Working With Your Affiliate Manager

An affiliate manager is not a support desk. They are a commercial contact with a target, usually measured on the net revenue their partner list produces this quarter. Almost everything that follows comes out of that one fact: why a rate request lands better at the start of a quarter than at the end of one, why "send me your numbers" is a real answer rather than a brush-off, and why the affiliates who get things done are the ones who write the manager's internal case for them.

This guide is about the relationship after approval. If no program has accepted you yet, start with how to get approved by affiliate programs and come back to this page once you have a live account and a month of data in it.

What a manager can decide, and what sits somewhere else

The most common mistake is asking the wrong person. A manager owns commercial terms inside a band that their head of affiliates set. They usually do not own the payment run. They never own a licence condition. Asking for something that is not theirs to give costs you the only relationship you have inside the program, and it teaches them that your requests need filtering.

The last row is the one beginners argue with. In Great Britain the operator's own licence makes it responsible for the conduct of the third parties who market on its behalf — the Gambling Commission sets this out in licence condition 1.1.2, responsibility for third parties. A manager who refuses a bonus headline is not being awkward; they are protecting the licence that pays both of you. What each big European regime demands of an affiliate is set out in affiliate compliance in the UK, Germany, Sweden and Spain.

The monthly report that makes every other ask easier

Managers handle a list of partners, most of whom contact them only when something is wrong. A short monthly report puts you in a different category before you ask for anything. It also gives the manager a document to paste into their own internal request, which is the actual mechanism by which rates change.

Send the same six numbers every month, on the same day, in the same order. Here is a worked template — the figures are illustrative, not a target.

Subject: [yoursite.example] August report — 24 FTDs, EUR 5,120 NGR

Hi [name], August summary for account 10482.

Clicks 1,410 (July: 1,180). Registrations 58, which is 4.1% of clicks. First-time depositors 24, which is 41% of registrations. NGR EUR 5,120. Traffic is 88% organic search, 12% newsletter.

Biggest page: the live casino comparison, 61% of outbound clicks. Published this month: three new brand reviews and two updated payment-method pages.

Next month: a payments guide and a rewrite of the bonus-terms explainer.

One ask: could you confirm whether [brand] is open for traffic from [market]? I have a page ready for it.

Three rules make the report work. Keep it to one screen. Include the down months honestly, because a partner whose numbers only ever rise is a partner nobody believes. And carry exactly one ask per report — a list of five requests gets answered on the easiest one and the rest disappear.

Asking for a rate raise: what to bring, and when

A rate request is a business case, not a favour. The manager has to justify the change upward, so hand them the justification already written.

Worked example (illustrative). Say the report above is your third consecutive month above twenty depositors. At a 30% revenue share, EUR 5,120 of net gaming revenue pays 5,120 × 0.30 = EUR 1,536. At 35% it pays 5,120 × 0.35 = EUR 1,792. The difference is EUR 256 a month, or EUR 3,072 over a year on flat volume. Now look at the same numbers from the program's side: five extra points costs them EUR 256 this month against a partner already producing twenty-four new depositors, and the cost of replacing those depositors through paid media is the comparison their head of affiliates will actually make. Model your own version in the commission calculator before you name a figure.

Bring four things:

• Three months of the same six numbers. Consistency is the evidence; a single good month is noise.
• A specific number. "35% from October" is answerable. "A better rate" is not, and it invites the smallest increase the manager can approve.
• What you will do with it. "I will move the brand into the comparison table's top block and add two new pages" is a commitment they can report upward.
• Your alternative, stated flatly and without theatre. If another program covers the same market with an equivalent brand set, say so as a fact. A threat sounds like a threat; a plan sounds like planning.

Timing: ask at the start of a quarter, after a growth month, and never inside the same message as a complaint. Ask before you commit to a block of new content, not after — once the pages exist, the leverage is gone. And ask once. Re-asking within eight weeks with no new data is how a partner becomes a nuisance.

Getting extra geos activated: the growth-story ask

Most programs enable markets per account rather than opening everything by default. A geo request is answered by three checks the manager runs quietly: does a brand in the group hold a licence in that market, is there capacity for another partner there, and does your traffic look like it belongs to that market.

Do the first check yourself. Look the brand up on the regulator's public register before you write — the method is in choosing your niche and market. If no brand in the group is licensed there, the answer is no and the ask costs you credibility.

Where a licence does exist, the request that works names four things: the market, the brand, the traffic you already have from that country, and the page you will publish. "I have 900 monthly visits from that market on a comparison page that currently sends them nowhere useful; can you open [brand] for it?" gives the manager a sentence to forward. A bare "can I get more geos?" gives them nothing. Expect a slower answer than for a rate change, because enabling a market can involve the brand's own compliance review of your site, and a review is a queue.

Escalating a stalled payment without burning the account

Payment problems are usually process failures rather than bad faith: a missing invoice, a threshold you did not meet, a bank detail that changed, a finance team that runs on the twentieth and not the fifteenth. Escalate on a timeline, in writing, and in the same tone at every step.

• Day 0. The stated payment date passes. Do nothing for three working days; bank transfers move slowly and a chase on day one costs goodwill for nothing.
• Day +3. One short message to the manager: account number, accounting period, amount, invoice reference, and the payment date the terms state. No adjectives.
• Day +10. Move it to email if it started on a chat app, because chat is not a record. Attach the statement and ask for a date rather than an explanation.
• Day +20. Name the clause that sets the payment schedule, ask the manager to escalate internally, and copy any finance address the program publishes.
• Day +30. A formal written demand: amount, period, dates of every prior contact, and the remedy you intend to use.

