Affiliate management is one of those careers people stumble into… and then wonder why nobody told them about it sooner. In this episode, I’m breaking down how to become an affiliate manager. What the job actually is day to day, the core skills you need to build, and the fastest ways to get real experience even if you’re starting from zero. If you want a clear path into affiliate management without guessing your way there, this is your roadmap.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
How to Build a High-Converting Affiliate Webinar Funnel
7-Figure Affiliate Launches: The Exact Launch Plan
How to Screen Affiliate Applications (My Approval Criteria)
How to Set Up Affiliates to Win (Onboarding Checklist)
How to Grow Affiliate Program Revenue 20X in 48 Months
How to Become an Affiliate Manager
If you’ve ever wanted to become an affiliate manager, this episode is for you. I’ll share what it takes, how to develop the skills you need, and even share a possible job opportunity that you might be interested in. So how do you become an affiliate manager? That’s a question I get a lot. People think maybe it’ll be cool. That, looks like a fun job.You know, the money can be really good. And all of those are true. I often joke like, you know, if, if my, if my high school guidance counselor had any idea that what I do even exists, he would tell me to do what I do. You know, I, I love it. To me, it’s like the perfect combination of I get to be a nerdy kind of techy marketer guy, but I also get to be a people person.I get to deal with stats and spreadsheets, which I don’t like the spreadsheets, but I like what they can do. I like the data.
I like getting into the data and driving things via data, but I also like the relationships. The money’s great. Even back when I was a nobody in the affiliate world, it can be very lucrative because mostly I’m paid on commission, you know, and that’s great.It’s a lot of fun. But ultimately the question is, how do you actually become an affiliate manager? Well, I think it starts with asking yourself three questions. You know, these are kind of like the important pre work, so to speak. You know, question number one, are you even right for it?Are you even right to be an affiliate manager? Like the job itself, the personality, the expectations, right? What’s expected of you as an affiliate manager? Is that the right career for you? It might not be.You know, a lot of people look and they go, okay.
Like, I look at me and go, you know what? I’m 40, almost 43, actually, by the time this airs, I’ll be 43. You know, I’m not going to go suddenly become an NFL quarterback. You know, that’s just not going to happen.I’m not going to make that career change. That’s an obvious one. But you know, there are some things where I’m like, maybe, you know, I could do that. I have no intention of changing my career. But I’m saying, like, I’m capable of doing that.I have the disposition to do that. So I think it’s important to just ask, like, is this something that you even really want to do? Is it the right job for you? So think about like what affiliate management is and isn’t. You know, what are the responsibilities of an affiliate manager?You know, number one, identifying potential affiliates for clients.
You know, if you’re working with clients or for your own thing, like, you got to identify those potential affiliates. Honestly, that’s a lot of looking. It’s a lot of grunt work. It’s not sexy, it’s boring.Now I often say, you know what, when I’m going to sit down and really do some grunt work and go try to find like a hundred affiliates and do that grunt work for three hours. I’m not going to find 100 in three hours, but I’ll find 40 or 50 in three hours and then do it again the next day. I need a good Spotify playlist. I’ve got to have something going like I got to have some music or something to keep me occupied mentally. I need to take breaks.I can only do that for 20, 25 minutes at a time and then I got to take a break. You got to recruit affiliates, right? But you also have to strategize, you know, promos and offers.
You’ve got to do things like come up with contests and have the creativity to come up with like, okay, here’s where the stats are. So you look at that, you look at stats and it’s this is a linear thinking thing, right?This is a, you know, kind of like a, I forget what side of the brain left and right, but it’s the analytical side. And then boom, you got a flip and go creative. That’s a really hard thing to do. Some people can’t do that. They can do one or the other and that’s fine.Then don’t be an affiliate manager, right? You’ve got to assure that affiliates are paid. So that’s ah, an analytical side. You’ve got to get over your fear, like bugging somebody. You got to learn to be persistent.You got to communicate with clients. If you’re working with multiple clients, you’ve got to identify growth opportunities. You got to monitor those stats and monitor and handle fraud. You got to stay up to date on what’s working. You got to be up to date.Like you got to keep studying the industry.
