Fractional Affiliate Programme Director, Monthly Management

Across the programmes I have taken over, the partners producing more than one percent of revenue each numbered between six and fourteen. The rest of the approved list is administration. Management as I run it is the work of deciding which partners are worth a relationship, what each of them is paid, and proving once a quarter that the money is buying demand that would not have arrived anyway. The monthly rhythm: Week one, partner-level profit and loss, new against returning split, and payout reconciled against the network invoice. Week two, the conversations that actually move a programme: briefing partners who need a reason to place you, negotiating positions, clearing compliance flags. Week three, tests in flight. Week four, a written review of four to six pages stating what changed and what I recommend, sent before the call rather than presented at it. Commission architecture: A single rate for everybody is a subsidy paid to whoever stands closest to the checkout. I build differentiated rates: higher for new customers, lower or nil for returning, separate rates for the actions that matter in your vertical, and an attribution window shorter than the network default. On Impact and Partnerize this is native. On Awin and CJ it takes advertiser-side logic and a monthly reconciliation, which I do rather than pretend the platform handles it. Proving incrementality: Each quarter one partner cohort is paused in matched markets for four weeks while the same cohort keeps running elsewhere, and we read the difference in total orders rather than affiliate orders. I have killed partners producing good-looking revenue on that evidence and will recommend it again. Cohorts that pass get a rate increase. This is the part that makes the channel defensible in a budget conversation and the part most programmes never do. The compliance surface: In pharma, medtech, legal and recruiting, a partner's page is your exposure. Live partner pages are reviewed on a rolling schedule rather than at onboarding only, because approved partners drift. Findings go to your reviewer with a proposed action and a date, and unresolved findings suspend the partner instead of sitting open in a spreadsheet. Network and platform: I hold the relationship with your network, including annual commercial terms, override rates and the tracking faults that need engineering attention on their side. Where the platform itself is the constraint I will say so and cost the migration, rather than working around it for another year and calling that management. Not included: Creative production, landing page development and translation. Influencer and public relations work, which is a different discipline with different economics and I will not pretend otherwise. Paid search, paid social and programmatic buying, unless bought separately as a CPA scope. I take no commission, override or rebate from any network or partner in your programme, and that goes in the contract. Who should not buy this: Anyone who wants partner recruitment counted as output. I do not work to a target of partners added per month, and if that number sits in your objectives we will disagree by the end of the first quarter. Programmes below roughly one hundred thousand euros of annual channel revenue, where the fee is a large share of the money being moved and the diagnostic alone serves you better. And companies that need the affiliate line to rise every month regardless of what the tests say. That is a reporting job rather than a management job, and somebody else should take it.