How much should a sponsors rep be paid?
 

We get lots of posts from webmasters complaining about the level of knowledge and skills of sponsors reps. So HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK THEY SHOULD BE PAID?

$50,000 a year?

That comes down to $1,000 a week or less than $143 a day.

Or 7 joins a day. Yes the guy helping you is unlikely to be able to sign up 7 members a day or the sponsor is paying him more than $50,000 + benefits.

If you want a guy who is the top notch and knows the site, traffic and your job from A to Z, how much do you think he's worth and how much do you think he should be paid?

I used $20 a sign us the absolute minimum and it should be closer to 5 joins as they should be worth $30 each. Plus a webmaster has some costs. Just illustrating the point.

I'm thinking they should be paid 30k a year + commissions. If they are good they will make a lot on commission.

Double their wages with commission to $60,000 or less than 9 sign ups a day?

You are missing the point of the thread. The point is if the guy was as good as webmasters expect he is unlikely to be working for a sponsor. Or instead webmasters would have to be taking 5% less to pay for the big wage needed to employ a guy that meets webmasters expectations.

Sponsors doing their own support would be the best, but when the program gets very big there are other things that need to be done.

Now consider it from the sponsors side. 90% of the sign ups comes from 10% of the affiliates. 90% of these require no support. So how much do you want to pay for a guy who is there to support people who bring in so little money?

Agian the figures are used to illustrate a point.

Depends upon exact job description and expectations of results

Well if you go by what a lot of webmasters think the job should be and expect then I think the wage should be high.

the 10% that bring in the sales were once in that 90% category

Very very true.

So should 90% of webmasters get 5% less to pay for a guy capable of getting them into the 10%?

This is also trying to educate webmasters that if they want maximum payouts the money has to come from somewhere. They can't expect top support, tools and payouts unless it's all very profitable. Also any program offering all this is going to have more of the "90%ers" than a program offering less.

It's about striking a balance, costs and returns.

That's kind of an open ended question. The rep should be paid what their value is to the company. Should a rep who has been around the industry for years, has tons of good contacts with good traffic be paid the same as a first time rep?

Definitely not and I very much doubt if these are the guys webmasters are bitching about.

Unless it's webmasters the sponsors rep knows are not worth bothering with. Which opens a new side to the debate, are these the guys bitching the most? :winkwink:

exactly!

Of course it's an open ended question. What's the point of asking any other kind?

Shouldn't this person take over some of the stuff you currently do thus freeing up your time. This has value and cost to it.

about $3k per month is the standard, not?

I mean, we are talking about a remote job here I assume, not working in the office with the company

and just getting new webmasters, and taking care of existence ones, but no real daily 'technical' tasks ?

BTW I guess there are different kind of sales rep / affiliate rep jobs....

some people are just hired as a face for a program, while others are hired often from outside of the industry and their main job is taking care of basic affiliate requests

Most people are aware of the 90%/10% "rule" but often draw the wrong conclusions. Keeping the 10% happy is in fact relatively easy, because the money they are earning does most of the work for you. But instead, these are the people on whom most sponsors spend the majority of the money and effort they put into affiliate marketing.

The point of affiliate marketing should be growth, which by definition is going to come from among the ranks of the 90%. Somewhere in there are the people who can grow and become tomorrow's whales.

Based on my past experience in other industries, if I were a sponsor, I wouldn't hire reps at all. I would give a secretary the job of dealing with routine questions and I would hire one or more people to handle affiliate development. The job would be to identify affiliates with potential and speed the growth of that potential, binding such affiliates to me along the way. My employee(s) would be expected to give suitable affiliates broad practical guidance, not solely related to my products. There would be a budget for providing such affiliates with tools - scripts, designs, whatever - when appropriate.

The trick in getting that job right is picking the right affiliates in whom to invest time and money. Inevitably there will be bad choices, but they must be the minority. So as well as needing someone with the technical skills, you would need someone with good judgement. People choose different roles for all kinds of reasons, so I don't agree that anyone who could do this would be working for themselves. However, the right people aren't likely to come cheap.

Commission has an obvious appeal for an employer, but I have only ever paid bonuses. The reason being that even the very best people will produce dramatically cumulative results and a straightforward commission deal would likely mean paying too little to be attractive on day one, but ridiculous amounts of money after a year or two.

Which means having faith in my own judgement when I pick someone, as well as faith in the person I choose. But realistically, for anyone who wants to get away from the "throw enough mud and hope some sticks" approach to drawing affiliates, there is no choice. Try to do it the cheap, safe way and you all but guarantee failure.