These are things you got to be able to do, like from your responsibility standpoint as far as skills, you need to be a people person. You cannot not be a People, person and be a good affiliate manager. Do you have to be the most outgoing? No.Can you be an introvert? Yes. I’ve said it before. I’m an introvert. But when I get on the phone with people, I enjoy people.I just need to talk to people for 60 minutes and then take a break for, you know, a half hour and go be by myself or go do something analytical, and then I can talk to another person. Right? You need marketing skills. You know, you need to be up to date on the latest in marketing. If I say, you know, hey, do you want to be an affiliate manager?And you don’t have a CLUE what, ah, TikTok is, that’s a problem. Do you need to be an expert at TikTok? No, I’m not. I said that a couple of episodes ago where I Talked all about TikTok. I’m not an expert, but I’m learning.
You gotta have the tech skills and the sales skills and the leadership skills, right? You do not need to do it alone if you’re gonna be a great affiliate manager. You need a team. You at least need a VA. I hired my first VA back in 2005.It’s a long time ago. 17 years ago. We have a team here at Matt McWames Consulting. We have a team like, you cannot do this alone. You can’t spend two hours running a report and spend two hours talking to affiliates at the same time.And a lot of times, if you can’t toggle your brain, you know, from one extreme to the other, you need some space to be able to toggle. That’s fine. Have a va. Do the grunt work, the running the report, you know, downloading spreadsheets and de duping, them against each other to make sure you’re not reaching out to the same people or identifying inactive affiliates and things like that. Like, there’s all kinds of things that a VA can do to help you, but you got to have leadership skills, right?Because you got to be able to lead them.
You got to be a good leader. So you got to have tech skills and sales skills and people skills and marketing skills and leadership skills just to be an affiliate manager. Those are the things that it takes. And if you’re lacking any of these, then work on them.If you’re lacking leadership skills, learn to lead. Listen to leadership books. Study sales, Just general sales. You know, if somebody came to me and said, matt, and we’ll talk about this later, like, they came to me and said, matt, I’d love to work for you, and Be an affiliate manager. How are your sales skills?Not so great. Go listen 10 books on sales. 10 books. Go listen to Jeffrey Gitamer’s sales bible. Go listen to a couple of Brian Tracy’s things.Listen to Jeffrey Gitamer’s the little red book of selling. go listen to. Gosh, the books that come to mind. There’s so many. Jeffrey Gitamer’s black book of connections.I think he’s got so many great books. By the way, Jeffrey Gitamer.
Go listen to secrets of closing the sale with Zig Ziglar and some of Zig’s other sales training. I’m trying to think of what other books I’d recommend. Just, you know, while we’re on the.On the subject, what is a customer is born every minute. I forget who wrote that. I think it’s Joe Vitale, if I’m not mistaken. the little green book of getting your way with Jeffrey Gittamer. I mean, there’s just so many, like, go look them up, right?Start there and go down the Amazon rabbit trail. If you listen to seven or eight, that’s fine. You don’t have to listen to 10. Listen to sales books. If you don’t know marketing, pick 10 books about marketing.Read Launch by Jeff Walker. Read Russell Brunson stuff. Trying to think what else I would recommend as far as, you know, marketing influence by Robert Cialdini. That’s going to help you with people skills, too. Yes, by Robert Cialdini.Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. Go listen to those books. Read those books. Right? Learn the marketing and people skills.
Learn how to use your technology. You need to be able to know those things. So if you’re lacking, then work on them. And if you go, yeah, all those things sound great. I’m just not really great on the, marketing side.Then spend a month where you just immerse yourself in marketing. Right? Do you have basic marketing, sales networking skills and good personal habits? That’s question number two. You don’t need to be the greatest, but you do need to have the basics.So do you have those basics? To me, my philosophy with affiliate managers, success is not based on personality, charisma, intelligence, or even hard work. It’s based on following the system. We have a proven system. If you come in and work for us and follow the system, you will be successful.Now, that said, we expect innovation and creativity. So there’s a balance. You follow the system, but you innovate. You follow the system, but you have an idea. You follow the system, but you, you tweak it a little bit and then ultimately it comes down to the question, would affiliates be okay with what you’re doing or do you want to wow them?
