In the world of affiliate marketing, people have been applying the 80/20 rule for many years now. But what if we told you that the 80/20 rule is dead and there are better ways to manage your business?
If you aren’t familiar with the 80/20 rule, then you should know that it refers to 80% of your revenue coming from 20% of your affiliates. So, in this sense, you would need to spend around 80% of your time with that 20% of affiliates.
Where did it come from?
Believe it or not, but the 80/20 rule originates from economics and goes right back to 1906. Back then, Vilfredo Pareto discovered that around 20% of the Italian population owned 80% of the land.
Over time, this concept evolved and was used by marketers who decided that they should focus time and effort on the 20%. In affiliate marketing, program managers started to focus their efforts on the affiliates that were generating the most revenue.
This might have worked 10 years ago, but today, it’s all about 20-60-20 which Lee-Ann speaks about in this week’s Affiliate Drive Time below.
The problem with 80/20 management
There are some major problems with 80/20 management, but the main issue is that it results in affiliate managers spending all of their time on certain affiliates. The truth is that new partners could be driving incremental revenue, but they are not being nurtured and so this could affect their performance.
It is likely that you’re paying the top performers in your program a premium rate for customer deliver right? When you look at it like that, you soon realise that it isn’t the right way to manage things.
How you should be spending your time:
Introducing the 20-60-20 Affiliate Program Management Model
The idea behind this 20-60-20 model of program management is that you spend your time wisely with the partners across your affiliate database to mine for value throughout the month. By doing this, you’ll avoid trying to spend what little free time you have senselessly doing lead generation and cold calling whilst maintaining top performing partnerships.
There’s a difference between what is time spent providing good affiliate customer service on partnerships you need to maintain and overcompensating hours unnecessarily on top performing partner relationship management.
When you join our AMPP training – you’ll get to find out more about this method and how to apply it to your affiliate program to generate steady revenues month on month.
Stop wasting time
By splitting your tasks and time management consciously to follow this management formula you will be able to add value to your bottom line because you’ll not be spending all your time with the wrong partners servicing work that you’re already paying for.
Stop wasting time and start utilizing it to nurture value from partners that haven’t yet delivered volume. I think you’ll be surprised about what diamonds can be mined in your existing affiliate database and hopefully start adding more value to your bottom-line delivery too.
Make sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel to catch next weeks’ Affiliate Drive Time episode. If you sign up for our newsletter, you’ll receive the Affiliate Drive Time updates each week. Check back next Wednesday at 10am for the latest in Lee-Ann’s series of tips!
