How to become an affiliate marketing manager: Stefan Muehlbauer’s practical tips 

Stefan Muehlbauer, also known as Affpal, is a public speaker, author of The Affiliate Management Starter Kit, and runs Affjobs.com, a recruitment portal specifically tailored for affiliate managers, and he also manages the Affiliate program “Masters in Cash”.

When new people join a company they suffer from the lack of support they are getting. It’s not because the companies and the supervisors are evil or arrogant and they don’t want to talk to new people. The problem is that this industry is so busy, and people barely have time to train somebody.

Therefore, the question arises: how to become an affiliate manager?

The training has to be like very much on the fly and on the chop directly. And from the first days this person has to be involved in the daily operations and practically absorb the staff themself. This is the most important thing that people have to be hungry to learn by himself and they have to ask the right questions because this is how you can get help.

There is usually no hand holding that somebody sits with you every day for two hours and explains the stuff. But when you request it, everybody will make time to help you. So, the companies have to encourage people to ask questions and ask for help. What is more, the companies should provide new affiliate managers with a basic education. This is how people can start in the industry and get fast on track.

How to be a good affiliate manager? It’s important to understand how this industry works. You have to learn your terms, speak with all the departments in the company to examine all the aspects of the project. It’s good if the company already has a SWOT analysis or VIKI that they can go through and ask the right questions. And the rest of the training should be done as much as possible hands on.

I recommend joining as many chats as possible, and in these chats be like an observer. And after that you can go back to the somebody in the company and ask the things or figure it out by yourself.

There are a lot of challenges nowadays for affiliate marketing managers.

One of them is that verticals start to compete more with each other on the same traffic sources. The most obvious ones are Dating 18+, iGaming, Nutra verticals that are highly approached to make money. For example, Dating campaigns go back to Facebook. So, if you are an affiliate manager working with Facebook traffic, pay your attention to this niche.

Many good affiliate managers left the companies to make their own programs or networks which wasn’t possible 10-12 years ago. There weren’t so many SAAS solutions earlier that take over everything you need to run a network. Now, there are so many options on the market that are affordable and easy to run even if you have not a deep technical understanding. This is a problem for companies, because when their employee quits, they get another competitor.

Another problem for affiliate managers is that it shifted a lot from individual affiliates to teams of affiliates. So, when you have teams of affiliates, and these guys are professionals with hundreds of people, it’s harder to build a personal relationship with these people. But personal connection is so important in this industry.

To build my personal brand it took me nearly 15 years and I made a rondout calculation that it cost me and the companies that were sending me to the conference is most probably something like $200,000. So, that is not something that you can do overnight.

Start by building your personal brand through becoming a go-to expert in a specific field, which can be quite diverse within the realm of affiliate management. For instance, if you specialize in providing white-label solutions, make sure to engage with your partners, and the wider market. It’s important that people see you as the person to turn to for this kind of expertise. This is the first step in carving out your niche.

There are so many podcasts out there about the online marketing industry, you can always find an opportunity to speak somewhere. And what I can recommend is, if you are doing it for the first time, do it in the language that you speak by mother. When you are speaking in a foreign language and this language is far from your native, you will have an additional challenge besides being nervous.

Then, of course, you can use the people that you work with as like a multiplicator. When you do some features with them together, usually everybody is sharing so that another audience is seeing your stuff as well. That is also something that is helping, you don’t have to do it alone.

Coming back to the conferences, there are a lot of events where I practically go without any expectations. I go there just for networking. So, I recommend you really to visit one time per year a conference that has close to nothing to do with your vertical to see a different perspective.

There are 5 strategies that help me not to be overwhelmed:

1. I eliminate anything that distracts me from work. I used to eat lunch while watching YouTube, but I stopped. I realized that even after finishing my food, I still wanted to finish watching the video;

2. When I wake up early in the morning, I should just get out of bed. Previously, I would spend two hours rolling around in bed doing nothing, thinking, “Oh, it’s only 6:00, I can sleep for another two to three hours.” Now, I simply get up and gain an extra two hours in my day;

3. I’ve noticed that I had repetitive tasks that I could delegate to someone else. That’s when I decided to hire additional help. This way, tasks can be done more efficiently;

4. I also started using a virtual assistant. Affiliate managers often spend too much time on repetitive tasks like creating links and ensuring details are up to date. These tasks can easily be outsourced to a virtual assistant;

5. I keep a whiteboard with all my important tasks listed. Although it doesn’t detail how to do each task, seeing these reminders every time motivates me to tackle them. I refresh this board weekly with new tasks. Having it physically next to me, rather than in a task management software, significantly boosts productivity.

I notice a significant difference in the way people approach recruitment.

Previously, recruitment services were a one-stop solution for everyone. However, with big companies establishing their own HR departments, they are less inclined to collaborate with external recruiters. Talent scouts within these companies have more autonomy but may lack the budget, motivation, or willingness to engage external assistance when they believe they can handle the process internally.

Some companies lacking an HR department opt not to interview affiliate managers or media buyers themselves. Instead, they request us to provide the top 2-3 pre-selected candidates for the final decision.

Furthermore, companies now assign tasks for candidates to complete before interviews — a practice that is becoming increasingly common.

I anticipate that AI will play a more significant role in areas that are not immediately apparent. For instance, a portion of the affiliate management role may become automated in the future.

I also observe a trend of the East and West coming together more closely. Many Western companies are now hiring individuals from the CIS region.