Most affiliate managers operate reactively. Something breaks, they fix it. An affiliate emails, they respond. The week disappears and almost nothing proactive got done. A simple weekly system changes that completely.
Running a healthy affiliate program isn’t complicated, but it does require consistency. The managers I’ve seen build programs to six and seven figures weren’t necessarily the most talented. They were the most systematic. They did the same core things every week, without fail, and built on that foundation over time.
If you’re curious what a typical day looks like, I’ve written about that in a separate post. But the daily view doesn’t give you the full picture. What matters more is having a weekly rhythm that covers recruitment, communication, relationship-building, and the numbers. When those four areas get regular attention, programs grow. When they don’t, programs stagnate.
Here’s how I break down the week.
Approve new affiliate sign-ups (daily, but worth calling out)
This one technically happens daily, but it belongs at the top of any weekly task list because so many programs get it wrong. New affiliates should be approved the same day they apply. Not within 48 hours. Not “when you get to it.” The same day.
Here’s why. A new affiliate applies because something motivated them in that moment. Maybe they just discovered your product, just attended a webinar, just got a referral from a friend. That excitement has a shelf life. If they wait three days for approval and then three more to get their links and onboarding materials, the window has closed. They’ve moved on.
I’ve seen programs lose serious affiliate revenue just by having a slow approval process. Set aside time at the start of each day to approve new sign-ups. It takes five minutes if the process is set up right. And once they’re approved, make sure your affiliate onboarding actually sets them up to promote, not just gives them a link and wishes them luck.
Send at least one proactive communication to your affiliate list
This is the one that separates the programs affiliates promote hard for versus the ones they forget about. Every week, something goes out. Not a desperate “please promote us” message. Something useful. Something that makes their job easier or gets them excited about what’s coming.
It could be a quick stats update: “Here’s what’s converting right now.” It could be a heads-up about an upcoming promotion. It could be a tip for how to promote more effectively. It could be a short case study showing what one affiliate did that worked. Any of these takes 20 minutes to write and does real relationship work.
Affiliates hear crickets from most programs they’ve joined. When you’re the manager who shows up consistently in their inbox with something worth reading, you get more mindshare. And mindshare turns into promotional effort when it matters. I use Affiliate Email Pro to cut the time it takes to write these emails from an hour down to about 10 minutes. It’s trained on thousands of high-performing affiliate emails, so the quality is there without the blank-page problem.
Recruit new affiliates (three to five outreach contacts per week, minimum)
Recruitment can’t be a launch-time thing. If you only recruit affiliates when you need them for an upcoming promotion, you’re always starting from zero. The programs that win are the ones that recruit steadily, year-round, regardless of whether something big is on the calendar.
Three to five outreach contacts per week is a realistic minimum. That’s 150 to 250 new contacts per year, which compounded with follow-ups is enough to build a substantial affiliate roster. The key is to start with a short, conversational first email. Not a pitch deck. Not a wall of details about commission rates and cookie durations. Just a few sentences, as I cover in my post on writing an affiliate recruiting email that gets replies.
When you do reach out, make sure you’re following up. About 80 percent of the affiliates we’ve recruited over the years came from follow-up emails, not the first one. Set tasks in your project management tool for each outreach contact and follow up every 10 days until you hear back.
Not sure where to look for new affiliates? Start with your customers, your email list, and the people already talking about your niche. The complete guide to finding affiliates covers the best sources in detail.
Check your numbers: at least a 15-minute review of key metrics
You don’t need to spend hours in your affiliate dashboard every week. But you do need to spend some time there. At minimum, a 15-minute weekly review of your key metrics will surface problems before they get expensive and show you where opportunity is hiding.
Here’s what I look at each week. Total clicks and sales compared to the prior week. EPC (earnings per click), because a drop here often signals a conversion problem on the offer side. Which affiliates drove the most traffic and which drove the most sales. Any unusual traffic spikes from affiliates you don’t recognize. And whether any affiliates hit a milestone worth celebrating.
That last one matters more than most managers realize. An affiliate who just made their first sale is at peak motivation. If you’re watching the numbers and you catch it the same day, you can send them a personal congratulations message while they’re still buzzing. That moment of recognition builds more loyalty than most commission bumps. For a deeper breakdown of what to track and why, the post on measuring affiliate program success lays it out clearly.
