Most of the people who start an affiliate business make the mistake to consider this not as a business but as an income opportunity only. Neglecting the importance of a serious business approach can determine pour results. Affiliate campaigns are really serious activities. You need to manage your activities, for this reason nowadays people are talking about affiliate management.

An affiliate program is a project and, as such needs to be managed by a project manager. In the case of affiliate marketing the project manager is the affiliate manager.

The project is not related to a product development but to a product promotion.

An affiliate manager should be skilled as a project manager to manage time, costs, risks and resources (if any) dedicated to the promotion and at the same time he/she should be able to recruit JV partners and affiliates, create the tools for the promotions and monitor the product launch. He/she can be also a launch manager but this is something I would recommend to be dealt with by a product manager or a dedicated launch manager.

In general an affiliate (and an affiliate manager) does not need deal with problems, e.g.:

- Creating products

- Own and manage inventories, equipment, etc.

- Shipping

- Monitor and track payment transactions

- Manage refunds

- Own a web site and a shopping cart

Anyway we will see that an affiliate manager has to deal with web sites and products. The web sites are to be considered places where the affiliate manager uploads the promotions tools and the products are the tools! As a consequence the work of an affiliate manager is a project management task!

We will be going to discuss about the role of a super affiliate. A super affiliate is a business person who has to stand out from the rest. You really need to have a project in place if you want to become a super affiliate. It is not enough that you approach the market in a static way.

There are two options if you want to become a super affiliate:

- Create a great business as an affiliate (managing your activities as a project, you need a good and complex web site to sustain your business and you need to create a great product: your service).

- Delegate a good affiliate manager to make you become a super affiliate.

Being a super affiliate has great advantages:

- You increase your exposure and popularity

- As a consequence you can have more people asking you to be their JV partner

- You can request higher commissions

If you really start to think as a project and product manager before that an affiliate or affiliate manager, you are already a step ahead. Concepts e.g. milestones, schedules, risk assessment, resource usage, costs, roadmap, business plan, etc. must be fixed in your mind as well as your knowledge in driving a car.

If you are a marketer this is a great opportunity to grab business management information to increase your entrepreneurial or managerial skill. If you are a technical person, well this is the right and easy point to start to become also a marketer.

Those who have this approach are people with a vision and the focus on making a business rather than a money-making opportunity.