• Industry conferences - these are the best tool at your disposal. Create personal relationships with your affiliates, or just learn from other affiliates and managers in other fields
• Revenue Magazine - Pay attention to what’s going on, what’s working well for others, and emulate it.
• Affiliate Announce - Get your name out there, and let folks know about your program, this is a good way to start doin’ that
• Linda’s list o’ links
• E-mail and Instant Messenger are your friends. New methods of communicating are nice for new media marketing. New who to call on, how often, and for what. Build your network of trusted folks who can help you get questions answered and problems solved.
• Improve your program - If you have an existing program, start another that offers a little higher percentage that passes link popularity
• Research the scripts available at the various software directories. Find something that works and get a good programmer to customize for your cause.
• Look for “your keywords + forum”, “your keywords + advertising” with the combination tool (yes, I keep plugging this tool because I use it constantly myself)
• Affiliate Marketing Today - Haiko De Poel 4 p.m. Tuesdays, or catch the podcasts - Definitely a guy worth listenin’ to in the affiliate space.

Affiliate Networks and Software

• Shareasale
• Commission Junction
• Link Share
• ClickBank
• More affiliate networks
• For finding affiliate merchants, you may also try a combination tool searching for “your keywords + affiliate” or “your keyword 2 + affiliate program”, etc. This is sometimes a way to find those great affiliate programs.
• Other program directories
• Affiliate Clicks software
• Cookieless Affiliate Tracking
• FusionQuest Software *thanks Linda

Top Reads for affiliate managers:

• Affiliate commissions for 800 #’s at sitepoint
• Merchant requests advice from affiliates
• Losing affiliate commissions to a merchant’s 800#
• Best affiliate programs - what makes them attractive
• What do affiliates want? *great read
• Hiring an affiliate manager - from a guy who would know.
• Successful affiliate marketing for merchants
• Affiliate manager pay scale
• Thread to watch - favorite affiliate software - hopefully there’ll be some more folks weighin’ in their opinions (and suggestions), as there already been some fantastic answers (very insightful constructive criticism) attempting to talk me out of the original question.

Some of my favorite affiliate information sites:

• Superaff - Terry is an affiliate well worth payin’ attention to.
• Linda B 5 star programs
• Affiliate marketing WSO
• A Best Web
• Drastic Tactics
• Go learn at the Affiliate marketing summit

There’s two things I’ve always found in the top affiliates I’ve met.
1. They like to be independant and highly value their time.
2. They like to make money working smarter not harder.

Help them do both and you’ll always have a successful program.