We want to wow our affiliates. We want to wow our clients. Like one of our core values. We always over deliver. So our clients, our customers get at least 10x value on what they invest.We take that extra step to ensure that people feel amazing in their interactions with us. And so do you have those skills? We kind, of talked about that before. Do you have the basic skills? Do you understand marketing?Do you understand launches? Do you understand evergreen promos? Do you understand webinars enough that you can get by? Right. Do you have those basic skills and personal habits?Because here’s the thing, as an affiliate manager, nobody’s going to tell you what to do. They’re going to give you a system, but they’re not going to tell you that from 10 to 4 every day you’ve got to do these three things. No, you’re pretty much on your own. So do you have the basic habits, personal habits that you’re going to be able to get your work done? Are you a productive person?
Okay, so may m I struggle with productivity. Then learn productivity. Go get Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt. Read Getting Things Done by, David Allen. Robert Allen, I think is the.I always get Robert. I think it’s David Allen. You know, I don’t know, whatever you need to read there. Look up productivity courses and books and go through those. And then question number three.Do you have a basic understanding of affiliate marketing and affiliate management? Do you listen to my podcast? How many episodes of my podcast have you listened to? If you’re north of 40, yes, you have a basic understanding. Now, again, I’m not looking for you to have the world’s best understanding.It has taken me 17 years to get to this point and I’m still learning. And, I would consider myself an expert. You don’t need to be an expert. But have you promoted some affiliate offers? You know, it’s really hard to be a great affiliate manager if you’ve never promoted anything as an affiliate.
I was, okay, maybe slightly above average affiliate manager before I promoted something. After I started promoting something, I became a phenomenal affiliate manager. I went from like, you know, I might make it to the metal stand, win a bronze medal, to affiliate manager of the year repeatedly. Why? Because I started doing affiliate marketing.That was the very simple reason. And I got to see what others were doing and I said, man, what they’re doing is awesome or what they’re doing is wrong. I don’t ever want to make those mistakes. And I saw a couple of things that they would do, and I pulled them into my system. You know, I had a, 100 page playbook, and I added five pages and that made it better.Now I had 105 page playbook, and then I saw five more pages and I pulled from that. And then I saw, like I said, saw things that other people were doing. And I went, that’s stupid. That gives me an idea. I’m going to do something to fix that.
And I would take things from other people and I would tweak them and I’d make them even better. I can give you one example, and I typically have only shared this with, like, private coaching clients. But one example, I got an email years ago. I don’t even remember who it was from years ago. And it was an email that said, hey, Matt, if you want to run Facebook ads, we’d like to help you pay for them.We’re only sending this to, like, our top 20 affiliates. So we’ll give you a thousand bucks, you know, kind of an advance on your commissions. We’ll send it to you right now. Just let me know if you want it and you can run, you can use that money to run Facebook ads. I was like, that’s a cool email.What if we took it to the next level? What if we sent a check in the mail? We call them our fake book checks. And it looks like, you know, it has that little window and it has their name on it looks like a check. And they open it up, it looks like a check, and there’s a letter with it that’s like, you know, hey, if you want to take advantage of this, just send me an email or shoot me a text and we’ll send you, you know, we’ll PayPal you $1,000 right now.
So it’s, it’s breaking through that clutter. It costs like a buck, you know, in paper and envelope and time and mailing. It’s like a dollar, you know, that’s the kind of thing that you can like. I took this one idea and added my own flair to it. Now it’s my idea now.A lot of people do that now because they stole it from me, which is kind of cool. So I wouldn’t have learned that if I wasn’t promoting affiliate offers. So question number one again. Do you have, like, is it right for you? Do you have the personality?Do you hear the responsibilities and the skills that are needed and go, yep, this is right up my alley, dude. Number two, do you have the basic marketing and sales and networking skills, the personal habits to be a good affiliate manager? And thirdly, do you have a basic understanding of affiliate marketing and affiliate management? If so, and you’re looking to be an affiliate manager for the, I think the top affiliate management company on earth, you know, if I say so myself, right, I’m going to tell you about something. Over the past couple of decades, almost crazy, oh my gosh, it’s been 17 years.
