Selling Online
June 2, 2023
3 Min. Read
Whether you’re getting started in affiliate marketing or have been prospering in it, you may decide that it’s time to hire an affiliate manager. This is someone who can manage your affiliate marketing program, especially if you’re too busy to keep track of everything. But how much should you pay?
The answer depends on the manager’s responsibilities and experience. Let’s start by explaining what exactly an affiliate manager does.
People are often confused about the role of affiliate managers in an affiliate marketing business. They expect them to take on the role of recruiting new affiliates, boosting your sales, and getting customer service in order. But this is not always the case.
While this is certainly true in some cases, affiliate managers also focus a lot on admin work. They typically obtain affiliate payment information, provide affiliate links and swipes to affiliates, and do general management work. These tasks are not all revenue-generating, but they keep the wheels turning.
However, this doesn’t mean that an affiliate manager is supposed to always do admin work. If you so decide, you can put your hire on more challenging tasks and get more involved in sales and business development. But this will probably have to come with a pay raise.
The minimum salary range for affiliate managers is $30 to $35k per year. The top end is around $100k+ per year.
The salary typically depends on what they do for your business. An affiliate manager who performs strictly admin work will probably cost $30k to $50k.
If you’re looking for somebody who can handle business development and sales work, you may have to pay between $50k and $70k.
In any event, before making your offer, you want to ask yourself the following:
What do I expect from this person?
If all you need is a hand in doing admin work, you can go that route.
However, you may not want to saddle your affiliate manager with admin work if they’re supposed to make sales, bring on new affiliates, and generate more revenue. It’s a real waste to have highly qualified affiliate managers do admin work when their skills are better applied elsewhere.
Finally, when hiring an affiliate manager, give them permission to cut and make deals since they will be in charge of most details. It often takes time and energy to explain new opportunities to you so it might be easier and more profitable to trust your affiliate manager.
Hiring an affiliate manager would signal that you’re at a point in your business where you could use some help with your affiliate marketing.
An affiliate manager's salary should depend on the type of work you have in mind. Needless to say, a manager who does all admin work will not make the same amount of money as one who handles customer service, promotions, new affiliate recruiting, so on.
As soon as you decide on the role for your affiliate manager, just consult the salary ranges and go from there.
And finally, don’t be afraid to invest in a talented affiliate manager who can really make a difference in your affiliate marketing business.
Do you want to add your product to the Digistore24 Marketplace? Simply go here to register for free.
Author
Director of Marketing
Kyle has over a decade of digital marketing experience, including successfully launching & growing several e-commerce brands - using SEO, content marketing, social media, and more. Prior to becoming Director of Marketing at Digistore24, Kyle was an 8-figure affiliate marketer and email list manager.