Knowing the statutory floor changes the tone of that last message, because it stops being an opinion. For a contract governed by English law, the UK government's guidance on late commercial payments states that where no payment date has been agreed, payment is late 30 days after the customer receives the invoice or the service is provided, whichever is later; that statutory interest on a business-to-business debt is 8% plus the Bank of England base rate; and that fixed recovery costs of £40, £70 or £100 can be charged depending on the size of the debt. Other jurisdictions set their own equivalents, so check the law your contract names rather than assuming. The invoicing side of this — who raises the document, in whose name, with what VAT treatment — is in getting paid, taxes and invoicing.

Two things to avoid. Do not raise it in a public forum before the private route is exhausted, because you only get to do that once and it ends the account. And do not stop sending traffic as leverage in month one; a paused account is easier for a struggling program to ignore than an active one.

Carryover resets: the ask almost nobody makes

Under negative carryover, a month in which your referred players win more than they lose starts the next month in deficit rather than at zero. With a small player set this is not an edge case; it is a normal quarter.

Worked example (illustrative). One player wins EUR 4,000 in March while the rest of your cohort produces EUR 1,000 of NGR. Net for the month is minus EUR 3,000. At a 30% share that is a carried deficit of EUR 900. If April produces EUR 5,120 of NGR, you are paid 30% of (5,120 − 3,000) = EUR 636 rather than EUR 1,536. Two ordinary months have quietly become one.

Managers can often zero a balance of that size, and many will if asked once, early, and with the volume to justify it. Ask before the payment run closes, ask for the specific figure, and say what you are doing next month. What they cannot do is reset a deficit the size of a quarter's payout, so the real defence is contractual: get the carryover position in writing at signup. Revshare vs CPA vs hybrid works through how the same traffic pays out under each model, and the post on negative carryover goes through the clause line by line.

What to send monthly, and what to send never

Monthly: the six numbers, one line on what you published, one line on what is coming, one ask. Quarterly: a short note on where the market is moving, the kind of thing managers pass around internally. Yearly: updated company and invoicing details, unprompted. Never: a forwarded complaint about a player's withdrawal, which belongs in the operator's support queue; a request to bend an advertising rule; or a bulk message obviously sent to twelve programs at once, because managers talk to each other more than affiliates expect.

Six red flags in a program or a manager

1. Terms only ever given verbally. If a rate, a threshold or a carryover position never appears in writing, it does not exist.
2. Everything happens on a chat app. Convenient for them, unrecorded for you. Mirror every agreement into email the same day.
3. They cannot state the NGR definition. A manager who does not know what is deducted before your percentage applies cannot tell you what the deal pays.
4. Two consecutive late payments with no explanation offered before you ask. One is a process failure. Two is a pattern.
5. Their reporting and your click log disagree and nobody will reconcile it. A 5–10% gap is normal tracking loss; a 40% gap is a broken integration or a broken deal. Read affiliate tracking and postbacks explained before you accuse anyone.
6. Retroactive plan changes. Some contracts allow a CPA plan to be switched to revenue share after the fact on quality grounds. That may be legitimate, but if it happens without notice, treat the account as unreliable and diversify.

When to stop asking

Stop when three months of reports have produced no reply, when the second payment is late and the escalation is ignored, or when the answer to every request is a promise with no date attached. At that point more effort spent on the relationship is effort not spent on the site.

What to do instead is undramatic. Keep the account open and the existing links live, because referred players keep generating revenue. Point new content at a program that answers. Say nothing publicly. Programs change hands, managers move, and an affiliate who exited quietly is welcome back; one who exited loudly is not. The program directory lists what each program publishes about its own terms, which is the first filter when you are choosing the next one.

Common questions

How often should I contact my affiliate manager?

Once a month with the report, plus whenever something material changes on your side. More than that and you become an interruption; less and you are a row in a spreadsheet.

Can a manager get me a better rate before I have any traffic?

Rarely, and it is usually the wrong thing to spend your one early ask on. A better opening move is asking for the terms in writing — NGR definition, carryover, fees, thresholds — because those clauses decide more of your income than the headline percentage does.

What if my manager leaves and nobody replaces them?

Write to the generic affiliates address with your account number, your last three months of numbers, and a request for a named contact. An unmanaged account still pays, but it stops improving, and unmanaged accounts are the ones quietly dropped in a rate review.

Everything here concerns advertising licensed gambling products to adults, 18+ or the legal age in your market. Keep responsible-gambling messaging and the local helpline visible on every page that names a brand, and never trade compliance for a commercial term.

What we would do this week

1. Write the six-number report for last month and send it to every program you have an account with, even the ones producing nothing. It takes about twenty minutes per program the first time and five minutes a month after that.
2. Pick one program and one ask. The rate, a geo, or a carryover reset — whichever the numbers support best. Put the arithmetic in the message, name a specific figure, and say what you will do with it.
3. Open a file per program with the terms you actually hold in writing: rate, NGR definition, carryover, admin fee, threshold, schedule, contact name. Any blank row is a question for your next monthly email, and blank rows are where money goes missing. If you are still choosing where to apply, the 2026 program comparison sets out what each of the programs listed here publishes.