My company’s worked with more than 300, 350,000 affiliates. Now. We worked with clients like, you know, Ryan Levesque, Stu McLaren, Michael Hyatt, Lewis Howells, Brian Tracy, Ray Edwards, working with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi, helping them with their launch, you know, Jeff Walker. Like, we’ve worked with some amazing people and we’re hiring, we are hiring affiliate managers. And so if you think you might be interested, this opportunity is for you.Now I want to explain some things though, and if you’re like, matt, I don’t want to be an affiliate manager. I definitely don’t want to work for you, that’s fine. I want you to listen to this hiring process though, because if you’re planning on hiring anybody, we have just proven that this hiring process, the idea of this has made things so much better, like as far as retention and whatnot. So we have a really unique hiring process for our agency. We put them first through a five week.
If you apply, you’re going to go through a five week training session. So actually very first you’re going to fill out an application that’s extensive. I’ll talk more about that in a little bit. You go through a five week training session which will teach you all about affiliate management and client relations and more. All right, so the training is free.We don’t charge for it. There are tests and at the end of the training and we’re grading those tests, you’re going to have an opportunity at the end to work for us on a trial basis. And if your skills, your attitude, all these things are a good fit for our agency, then you’re going to be invited to join our team. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, apply for our affiliate manager training@mattmcwilliams. com agencyapp now we’re gonna put this in the show notes.
You don’t have to memorize this, but mattmcwilliams. com agencyapp okay, a G. If you can’t Spell agency. This is not for you. AgencyApp app.Okay? Now, like I said, you know, we’ve been around, been doing this for 17 years and we are on a mission to help businesses increase their revenue. You know, this is our mission, right? This is our mission as a company to increase their revenue so they can have a greater impact on those they serve and create a lifestyle they love. That is straight from our mission statement.How this looks, you know, as a company I mentioned earlier, you know, like our core values, right? We always over deliver. We give customers at least a 10x value on what they invest. We take that one extra step to ensure that people feel amazing in their interactions with us, us. So we do that with our clients, we do that with our affiliates.
That’s a, core value in our company. Another core value is we’re constantly learning. I, touched on this. Right? We are constantly learning from others.We learn from ourselves. We experiment, which means we fail, by the way, which means we learn. We allow others to surprise us. I talked about this. With leadership, we delegate freely, we focus on our unique abilities, and we allow others to fill in the gaps.I’m reading some of this straight from our, you know, our core values, right? Another core value is we do not work with jerks. And it says in our core values, we give grace to the hurting and confused. But we have zero tolerance for jerks or abusive customers. As much as reasonably possible.We avoid working with negative people on the front end. Fifth, we ruthlessly protect our downtime. If you think you’re going to come here and work 80 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, you are absolutely wrong. Will there be a week? Sure.
When you run in a big launch, will there be a week or two out of the year where you work 60 hours? Absolutely. You know what happens the following weeks. You take some time off. We are purposeful about giving our team the rest and rejuvenation.They need to care for their health, to care for their mind, to care for their most important relationships and, you know, selfishly as a business owner so they can do their best work. If you work 60 hours a week for more than about three straight weeks, you’re done, you’re toast. I told one of our guys on our team earlier, he’s not feeling well. And I said, listen, here’s what I, here’s what I need from you. I need you to tell me if you need me to help with you today so you can get some rest, because I’d rather have you at 100% for the last Week of this big launch that we’re running, I’d rather have you at 100% for the next seven days and be at 0% today than be at 70% for the next eight days, including today.
I’d rather you be at. I’d rather have to do your whole job for you today and then you’re going to be at 100% starting tomorrow than be running at 70% the whole time. You can do the math on that. That’s the difference between seven. I get 700 out of 800 or I get, you know, whatever, 560 out of 800.I’d rather get the former of those two. We’re the hero, not the guide. You know, this is. Every customer is the hero, not us. We do the things that scare us.So we take on new projects that challenge our current skill level or resources. We apply what we call the 8020 rule. Not 8020 in the sense of the Pareto principle, but done is better than perfect. Right. We believe that a wrong decision is better than no decision.
