Quote:
Originally Posted by NinjaSteve
I don't think those skills are needed for the role of an affiliate manager. If company A wants a person to do sales, then they should be doing sales. If they get commission, they should be doing sales to get more money and not screw around with anything else. If they need promo materials then they should have another person do those. That's how a system works. Each part of the system has it's role. Just because my oven is hot and produces heat, it doesn't mean I should heat my house with it. That's what my heater is for.
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People would think that. Perhaps if there was an ideal world or job then it would happen too. Reality is much different. Often they not only want you to be the face of the company. They want you to handle the hundreds of tiny and usually very needed pre existing affiliates. Then if nobody has forgotten, affiliate programs are now almost required to do all of the work for the affiliates. This often means the affiliate manager or whatever they really are, also has to make new ad tools, go over peoples sites, upload crap for people, build out and populate new galleries/zips/RSS and such, deal with payroll issues, handle email/icq/messenger/board issues. Then also perhaps update and or maintain parts or all of the site or affiliate program.
In such a world just being paid on a percentage of what you bring in is laughable at best. Expecting to bring in more and more each and every month would also be absurd under nearly any situation. Nobody will be able to maintain a 25% growth rate let alone a 5% solid growth rate, so if they do not get earnings on everything that they already brought in well fuck that pay idea.
You would also run into the issue that what happens when you have burnt through that persons network. Is it then just time to let them go and find someone else with another network so you can rape and pillage that one too, burning through peoples networks until you as a program owner have cannibalized every network out of most of the larger affiliates. So this is where you may run into issues of minimum salaries and often a lifetime or set number of years of a constant revenue sharing on the people they brought in.
Then as Sarah said, the ability to handle customer service is a big one. Not only must you be fluent in typo and engrish. You must have the patience of a saint and be able to communicate with almost everyone and they expect you to be there at almost every hour. Then to top it off, often if shit hits the fan it is that affiliate managers name who is on the line. More often than not you will never hear of or know who the owners are in many programs and most will just know who the affiliate manager is.
There are many more reasons and issues behind all of this that alters and justifies assorted pays. Many never get it and thus threads like these exist. People end up expecting the wrong things and hire and fire people quickly, or there is a pool of assorted people that seem to be let go a whole lot. With both of those you can draw your own conclusions.