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ADVICE NEEDED: Finding an Affiliate Manager (11)

04-08-2019 02:55 PM #1 madskills (Member)
ADVICE NEEDED: Finding an Affiliate Manager

Hi all,

Since this forum unites affiliate marketers and offer owners, I would like to ask for some specific advice.

Having successfully launched an in-house affiliate program, I'm looking for professional help. Namely, I'm looking to hire an Affiliate Manager for my store to who would be in charge of a) supporting existing affiliates and b) further developing + scaling the in-house program. As this is a critical role, has exposure to important information and can do a lot of good or bad, I am looking for your advice on such hire.

I'm sure I'm not the first one with such challenge in front of me, so I would like to head your thoughts on:

1) Where would you look for an affiliate manager?
2) How would you test skills of such a person?
3) Would you hire someone with prior AM experience or based on potential?
4) What (critical) qualities would you look for in such hire?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

04-08-2019 03:46 PM #2 stickupkid (Senior Moderator)

Just a quickie here;

1. Linkedin (or Affjob)
2. give em a random shop (maybe similar or relevant to yours), ask how would they would setup an ad in FB/Google/Native/push ad manager section (so you follow their steps and they explain why they would choose certain targeting/settings)
ask them which traffic sources and audiences are best for you store (see if it meets your vision)
ask other relevant questions you think are important to know about the product/store

put this all in one single short case, pass them around to people who reply on your linkedin/affjob ad and check their case (and only proceed with the potentials)
3. we prefer to hire guys/girls who are young, well educated and honest about their motives to start in AM, no experience with mediabuy (but private experience on social)
4. patience, persistance, eager to learn, marketing minded (so they have a certain level of stepping out their way of thinking, and think like the potential audience)

04-08-2019 03:55 PM #3 blueflag (Member)

Cheers man,

been there done that :-)

I never had in my team better workers then the ones that we were growing from 0. People that were in sales but not affiliation. We hired also a lot of guys that were already coming from the competitor, but
-They want more money
-Not so loyal
-Complaining about the past (at my previous company I could give super easy bumps, got 10 USD more business expenses on the shows etc)

If you have the oportunity to grow somebody do it! In that way you can skip headhunters. You simply make a regular job announcement and you tell all of your friends so you get recommandations.
Our most recent hire was found like this... And she is doing amazing.
There is no way of testing it, but what I always tell them is that they need to have an online mindset. Working at night, becoming involved in the community etc, and in return having a lot of freedom and earning
a good buck.

I have maybe even somebody for you. She came to an interview on recommandation but we have currently no space. No affiliate manager experience but worked in sales for products that are used by affiliates.... Drop me a PN if you wanna be introduced

04-08-2019 03:57 PM #4 madskills (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by stickupkid View Post
Just a quickie here;

1. Linkedin (or Affjob)
2. give em a random shop (maybe similar or relevant to yours), ask how would they would setup an ad in FB/Google/Native/push ad manager section (so you follow their steps and they explain why they would choose certain targeting/settings)
ask them which traffic sources and audiences are best for you store (see if it meets your vision)
ask other relevant questions you think are important to know about the product/store

put this all in one single short case, pass them around to people who reply on your linkedin/affjob ad and check their case (and only proceed with the potentials)
3. we prefer to hire guys/girls who are young, well educated and honest about their motives to start in AM, no experience with mediabuy (but private experience on social)
4. patience, persistance, eager to learn, marketing minded (so they have a certain level of stepping out their way of thinking, and think like the potential audience)
Thanks stickupkid! Some great value bombs in your post for sure.


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums

04-08-2019 05:38 PM #5 madskills (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by blueflag View Post
Cheers man,

been there done that :-)

I never had in my team better workers then the ones that we were growing from 0. People that were in sales but not affiliation. We hired also a lot of guys that were already coming from the competitor, but
-They want more money
-Not so loyal
-Complaining about the past (at my previous company I could give super easy bumps, got 10 USD more business expenses on the shows etc)

If you have the oportunity to grow somebody do it! In that way you can skip headhunters. You simply make a regular job announcement and you tell all of your friends so you get recommandations.
Our most recent hire was found like this... And she is doing amazing.
There is no way of testing it, but what I always tell them is that they need to have an online mindset. Working at night, becoming involved in the community etc, and in return having a lot of freedom and earning
a good buck.

