Affiliate Certification Requirements Could Come To Affiliate Networks By Late September

Published 7th August 2009

To the delight of CPA and affiliate networks, the Affiliate Classroom 2.0 team announced their plan to "Certify" affiliates as they complete the rigorous training course that they will have to accomplish. Underperforming marketers are up in arms about the prospect of having to compete with highly trained marketers and are expected to try to boycott the launch!

"They don't have the right to make us have to demonstrate anything to CPA Networks and affiliate managers in order to promote their products!" blurted one affiliate who demanded anonymity to prevent being removed from current affiliate networks. "This will make it much harder for us to join new networks unless we currently have a history with the affiliate networks."



These sentiments are quite the opposite in the CPA networks and the affiliate networks. Affiliate managers offen have criticisms about the ability of marketers who sign up for accounts to promote the goods carried by those networks.

"We never were sure if the affiliates we signed up knew the difference between CPA and PPC! Since the inception of the new certification process in Affiliate Classroom 2.0, we can pick those with scfores from 5 to 10 and know that these people will know what they are doing and require much less training to make some sales," declared one CPA network sales rep who requested his firm's name be withheld. He also explained that 20 percent of industry affiliates make 80 percent of the sales, with the majority never making one sale!

With records like that, the industry needs to intensify sales while decreasing the costs of doing business that many affiliate networks have found to be increasing as new affiliates sign up without producing any results, while they are tracked in their books.

The Affiliate Classroom 2.0 curriculum features a combination of testing and real-world applications to certify affiliates! Because of this affiliate trainees will get a class level based on the results of the testing and procedures they are supposed to perform in live situations. While students reach milestones, they move up in the rankings, and individuals who are not very motivated to finish tasks will see their own lackluster rankings as they log in to the site, alerting them that they must complete additional training to increase their standings.

Affiliate Classroom, being the innovator again in affiliate certifications, created the affiliate manager certifications back in 2007. Product developers, sick of supervision their own affiliates, saw this certification as a way to obtain qualified affiliate managers to keep their affiliates motivated and educated. At this time a good number of the graduates of Affiliate Classroom 1.0 are highly coveted by product creators and affiliate networks. Those that decided against working for others have found it very rewarding to be super affiliates in their own right..

"Me? Work for someone else? I don't need to, when one ad pays for my car, one campaign pays for my residence... If I need a little extra money, all it takes is a quick PPC campaign for 48 hours and my savings account is full. It fits my personality much better being a free spirit." Bernie Dorman used to work as an affiliate manager for 10% of all the sales he managed, but soon found he was outperforming all of his affiliates combined. "Now I choose whose products I promote. I wait for those that excite me. And I don't promote anyone's product if they don't let me have a copy!"

Not all affiliate marketers can be that successful, affiliates who market full time find that they sell more than some of the inexperienced marketers they are competing with. Without proper training, some affiliate marketers target the improper keywords, not doing sufficient keyword exploration or not using commonly accepted marketing tactics.

Affiliate marketers should also know traffic generation techniques, product research and the intricacies of email marketing. CPA and affiliate networks deal with legal issues and want nothing to do with people who spam, use improper advertising methods and make false claims.

Affiliate Classroom offers over 62 different courses that cover legal and ethical issues in the industry as well as several business models that affiliates can elect when picking their marketing career. A good number of of the courses focus on "natural" traffic (traffic that comes from searches on the web) as well as PPC (pay per click - where the search engine charges the affiliate marketer a set price for all clicks on the link that they placed for a particular keyword term) strategies. A number of of the courses also cover how to test and track to increase results. As the months progress, additional courses will be added to enhance a marketer's education and revenue simultaneously.

Paying students will have access to supporting materials and software tools to make affiliate campaigns easy to set up with a few mouse clicks. With that much training and support available to students, it is no wonder that the CPA and affiliate networks are drooling over the first wave of graduates to come out of Affiliate Classroom 2.0 training.

Affiliates may want to build a resume of their affiliate successes for future reference by the networks when reviewing their applications, and a great place to do this will be the Affiliate Classroom members area, which will include a forum where all of an affiliate's Websites, Niches and Promotional Method Expertise will be tracked, so that members can have a resume to use to negotiate higher commissions rates and to find potential joint venture (JV) partnerships. This forum alone can help a struggling affiliate get the help they need to increase their chances of getting accepted by the networks.

"With the networks waiting for Anik (Singal) to launch the (Affiliate Classroom 2.0) course, those of us who are already in are safe, but anyone trying to sign up for an affiliate account is going to have a much harder time getting approved than it ever was! I am glad I made the cut," said Bernie Dorman as he sped off into the Tampa Bay streets in his Mustang Convertable. "Tell them to sign up now, if they want in! Give them my affiliate link!"