Evolution of an Affiliate Team: from Forming to Adjourning

Bruce Tuckman’s classic model describes a team’s journey from its formation to its dissolution.

We suggest looking at it as a metaphor for the real growth of an affiliate marketing team — from the first attempts at driving traffic to creating your own affiliate program and launching your own product.

In this article, we will:

• Walk through each stage with concrete, real-world examples

• Break down the typical challenges and why many teams get stuck

• Show you how to move forward at every step

• Explain how LGaming can support you throughout the entire journey

Let’s dive in!

Forming – Team Formation and First Leads

At the Forming stage, the team is just coming together and starting to work together. In affiliate marketing, this is the moment when several enthusiasts have decided to join forces to drive traffic together. For example, imagine three friends in affiliate marketing: they are inspired by stories of earnings, pool their budgets, and launch their first campaigns. The Forming stage is usually characterized by enthusiasm and high hopes, but also by unclear roles and processes.

Features of the Forming stage:

Participants are still getting to know each other. Everyone is friendly and full of optimism, with no serious conflicts — on the contrary, they try to avoid them.

Roles are not distributed: each person tries to do a bit of everything — coming up with creatives, launching ads, and working with the tracker. The rules of working in the team are still chaotic.

The team does have goals (for example, to get into profit on a specific offer), but there is no clear plan or strategy yet. Much is done through trial and error.

At this stage, the team may face its first difficulties. Newcomers are often confused by an overload of information: thousands of offers, different traffic sources, techniques, and tools. Beginners can get stuck if they do not see results quickly — enthusiasm fades, and without experience it is easy to burn through the budget. There is also possible uncertainty: “Who is the leader? How do we make decisions?” — these questions are still in the air, and if ignored, they will come back later.

How to successfully pass through Forming: The main thing is to learn and communicate. It is useful for the team to openly discuss roles and expectations: who is most interested in what, who takes on leadership or technical tasks. Do not be afraid to ask questions and seek advice from more experienced colleagues. This is where the support of a partner network can be very useful. For example, at LGaming, newcomers are helped by personal managers: they will advise on which offer is best to start with, which GEOs are currently trending, how to avoid bans, and so on. We provide simple and reliable offers for a start and share knowledge so that your young team can experience its first successes as soon as possible. After receiving the first leads and completing payouts on time, the team will strengthen and smoothly move on to the next stage.

Storming – The “Storm” of Conflicts and First Crises

Storming is the most turbulent and tense stage of team development. Translated into the realities of affiliate marketing: the team faces its first serious problems and internal conflicts. Let’s say our three friends have launched several campaigns. At first, everything was going well, but then Facebook banned the advertising accounts, and part of the budget was lost. Tension grows. One member reproaches another: “You chose the wrong offer” or “The creatives were weak, that’s why we lost the budget.” Disputes and competition appear — who is right, whose strategy is better, who is the leader in the group? Add burnout to this: someone spent nights setting up campaigns, got tired, and snapped at colleagues. Welcome to Storming.

Typical challenges of Storming:

Conflicts and disputes over strategy, profit distribution, and working style. What was previously left unsaid out of politeness now comes out into the open.

Uncertainty of roles begins to get in the way: several strong players may fight for leadership, or, on the contrary, no one wants to take responsibility for difficult decisions.

Stress and burnout: the first setbacks (account bans, losing campaigns, financial losses) hit motivation hard. Some may feel the team is dragging them down, creating the temptation to quit altogether.

Internal competition: instead of tackling the problem together, members may unconsciously start competing with each other — for contribution, recognition, or control. This divides the team.

It’s no surprise that most teams do not pass the Storming stage. Many break up here, failing to overcome the period of conflict. If problems are ignored or members keep blaming each other, the “storm” will only intensify. But the good news is that Storming is normal. It is a sign of team growth — you just need to learn to overcome difficulties together.

How to move forward from Storming: The key is communication and collaboration. The team needs to sit down and discuss the pressing issues: what went wrong, what lessons were learned, how to prevent this in the future. It is useful to more clearly divide roles: for example, one becomes a media buyer and is responsible for launching campaigns, another is the creative specialist, and the third is the analyst and tech expert. When everyone knows their area of responsibility, there are fewer reasons for disputes and duplicated work. It is also important to learn to listen to each other and respect opinions — each person may have valuable ideas for optimization.

At this stage, external support is often required. LGaming during the “storm” becomes a pillar for teams: we ensure payout stability (so that at least the financial question does not add fuel to the fire) and are ready to act as an advisor. Knowing that you have a reliable partner, the team feels supported and begins to see a way out of the crisis instead of breaking apart. After passing through the storm of conflict, the team gains valuable experience and is ready to move on to the next stage.

