and my boob falling out for a blond haired chap to be standing right there warming his hands like he is about to get the said boob in his hands. Did I mention he looked like a serial killer?.

WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAT??? No I have not heard this story! I need to know more about the Serial Boob Grabbing killer! (That should be a book by the by)

Those are great stories! lol...

**Marit VS** · 19 December 2012, 2:12 am

Originally Posted by CityGuard

Gamesys Ltd. / Gamesys N.V. - Two gaming site operators and software providers that have absolutely no connection with one another.
Affiliate Edge / Affiliate Edge - In addition to being the affiliate program that we all know and love, Affiliate Edge is what Boss Media calls their affiliate tracking interface.

This industry needs to keep an audit of who is naming what when!

**Anthony-Coral** · 19 December 2012, 3:35 am

Nice thread Marit - biggest, most frequent, most heart-stopping, most dangerous error I think are kind of similar and both relate to email...

Autofill an email address - Never, Ever trust autofill. It hates you and it will try to destroy your career.
Pasting a list of email recipients into the CC field and not the BCC field. We all try to avoid the mass mailer if we can but sometimes it is unavoidable. Having made this error twice I can say that most people I contacted to apologise weren't bothered or even aware what I had done, but the handful that were angry about it were REALLY angry about it.
Did I mention that you shouldn't trust autofill?

**Marit VS** · 19 December 2012, 3:45 am

Originally Posted by HodgeyBoy

Did I mention that you shouldn't trust autofill?

I feel there are untold details to this tale. Do, pray, share. We're all friends here. We will only laugh in our office loudly and not tell you about it. Promise.

**Louis - Income Access** · 19 December 2012, 10:18 am

In my first month as an affiliate manager (retail US market, before getting into iGaming)... I had this brilliant idea to use a site scraping software to get like 2000 affiliates' email addresses and then send them a bulk email recruitment email... almost got my employer dropped by its server company (one more spam complaint and they would have been forced to drop us due to the SLA). I think maybe we got two affiliates on board from that brilliant recruitment strategy.

**Marit VS** · 19 December 2012, 11:03 am

Originally Posted by Louis - Income Access

In my first month as an affiliate manager (retail US market, before getting into iGaming)... I had this brilliant idea to use a site scraping software to get like 2000 affiliates' email addresses and then send them a bulk email recruitment email... almost got my employer dropped by its server company (one more spam complaint and they would have been forced to drop us due to the SLA). I think maybe we got two affiliates on board from that brilliant recruitment strategy.

Haha, Brilliant! Lesson learnt - spam never pays off.

That could have easily been a career breaker, you got very very lucky!

**Renee** · 19 December 2012, 5:27 pm

Originally Posted by Marit VS

I feel there are untold details to this tale. Do, pray, share. We're all friends here. We will only laugh in our office loudly and not tell you about it. Promise.

The untold tale is that Hodgey **** himself in Barca. I almost forgot about that one. Surprised Martyn didn't post it yet

Marit you totally know about the boob incident! You and I (and the person I was dancing with) talking about it on my facebook made the person's wife crack it and I had to delete him.

**Puma** · 20 December 2012, 8:40 am

This industry needs to keep an audit of who is naming what when!

I forget who it was but I remember an affiliate manager being called a donkey of some sort. Anybody remember what that was?

**Puma** · 20 December 2012, 8:46 am

Found it ! I lol'd for awhile on this and almost fell off my chair at one point.

You blody blood of a bi,sexual donkey
I absolutely do not have any interest to contact you. **** eater monkey.
And i will not say sorry , insert a finger into your mother's ass and take my name shoutly.
get off

**Renee** · 20 December 2012, 4:30 pm

Yep that was me! I got called a bisexual donkey.
Gotta love mental patients.

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