I have maybe even somebody for you. She came to an interview on recommandation but we have currently no space. No affiliate manager experience but worked in sales for products that are used by affiliates.... Drop me a PN if you wanna be introduced
Hiring on potential is definitely a great way to build a strong team. We have done that with multiple team members and we never regretted that decision. However, we have had an instance where we had to let one person go who did not live up to the hopes and that is never an easy thing.

04-08-2019 08:56 PM #6 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by blueflag View Post
I never had in my team better workers then the ones that we were growing from 0. People that were in sales but not affiliation. We hired also a lot of guys that were already coming from the competitor, but
-They want more money
-Not so loyal
-Complaining about the past (at my previous company I could give super easy bumps, got 10 USD more business expenses on the shows etc)
This is interesting, somehow I was expecting that AMs with experience would be better because of one reason: their past relationships with affiliates they've worked with. I actually joined a few networks just because one of my past AMs moved there, so I thought it's pretty common. Was my assumption wrong and it's not really happening a lot?

04-09-2019 08:20 AM #7 blueflag (Member)

I can not say it as a general rule, only how I experienced it with Glize and Brokerbabe. We have 2 team members that come from other companies but booth of them were partners of us for up to 3 years so we knew them in and out.
The rest of the hires with in the industry were very dissapointing. A huge problem hiring within the industry (at least when you have it remote) is that they wanna do a lot of side biz - and thats never good.

04-09-2019 08:29 AM #8 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by blueflag View Post
I can not say it as a general rule, only how I experienced it with Glize and Brokerbabe. We have 2 team members that come from other companies but booth of them were partners of us for up to 3 years so we knew them in and out.
The rest of the hires with in the industry were very dissapointing. A huge problem hiring within the industry (at least when you have it remote) is that they wanna do a lot of side biz - and thats never good.
I hear ya, I'm not surprised experiences AMs are tempted to do side-biz too, with all the data they see

Thanks for the insights, very interesting info!

04-09-2019 01:50 PM #9 madskills (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by blueflag View Post
I can not say it as a general rule, only how I experienced it with Glize and Brokerbabe. We have 2 team members that come from other companies but booth of them were partners of us for up to 3 years so we knew them in and out.
The rest of the hires with in the industry were very dissapointing. A huge problem hiring within the industry (at least when you have it remote) is that they wanna do a lot of side biz - and thats never good.
Did you have any of the guys who left you use the information that the acquired with you for their other business dealings?

04-10-2019 01:49 PM #10 blueflag (Member)

The amount of people that left us to go to a competitor is quite small. It were only 2 so far and of course both of them were working for a competitor before :-D
1 guy did his job without stealing contacts or insides, at least nothing that we felt. Its also ok to keep your contacts that you worked with and the dude was over 2 years here - can not complain about that
The other guy was 2 days in a new company and send a newsletter blast to all of his pubs he had with us that they are the best blabla :-D He was only 2 month with us.
After confronted with that shit, he told us that he only send it to the guys he aquired. In that case even our testing accounts we created were spammed with it so yeah bullshit.
The owner of his new company is a friend of mine and had a list stolen before, so I called him and he was close to fire this dude. In the end he never did it again but was away from that company
as well after 2-3 month.

04-10-2019 06:47 PM #11 sellhealthg (Member)

1) Where would you look for an affiliate manager?
- Someone with an outgoing personality. It's hard to build relationships with affiliates if you dislike people.

2) How would you test skills of such a person?
- Have a conversation in person or over the phone with them.

3) Would you hire someone with prior AM experience or based on potential?
- A mix of both. Prior AM experience is incredibly helpful, but I think it's possible to train someone who is good in outside sales to excel as an Affiliate Manager.

4) What (critical) qualities would you look for in such hire?
- A track record of loyalty, dependability, ethics, and marketing knowledge.
- An AM will have access to a lot of important data that needs to be kept confidential. Create tight non-disclosure agreements and non-compete contracts (when possible).
- Someone who will "pound the pavement" and do the work necessary to build their affiliate pool.

In my opinion, the best ways to hire affiliate managers are based on referrals from people you trust. Not to say that you can't find incredibly qualified people elsewhere. I like referrals because it's a 3rd-party endorsement of that individual's abilities.

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