One specific thing to look for in your weekly review: unusual traffic from affiliates who haven’t historically sent much. It could mean they’re ramping up their promotion. It could also be a sign of fraud. I check for this every week. If something looks off, I investigate. For the specifics of what to look for, the post on spotting and stopping affiliate fraud is worth bookmarking.
Personal outreach to your top partners (at least once a month, flagged weekly)
Your top 10 to 20 affiliates should hear from you personally at least once a month. Not a mass email. A direct, personal message that acknowledges something specific about what they’ve done or what’s coming up. This is the work that builds real relationships instead of just transactional ones.
I keep a running list of my top partners and put a note on their file every time I reach out. When I flag my weekly tasks, I check the list and look for anyone who hasn’t heard from me personally in the last 30 days. The message doesn’t need to be long. A two-paragraph email checking in on how things are going, mentioning something relevant to their audience, and teasing what’s coming up is plenty.
The managers who do this consistently end up with affiliates who go out of their way to prioritize their promotions. The ones who don’t end up competing for attention against every other program their affiliates have joined. Small effort, outsized return.
Re-engagement: touch your inactive affiliates
Every affiliate program has two types of people in it: active promoters and everyone else. The “everyone else” group is almost always 80 to 95 percent of total sign-ups. That’s not a failure. That’s normal. But it is an opportunity that most managers ignore completely.
Each week, pick a small segment of your inactive affiliates and reach out. Not a “we miss you” blast email. A short, personal note that gives them a reason to come back. Maybe there’s a new offer. Maybe you have new creative assets. Maybe you want to hop on a 15-minute call to learn what’s been holding them back.
The key, as I cover in the post on activating inactive affiliates, is to make the barrier to getting started as low as possible. Give them one thing they can do right now. One email they can send. One social post. Not a full promotional plan, just a single easy action.
If you want a plug-and-play solution for this, the Affiliate Activation Templates give you the exact emails to use, including both short-term and long-term re-engagement sequences. They’re based on what’s actually worked to turn dormant affiliates into active promoters.
Plan and prep for what’s coming next
Every week should end with a brief look at what’s coming in the next two to six weeks. What promotions or launches are on the calendar? Do your affiliates have everything they need to start warming up their audiences? Do you have your promotional assets ready to send out?
This forward-looking habit is what separates managers who scramble from managers who execute. If a launch is six weeks away, your affiliates should already know about it. They should have it on their calendar. They should be getting warmed up to talk about it. The managers who wait until two weeks out to notify affiliates of a major launch are leaving a significant amount of revenue on the table.
The same applies to evergreen programs. Even without a fixed launch date, there are always patterns. Sales pick up around certain holidays. Conversion rates change seasonally. If you know from last year’s data that your program sees a 30 percent lift in October, you should be building affiliate momentum in August. The weekly planning habit makes that kind of proactive preparation possible.
If you want to get your entire program organized and running efficiently from the start, the Book on Affiliate Management covers the full system, from recruiting and onboarding to activation, communication, and scaling. It’s the resource I wish had existed when I started.
The weekly rhythm, summarized
Here’s the full list, stripped down. Every single week, an affiliate manager should be doing these things.
First, approve new affiliate applications same-day. Second, send at least one proactive email to your affiliate list. Third, send three to five new recruitment outreach messages and follow up on existing ones. Fourth, spend 15 minutes reviewing your key metrics and looking for anything unusual. Fifth, check your top-partner outreach log and send personal notes to anyone who hasn’t heard from you in the past month. Sixth, touch a segment of your inactive affiliates with a low-barrier re-engagement message. Seventh, look ahead at what’s coming and confirm your affiliates are prepared.
That’s not a 40-hour workload. For an experienced manager in a stable program, most weeks the core tasks take two to three hours. The catch is that it needs to happen every week, not just when things feel slow or when a launch is coming. Consistency is what compounds into a program that affiliates show up for.
The programs I’ve seen fail weren’t missing strategy. They were missing rhythm. Get the rhythm right and the strategy has somewhere to land.
