How I manage all my affiliate accounts

This story is so humorous I just had to post it because I’m sure a lot of you can relate. As affiliate marketers, we have accounts with Commission Junction, ClickBank, Share-a-sale, Linkshare, PepperJam, Copeac, ClickBooth, PayPal, Adwords, Adsense, Azoogle, Chitika, InLinks, NetKlix, Webmaster tools, hosting accounts, domain accounts, site logins, blog feed accounts, Digg, Technorati, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, WordPress, and I could go on and on and on.

I have so many logins there would be no way to keep them all straight so I use this login management software that keeps my logins all nicely organized and can be easily transferred from desktop to laptop so your logins are always handy.

Almost all my affiliate payments are via PayPal or ACH, but one company had made payment via mailed check up until last fall when I switched from a DBA to a corporation. I had completed all the ACH paperwork, faxed it in to the company and my rep said he would take care of it.

This was a decent CPC affiliate program that I had integrated into about six different sites. Traffic has grown on all the sites since last fall, and so had the earnings. I hadn’t thought anything about it until the other day when I went to my PO box to check my mail. I got to thinking that I hadn’t seen a payment from this company for quite awhile, despite having decent monthly earnings.

So I logged into my different bank accounts to see if I just missed the ACH, and couldn’t find anything for that company. I checked my PayPal account just to make sure I didn’t direct payments there. I finally realized that I hadn’t seen a single payment from them since I switched my paperwork over last fall.

After talking with the VP (and feeling like a moron for not catching this sooner), they tracked down the error on their end which turned out to be the wrong routing info for my bank account and payments weren’t being made. He said they’d catch up on the payments with the next month’s payment.

The worst part wasn’t necessarily that I wasn’t getting paid, but rather the fact that I didn’t miss the money from not getting paid! $6,400 is a decent amount of money, especially back when I was first getting started in affiliate marketing. I still remember the first affiliate sale I made online, and it was that virtual ‘clink’ in the bank that got me hooked on making a living online.

So I’ll take this as a sign that 1) I’m doing alright as an internet marketer 2) I need to get more organized, and 3) I need to always remember that first sale and appreciate every dollar that I generate online.