Norming – Normalization and Systematic Work

After surviving the storms, relief sets in — the Norming stage begins. The team finally brings order to its work, establishing rules and standards. In an affiliate marketing team, this looks like: roles are more or less assigned, and everyone knows who is responsible for what. Our friends, having overcome conflicts, agree: Petya becomes the team lead (coordinates work and communicates with the partner network), Vasya is the lead media buyer (runs advertising campaigns), and Masha handles business development. A system emerges: for example, they create a group chat or task manager for planning, hold weekly calls to discuss results. The team moves from chaos to a stable routine.

What happens at the Norming stage:

Cohesion and trust. Members better understand each other’s strengths and learn to trust one another. Experienced teams look back at Storming as a valuable lesson: now they are not just a group of people, but a united team with a common goal.

The team sets internal regulations: how decisions are made, how new offers are tested (for example, the testing budget should not exceed N% of profits), and how expenses and profits are distributed. This reduces chaos and makes work predictable.

At Norming, people actively learn from one another and fill in skill gaps. For example, the team lead may learn the basics of analytics. Everyone becomes more professional, and knowledge sharing is established.

Stable results. The first consistently profitable campaigns appear. The team no longer jumps at every offer but focuses on several where they have honed their skills and achieve a confident ROI. Occasional failures do not disrupt the workflow — they are handled calmly and corrected according to established procedures.

Many teams can get stuck at Norming, especially if they reach a comfortable income level. Stability can lead to complacency: if everything works, why change anything? However, staying in the comfort zone for too long is risky — the affiliate market changes quickly. Without development and exploration of new opportunities, the team may start stagnating and eventually regress (for example, a campaign burns out, or the traffic source starts to decline). Normalization should not turn into stagnation.

How not to stall and move toward growth: A team at Norming must maintain a discipline of development. Continue setting new goals: double the budget, enter new GEOs, or master an additional traffic source. Let the system work, but avoid self-satisfaction. This is where partner network support is especially useful for scaling. For example, LGaming offers advanced opportunities for growing teams:

Private offers. We work directly with several advertisers and can provide access to private offers that are not in the public list. In some cases, we can even source a specific offer upon request. This is a benefit for teams that consistently deliver results.

Tools and technology. The transition from chaos to a system is made easier by technical solutions. The LGaming ecosystem includes virtual payment cards and the rental of mobile applications (WebView/PWA for iOS/Android) — services our partners can use. The team receives ready-made tools instead of developing everything from scratch, saving time and budget.

Personal management and analytics. At the Norming stage, optimization questions often arise: how to get the most out of current campaigns, what time of day generates the best leads, how to improve player retention. Our managers request detailed statistics from advertisers and help analyze it.

When the basic system is in place and results are consistently positive, it’s time for ambitious steps — the Performing stage.

Performing – Scaling and Market Leadership

Performing is the stage of peak efficiency, when the team has fully unlocked its potential and is delivering high results. In the context of affiliate marketing, this is a period of rapid growth and scaling. Our example team is now confidently profitable every month and sets itself new ambitious goals.

What might happen at the Performing stage:

Team expansion. There is now so much work that three people can no longer handle it. The team hires new staff: junior media buyers to launch additional campaigns, a designer to handle the flow of creatives, a content manager, possibly a financial manager, and a PR department. The team lead becomes a full-fledged manager, learning to lead people and processes.

Launching their own affiliate program. Having achieved high traffic volumes and expertise, the team starts thinking: why not launch our own affiliate program? The team essentially becomes a mini-CPA network — this is how new partner networks created by affiliate marketing veterans emerge. Alternatively, the team may negotiate private offers directly with advertisers and act as an intermediary for others.

Brand development. At the Performing stage, the team is already known in the community. A brand emerges: they create a team or agency name, logo, and style. They may speak at conferences and share case studies (revealing only the safe secrets of success). The goal is to strengthen their reputation to attract both advertisers and talented staff.

Stepping up in the market. The team begins to act not only as a media buying group but also as a market player. For example, they may negotiate exclusive terms with advertisers and launch joint projects. The next step could be creating their own product.

Example: A successful affiliate team in the gambling niche decides to build its own product. Having experience driving traffic to others’ products, they understand player pain points and desires and know how to attract them profitably. They invest profits into website development, purchase software, and obtain a license. Now the team is an operator of their own product, which other affiliates can promote.

