Manage the Program, Not Affiliates Something else deserves our attention this Monday. You will often hear the terms affili- ate manager and affiliate management used interchangeably with affiliate program manager and affiliate program management. Although the industry-accepted terminol- ogy will not be changed by one book, it is important to define the terminology at the outset and not let some of these terms have a negative effect on our very approach to managing the affiliate program. I don't believe it is possible to manage affiliates. The reason for this is the very essence of the relationship at stake. Affiliates are very different from any traditional workforce. Although they all vary in types of marketing methods used, psychological maturity, professional experience, and training, there is one thing that is true about all affiliates, and it is the driving force that moves them. All affiliates are motivated by their love of independence. They are normally not tied by performance contracts and can choose what affiliate programs to promote and what merchants to drop, without notify- ing the merchants themselves. By the very definition of the term, affiliates are unmanage- able. Therefore, merchants who believe that their job is to manage affiliates frequently fail. Management is often associated with a top-down, directing, controlling, perform- or-we'll-terminate-you kind of approach. As I will discuss in the more advanced chapters, affiliates are intolerant of such management techniques and of merchants who practice them. Instead, online businesses that run affiliate programs should understand that their 74 E M E N T O P T I O N S