How does one become an affiliate manager? (AM) (13)
Hello,
I have been wondering since day 1 I started learning about affiliate marketing. "How does one become an affiliate manager"? Does the process similar to becoming a judge ? i.e. in order to become a judge, you will have to start as a lawyer for 8 - 10 years. Then, the law society will review your experience / skills before appointing one to become a judge.
Does the same process go for AM? Meaning that one has to be an affiliate marketer first, gain experience / skill sets then, a network will pick whoever suits the role to become an affiliate manager?
Thank you for your responds !
While it would be useful that someone has experience in affiliate marketing, most networks hire people that haven't even heard of it before. I'm in a bunch of networks so I talk with many managers every day and many of them got the job having previously marketing experience in other business, other weren't even in the field of marketing before. So no, I think you just need to apply to a network that is hiring and obviously having a marketing degree or business related would likely help. There are some owners and managers here that may give you a better answer.
Ps: If you become a successful affiliate, is highly doubtful that you will want to become a manager, since you will earn less and all the "9-5" thing as americans here like to say.
Even if you have a marketing related study, the university won't go too much into depth in Affiliate Marketing (I speak from experience). Because of this, the flow as it may, to become a senior is completely different than the traditional jobs such as judge or lawyer. Think about it, affiliate marketing is one of the youngest businesses around. Therefore it would be simply impossible to have a career path of 10 years + to become a senior AM for example.
If you look around at affiliate networks, the average age is way lower, relatively young people (25-30) can be senior and management can be below 40 or even 30 years old, this won't be the case in traditional professions
Basically every junior really needs to start from scratch but you can build your way up in 2 to 3 years to senior. Mostly seniors or mediors are being hired from other networks or advertisers, or someone that has been working some years in online marketing companies. It is really rare that affiliates make the switch to being an AM, it's usually the other way around, simply because of the reasons Draper mentioned.
I think in general there is a scarcity in our fields for good professionals, a lot of Juniors are getting the chance to proof themselves and salaries go up for mediors and seniors. That's what does make this business pretty awesome for starters; young teams and good salaries, but unfortunately our business is still quite unknown (it shows when you talk to non-business related people)
Judging my most of the reps I get initially assigned or hit me up on facebook, being an aspirational instagram model seems to be the only criteria required
There is really no industry standard for what experience is needed to become an AM.
It really depends what affiliate network you want to join. Some look for certain personalities, some look for certain looks, some look for a book of business, some look for education.
Just Google the terms Affiliate Manager Jobs and you can see the requirements https://www.totaljobs.com/jobs/affil...ager/in-london for various roles.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
In short, to answer your question, OP, you definitely do not need to have been a successful affiliate for x number of years to be an affiliate manager.
I actually don't see many successful affiliates who then decide to become an AM.
In fact I can't think of any.
I do know quite a few affiliate managers who have become affiliates themselves.
Originally Posted by nickpeplow
Originally Posted by Mr Green
Originally Posted by intaphan2014
Some of my best affiliate managers have come without industry experience. Mind you these days the "affiliate manager" is very broad sweeping. Some are expected to be mentors for newbies. Some are just expected to be 24 hr support for offer questions and placing pixels. It really depends what an affiliate network wants from their affiliate managers.
Originally Posted by intaphan2014
Affiliate Marketing can be learned rather easily, I mean the concepts, an AM doesn't have to know how to cloak or optimize a campaign, just understand the verticals, traffic sources, flows, etc ...
All the rest is basically EQ and relational skills.
You will more often see AMs becoming affiliates once they learned from their years of contacts with affiliates, than the opposite way actually.
Mehdi
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