Just about every sponsor marketing program right now relies on attacting affiliates at random, leaving them largely to their own devices until and if they get big by themselves. Then the sponsor starts to pay attention. Which was fine when there were fewer sponsors and more new affiliates. But it is increasingly an approach which means that all they are doing is swapping the no-hopers and leaving to chance whether affiliates who do make it, happen to be working for them when that happens. I would go so far as to say that many of the methods used to attract affiliates in the first place are probably a deterrent to many of those who are likely to be tomorrow's stars.

Relying on luck does not equate to running a business. To do that you need to take control. And in the context of affiliates, that means seeking out those who can provide tomorrow's sales, not just rewarding those who are making today's.

$30k-$50k is a good ballpark.

I dont agree with you, there are some very talented guys out there that are affiliates themselves that do make great affiliate managers. A well rounded affiliate manager is worth his weight in gold, not only can he help affiliates, but can also continue to build your internal traffic network, implement new ideas, and do other important work that most affiliate systems need done anyway.

It really doesnt have to break the bank to have a great affiliate manager, not everyone is driven by cash alone. There are alot of other factors involved and incentives that would make someone who is doing well outside take a internal position with a program.

I agree with this.

Any job involving sales, or growth, should be staggered with the bulk of 'pay' coming in incentives or commission.

:2 cents:

if they can create magic join links - $65,000 a year

if they can't create magic join links - $43,000 a year

However much they are worth, and thats the long and short of it!

I'd stay on the lower end around 30-35k + Commisions.
I was a car saleman in the past and there were people there with huge experience getting big salaries and closed the minimum amount of deals to keep the owner happy, but the guys who relied largely on commision (me) worked harder and had a larger close number than the salary guys.

also...if paying them to work remotely..you'd have to take into consideration the cost of living where they live.

where I live in florida $35k in a decent income...where as when I lived in maryland...the guys at mcdonald's were making $15 dollars an hour to start

What type of experience and background do you look for anyway?

my ? is how a person with enough advanced skills -a rep- to help others can´t make 30-50k on his own ¿

that was always my question

but fact remains, some of the most popular reps in this industry are just nice people that know how to please affiliates

after all, technically, it is a representative from the company to help affiliates with program issues...affiliate rep, not as affiliate "mentor"

hell, there are some affiliate reps that have never sent a hit to any sponsor in their lives

Well it's not same to hire a person who doesnt have contacts,traffic or expirience at all.Plus i was notice,a lot of managers even they are well paid they actual know very little or nothing.Also someone on board says affiliate managers are usualy people who didnt succedd as affiliates :)

most sponsor reps are either worth a shitload of money or worth junk

99% even if they know their shit will die out and get lazy within 4-6 weeks

I cant think of one at the moment who really has proven much long term to a company

ever notice the huge amount of annocements that go

week 1 I now work for blah blah affiliate company

week 6 looking for job

week 12 working for a new company

most and im tempted to say 99.9% are junk maybe short term they can do something for ya

Those who are solid and dedicated and are as motivated at month 6 as day 1 are worth 150k plus a year

contacts = shit, so you hire a guy with 25 contacts he gets 8 of them (thats a high number) to push you then what

getting affiliates is a non stop very hard task in these days even if you offer god knows what.

for the right guy id pay a serious amount of money, but I gave up looking for that

There is zero evidence to support that, in this or any other industry. Primarily it is a way of making someone less expensive if they fail to do well.

But the point is that you shouldn't be looking to hire people who will fail and you shouldn't be running a business at all (which needs employees) if you don't trust yourself to hire the right people and can't live with the occasional mistake.

There are good and bad people for every job. The best people won't care if they are commission based because they know they will make their money. Untried and failed people won't care either because, hey, they may get it right (this time) and if not, there is always the next job. The problem is that there very few really good people are looking for jobs and what a high element of commission does is exclude all the people in the middle: those who would perform better-than-average but can get and prefer a reasonable flat salary.

If you employ a small army of commission-based salesmen, the 90/10 rule comes to your aid and among all the rubbish will be some gems which can make the whole thing work. But that rule still holds good even if you only hire 1 or 2 people at a time. The difference is it means that 1 year in 10 you have someone who is selling effectively.

In short, there isn't a single business model, but different ones to fit different circumstances and objectives.

So not a job for me at those low rates. :1orglaugh