Even at the Performing stage, despite the success, there are risks. First, overload and management challenges: founders accustomed to doing everything themselves may struggle with delegation. Scaling also means restructuring processes — setting up staff operations and preserving team culture. Not everyone becomes an effective manager immediately, and new “storms” can occur at the company growth level (conflicts with hired staff, management mistakes). Second, the market doesn’t stand still: competitors aren’t sleeping. A team at its peak must continue to innovate, or it may find that its winning campaigns have been copied by dozens of others, with ROI dropping. Thus, Performing is both the peak and the challenge: how to stay there for the long term.

We value teams that have grown with us and offer them individual terms: higher payouts, priority in payments — everything that makes scaling easier. We are also open to exclusive proposals: for example, if you have created your own product, we can discuss adding it to our network so that thousands of affiliates can start driving traffic to it. In other words, at the Performing stage, the partner network becomes not just a source of offers, but a strategic partner interested in your further growth.

A team that successfully navigates Performing achieves the status of a true market leader. But what’s next? In Bruce Tuckman’s classic model, after the peak comes the final stage — Adjourning, which in our case is either a decline and breakup, or the transformation of the team into something greater.

Adjourning – The End of the Journey: Disbanding or Transformation

The Adjourning stage (disbanding) occurs when the team either reaches its final goal and ends its joint work, or radically transforms. For an affiliate marketing team, there are two possible scenarios here:

Disbanding the team. Unfortunately, a not uncommon outcome — even a very successful team can burn out and split up over time. The reasons vary: personal burnout after several years of a frantic pace, differences in visions for the future, or external circumstances (for example, changes in market regulations that cut off the main source of income). In this case, members go their separate ways: some leave the market entirely to rest, others join a large agency or affiliate network as experts. Feelings within the team are mixed — on the one hand, sadness about the end of the shared journey, on the other, satisfaction with what has been achieved. This is a natural life cycle: not all groups exist forever.

Transformation into a product company. A more positive scenario — the team does not fall apart but instead evolves into something bigger. In essence, the group “restructures” itself. For example, a team that has launched its own product becomes a full-fledged iGaming company: now they have a new staff (support operators, risk managers, IT specialists) and completely different tasks. The old team format is gone — a new development cycle begins, now in the role of a product company. Similarly, a team might organize a CPA network: as they grow, they are no longer just buying traffic, but providing a platform for others. In these cases, it’s hard to call it “disbanding” — rather, the core team remains, but the group is rebuilt, possibly with a new name and mission.

Where does the partner network come in at this phase? If the team is disbanding, it’s important to maintain good relationships. We are always open for dialogue: perhaps some members will decide to return to affiliate marketing later, or conversely, will want to try themselves in our in-house team (we value experienced affiliates and often invite them to join our company).

Our in-house offer BetAndreas is the result of a team once reaching the product level. We understand this path perfectly and are ready to help others: from integrating your new offer into our system (to attract traffic from hundreds of affiliates) to sharing expertise on product launch and development. Together, we can organize promotions, collaborations, and audience exchanges — any synergy that benefits both sides.

Motivational note: if you are ambitious, try to view Adjourning not as an end, but as a new beginning. Let your experience as an affiliate team be a springboard to an even larger business. Yes, the journey is not easy — from the first leads to your own company — but it is achievable. The market knows many stories of affiliates who became owners of well-known products. And if your goal is not to create your own product — that’s fine too: even if the team disbands, each member leaves with tremendous experience that will undoubtedly be useful in the future.

Conclusion: Every Beginning is a Continuation

Bruce Tuckman’s five stages show that team development is a cyclical process. By going through all the stages, you don’t just complete a journey — you grow from beginners into professionals, and possibly into an independent business. Many teams get stuck at the more challenging stages, especially during Storming, but those who know how to learn and adapt move on to stability (Norming) and full bloom (Performing).

LGaming is always by your side at every step of the journey. At Forming, we teach and guide you; at Storming, we support you and help solve problems; at Norming, we provide tools for building systems and growing stability; at Performing, we give you access to exclusives; and at the stage of transformation, we become your trusted business partner. We are invested in your success because your growth is our growth too.

Join LGaming if you want to work with a partner network that’s involved at every stage.

Remember, every team is unique — some will breeze through Storming, others may spend a year in Norming, and some may turn Performing into a permanent state. The key is to recognize which stage you’re in and what steps are needed for progress. If you feel stuck or face challenges, don’t hesitate to seek help: from your peers, from industry experts, and of course, from your partner network.

Growing an affiliate team is both a challenge and an exciting journey. We hope our insights and advice will help you navigate the evolution of your team. We wish you every success — whether your path leads to new heights in affiliate marketing or to building your own product.

Onward, to growth and results!

Your reliable partner,

LGaming