How To Keep Your Affiliate Business Organized

You can be running only one site with 5 affiliate links or many sites with many different affiliate links but you will still need to stay on top of your affiliate information. Usually each affiliate will provide you with a username and password to access your affiliate account to download creatives such as banners, links, and promotional material. The more affiliate information you accumulate, the more complex the problem becomes.

One could argue that their browser will remember all this stuff for them, but believe me, once you have to unexpectedly move your business to a new PC, you will waste countless hours trying to recover the details that kept your business running smoothly.

There are typically two ways to approach this problem:

1. Develop a spreadsheet using Excel and keep all of your affiliate details easily accessible in a way that makes the most sense to you. You can even save the Excel spreadsheet on your desktop and simply double click it to launch the spreadsheet into your Excel program. Here are a few column names you might want to consider to help organize your spreadsheet:

  • Program or Company Name - link this directly to the company or program login URL;
  • Username / Password
  • Affiliate Links - Used to refer members to the program;
  • Broker Links - Used to refer other affiliates to the same program;
  • Commission Details - Current information about the payment structure of the program;
  • Comments - Any comments or special instructions you want to add as a reminder.

2. Purchase software designed specifically for affiliates . Get a copy of Affiliate Organizer to manage the daily details of running your business. This software is easy to install and extremely simple to use. The Affiliate Organizer will help organize the details for Hosting, Web sites, Advertising, Merchants, Outsourced Work, Adsense, Tasks/Alerts, Projects and Ideas, Keyword Lists, Domain Registrars, Forums, Link Partners, Blogs, Year Plan, Services, Training, Resources, Software, Autoresponder, Memberships and Contacts.

What ever approach you decide to use, teach yourself to enter the information as soon as possible while the details are fresh in your brain.