Most affiliate managers spend their days in reactive mode, rarely getting ahead of their work. An email has come in? Time to respond. A partner is underperforming? Time to frantically troubleshoot. Revenue has dipped? Time to panic!
Luckily, breaking the vicious cycle doesn’t call for any heroics – just structure. If you want a programme that can grow affiliate revenue without stalling, you need consistent routines. And this holds true regardless of what you’re managing – a relatively straightforward B2B campaign or a more intricate SaaS marketing programme.
According to the Performance Marketing Association, affiliate marketing in the US drives a 11:1 return on ad spend, while UK programmes deliver 16:1 ROI according to the APMA’s State of the Affiliate Nation report for 2025. These results don’t happen by accident. They’re the product of affiliate managers savvy enough to run proven routines daily, weekly, and monthly.
Let’s break them down one by one, starting with things you might want to consider including in your day-to-day schedule.
Daily routines for affiliate managers
Morning check-ups to get the ball rolling
Start each day reviewing your dashboard. Check yesterday’s revenue, conversion rates, and significant shifts in partner performance. Data-driven affiliate programmes should be designed in a way that allows you to flag any issues early – and to capitalise on trends while they’re still fresh.
Pro tip: look for outliers. For instance, if a partner suddenly spikes in traffic but drops in conversions, it probably means that either your tracking links aren’t recording sales properly, or they’re sending the wrong audience to your site. Another example is someone unexpectedly doubling their revenue – find out what changed so you can replicate it elsewhere.
Don’t postpone replying to partners
Ideally, you should reply to partner emails and support tickets within no more than 24 hours. Quick, helpful responses build trust and keep partners active. Even simple acknowledgments – “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ll check and get back to you by end of day” – can go a long way towards making your partners feel cared for and happy to keep working with you.
Pay attention to new affiliate applications
Review new affiliate applications every day. Strategic partner recruitment means being selective – without, however, creating delays:
- Check applicants against your criteria.
- Approve quality partners as soon as possible.
- Decline those who are not a good fit with a brief professional note to that effect.
For higher-volume programmes, it’s best to devise a set of clear approval criteria and use automated filters for obvious declines. Finally, save your time for borderline cases that require some mulling over.
Weekly routines for affiliate managers
Get clear on what’s working (and what’s not)
Dig into your top performers with pointed questions:
- Are they driving visitors through blogs, social media, email lists, or paid ads?
- Are certain banner designs, product images, or promotional messages converting better than others?
- What promotional strategies drive the strongest results?
Once you’re clear on the above, replicate the insights with your other affiliates.
Just as importantly, make sure to identify underperformers. Some partners may need a gentle nudge – fresh images or copy, a promotional idea, or just a quick check-in. Others may need different types of support – and the only way to know what that might be is to touch base regularly.
Strategic partner recruitment beats mass emails
Set aside time each week for recruiting new partners, but do it strategically – research candidates whose audiences match yours, write personalised messages to each one, and follow up with those you contacted previously.
Keep in mind that quality outreach takes effort. Generic “Join our programme” emails are usually trashed before they’re even read. To get responses, you must demonstrate that you understand their audiences and spell out just how exactly your programme is going to benefit them.
Keep your affiliate materials exciting
Don’t skimp on updating your resources at least semi-regularly. Refresh banners and promotional text, add new product details, and create seasonal content or limited-time offers. When partners have new material to work with, they’re more likely to promote you again, even if they’ve already featured your brand.
These updates don’t need to be complicated. Sometimes a new product launch or holiday promotion is all it takes to reactivate partners who’ve been silent lately.
Run weekly experiments
Each week, review your active campaigns and try something different. For instance, pick a campaign and change one of its minor aspects – button text, a headline on the landing page, or which audience segment is able to see the offer. Check back in next week and see if anything has changed.
Pro tip: make adjustments one thing at a time. Otherwise, you won’t know what actually made the difference.
Monthly routines for affiliate managers
The big picture
Set time aside each month to zoom out and look at the big picture:
- How’s your total revenue performing compared to last month? Three months ago? Same time last year?
- Are you gaining new partners faster than you’re losing old ones?
- Which partners bring in the most money?
Reviewing monthly helps you see patterns you’d probably miss with restless, daily checks. Some months may be consistently stronger than others, or perhaps YouTubers drive better results than deal aggregators – whatever pattern you end up identifying, let it guide your time commitments going forward.
Invest in partner education
Make no mistake – partner education drives performance. For instance, you may want to run a monthly call walking partners through their sales data and answering questions in real time. Between calls, short recorded videos work well for showcasing specific techniques – how to improve conversions, which products are hot right now, or what your top earners are doing differently. The format matters less than the content – partners want practical information they can use immediately.
Keep it simple, though. A casual 20-minute “here’s what worked this month” session is far more effective than spending weeks on building something elaborate. Partners who know your products and understand the system are likely to stay longer and make more sales.
Are your commission rates still competitive?
What you pay matters, obviously. So, check monthly whether your commission rates still make sense – are competitors offering more? Would a seasonal raise during your busy period attract better partners? Sometimes rewarding your top performers with higher commissions works better than bumping everyone’s rates by the same amount.
You don’t need to change rates constantly, but if you never review them, you’ll either pay more than necessary or lose partners to programmes offering better deals.
Strategic recruitment planning
Growing your program means going after specific partners, not just waiting for applications. Set aside time monthly to identify a handful of partners who could really move the needle – maybe 5 to 10 worth pursuing seriously. Look at what they talk about, who their audience is, and whether your products actually fit what they typically promote. Then contact them individually, explaining why you think there’s a match.
This is different from your weekly recruitment emails. Rather than blasting templates to hundreds of contacts, you’re hand-picking a few partners who could generate serious revenue and making a real case for why working together makes sense.
Don’t allow technical issues to bleed revenue
Technical problems quietly drain revenue. Once a month, test whether everything still works correctly – if possible, click through your affiliate links on different phones and browsers to make sure they actually lead where they should. Check that partners are getting paid the right percentage when they make sales, and verify that whenever someone clicks a partner’s link and buys from you, the partner in question gets credit for the sale.
If you’ve recently changed anything in your setup or just launched a new programme, these checks matter even more. A broken link or payment system that doesn’t record sales properly can easily cost you thousands while partners sit there wondering why the conversion counter remains stationary.
Know your competition
Keep an eye on what other programmes in your space are doing. Check their commission rates occasionally, see where they’re finding partners, and notice which tactics seem to be working for them. (Remember, though – all you’re aiming to do is identify gaps, not opportunities to blindly copy-and-paste everything they do.)
For instance, maybe everyone in your industry recruits from the same three influencer networks, but nobody’s tapping into YouTube reviewers yet. Or perhaps all your competitors focus on cashback sites while ignoring niche bloggers. Those gaps are worth exploring because less competition typically means better results.
Conclusion
Revenue doesn’t just grow by accident. It grows through consistent execution of routines that balance immediate needs with long-term strategy. To put it schematically: monitor performance daily, drive optimisation weekly, and maintain strategic direction monthly.
This is how successful programmes actually operate – whether they’re run in-house or managed by third party agencies. Begin with the daily and weekly basics, then add the monthly strategic pieces as you get comfortable with the rhythm. Over time, you should be spending less time dealing with urgent issues and increasingly more time optimising your set ups that consistently generate revenue.
