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The Affiliate's Guide To Hiring - Employee Needs And Wants ($$$) (2)

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EMPLOYEE NEEDS AND WANTS

Individuals are not all driven by the same things. I would argue that a vast majority are driven by money but at the same time almost none are driven by money. In other words, money represents different things for certain people, and understanding this in more detail ties into one of the bigger roles you have as a manager: make people perform!


This is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. These are needs and wants just about everyone has. Depending on what level you are on this pyramid, you are very differently driven and motivated by money and the sort of work you do, what compromises you are willing to make and also what makes you happy.

If you want to increase your chances of success and create a better work atmosphere in general, it’s your duty to be aware of each person’s level on this pyramid and work on improving the dynamic between them. It’s not easy but it’s simple.

There are some obvious conclusions you can draw straight from the beginning. If someone doesn’t have safety/security, offering them a good paying job for the long term will be of great value to them. You will quickly earn their loyalty because you have fulfilled a very basic need of theirs.

This is the level many remote workers from Eastern Europe and Asia have; they come from much poorer countries, where corruption is prevalent and respect for workers is lacking; they are in a tough situation and then they are still getting taken advantage of, and outright scammed. This hurts their day to day life more than you can imagine, since without their next salary, they cannot feed their families. Now, imagine what return you can get just from the simple fact that you pay a decent salary on time.

On the flipside, if you want to hire Sergey Brin on a project, he will not care about the money, aside from the fact that it’s a nice way to judge (part of the) success. This other extreme is looking for the top spot in that pyramid, which partially uses money as a way of keeping score.

Your company is a great place to work for if you can take people from a certain level on that pyramid and help them climb to the top. Everyone is motivated to a huge extent by climbing that pyramid. Their happiness, general well being, productivity and impact all get better as they climb. I’m certain you’ve heard it at least once that a great job helps you grow as a person. Now you know what it means. Let's talk about money next.

$$$ MONEY AND SALARY $$$

An important, and often the main, motivator is the financial incentive you offer an employee. We have to talk about it here.

As a sidenote, a worrying amount of startups forget this factor and always try to make people underprice their work. Don’t be that startup company.

Some ballpark salaries for employees in small affiliate marketing companies:

Full time virtual assistant based in PH - $450-$600/month
Full time coder in an Eastern European country - $1000-$1500/month
Bookkeeping and accounting - depends on where you are incorporated, clear market salary

An affiliate marketing specific position is that of media buyer, someone running campaigns for you. It’s similar to a sales position in other businesses and most often should have some performance incentive. Here’s my starting point (based in Vienna, Austria):

Flat salary - $1500-$3000/month
Every 3, 6, or 12 months - profit share on campaigns ran of between 10% to 30% - alternatively, it can be progressive bonus on concrete numbers, for example:

• $0 - $10,000 profit - 0%
• $10,000 - $50,000 profit - 15%
• $50,000 - $100,000 profit - 25%
• $100,000+ profit - 30%

This means, if someone makes you $250,000 in net profit over the year, with the scheme I presented as an example, you would pay them in bonus:

$50,000 * 15% = $7,500
$100,000 - $50,000(you have paid the bonus for the first $50k made) = $50,000 * 25% = $12,500
$250,000 - $100,000(you have paid the bonus for the first $100k made) = $150,000 * 30% = $45,000

In total it would be $65,000 or effectively 26% net profit bonus. I suggest making it percentages of net profit (after all expenses for tools and services have been paid for on the campaigns they ran). Otherwise, you run the risk of misaligning their interest versus the company’s.

Furthermore, the bonus is ideally calculated and paid yearly; more often is possible but I suggest lower end percentages then or another way of dealing with high risk gambles for short term profit of the employee.

Profit share is a good motivator but it doesn’t align interests as much as being the owner of the company so you have to solve any misalignments in incentives.

The point of this reward scheme is to serve purely as a starting point. You can change numbers and model to adjust reward amounts, risk, and everything else to suit your own situation (priorities, location of your company, location of your employee, etc.) The base salary can also change depending on how risk averse the person is - or what his living costs are. The main feature of this is the tiered profit share where the better the results, the better the rewards as well.

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This was incredibly useful, thank you.

I'm still a beginner in this game, but I frequently think about the idea of scaling up once I've got my processes in place and how it will work.

Specifically, the part about how to hire a media buyer and get their interests aligned with the company's was very valuable.

Thinking about it as being analogous to a sales role in a "normal" company and treating it in a similar way makes a TON of sense. Thanks again mate

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