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And so those are our core values. If you’re going, that sounds like a company I’d like to be a part of. Awesome, keep listening. If not, that’s cool too. Now, about the training, just to be real quick.It is intended to teach you the basic framework of affiliate management for our company’s core focus. Okay. Which is affiliate programs in the online business, digital products, memberships, coaching books, similar spaces. Right. It’s not meant to teach you everything about affiliate management.That took me 17 years. You think I’m gonna fit that into a five week training? It’s not gonna happen. you’re gonna learn a lot of our secret tactics and strategies. And in fact, one of the things that you do when you apply is you agree not to share them.You’re not gonna like go through this training and then go share all these things with people. That’s not cool. I’ll give you kind of a high level view of things along with specific situations and case studies, examples, things like that. Right. It’s intended on our end.
Again, this is where you as a business owner can learn. We’re identifying qualified, enthusiastic, eager candidates who work for our agency. It’s effectively like an extended job interview. So if you’re interested in this, think of it as a lengthy job interview is not five months long. But it’s also not like, hey, I’m going to talk to you.You’re going to say great things about yourself. I’m going to check out one reference and then I’M going to hire you. It’s meant as more of an extended job interview. You’re going to learn a ton of things in the way that you may or may not apply elsewhere. It’s not a comprehensive training in that so much of the learning takes place as you engage in the activities, as you do the work.
You can ask anybody in our agency. The first big launch they ran, they learned more in that big launch than they learned in the training. But they couldn’t have done that without the training. All right? So, again, it’s not intended to teach, you know, affiliate marketing outside of our core focuses.So if you’re like, hey, man, I want to run a gambling affiliate program, you’re probably not going to learn a whole lot. It’s not for showing up randomly. It’s not for showing up sporadically. If you like. If you commit to this, like, you’re all in.You’re all in. This is a unique opportunity, just to paint expectations. Last time we had 52 applicants, we accepted 27. Into the training, we had five make it to the test phase. So only five out of original 52 made it to the point where we had them do a test and we hired two.I’m not saying that to scare you. I’m just telling you I’d rather you go, whoa, Matt, that seems like this is not for me right now than end up getting into this and discovering it’s not for you. Three weeks in. You know, it’s not easy, but they’re loving it. Like, the two that we hired are loving it.
You know, they learn, like, day one, the keys to success, right? Show up, be on time, be all in, ask a lot of questions. You know, be interactive. Right? The people that we ended up hiring that made it to the test phase are the ones who asked questions.They were the ones who were the most engaged. You know, that’s the keys to success there, and that’s the key to success in anything, in learning. And so if you’re interested, like, Matt, this sounds like it’s for me, maybe. I think I’m interested. I’d like to learn more about being an affiliate manager.Apply for our affiliate manager training. Mattmcwilliams. com agencyapp agencyapp. Again, no cost for it. It’s a lengthy application.
I’m actually gonna pull open the application while I’m recording this. And just so there’s no surprises, like, again, I want to be totally transparent so you can, you know, see, like, we, of course, we need your information, you know, your contact information. We Ask you, why do you want to join the team? Describe your current job or business. What do you like most about your job or business?What do you like least about it? Why would you make a good affiliate manager? And then I ask a handful of questions. These are situational questions. Like, if you’re running an affiliate program and you find out that one of your top affiliates is breaking the rules, what do you do first?How would you proceed from there? This is an open ended question. There’s no right or wrong answer. I want to learn how you process things. Then we ask him some specific questions like, you know, according to Matt, what is one of the three Cs of a successful affiliate program?
Now here’s the deal. You either already know that because you’ve listened to enough of the podcast, or you’ll do the work to go find it. Those are the type of people we’re looking for. Doesn’t matter which one. I don’t care if you’ve ever.This is your first ever podcast episode. Your friend sent this to you and said, go listen to this. I think you might be interested and you’ve never even heard of me, that’s fine. But are you going to do the work? Because the questions that we ask on here, you can find them.Look, if you use a search feature on the, on, mattmcwilliams. com you will find the answers to these questions. Are you going to put in the work? Might take you 20 minutes. Are you willing to spend 20 minutes?
Don’t put, I don’t know, I couldn’t find that information. You are immediately removed from consideration. And that’s what I’m talking about again with that hiring process. You know, so again, that’s what it looks like. There’s some more to that application.The reason why only 27 of the 52 people made it through are some of the reasons. You could probably figure out out half of those 25 that we didn’t select. They put things like, I don’t know, I’m not sure. You know, an affiliate asks you for a special landing page. This is not something we’ve previously discussed with the client.How would you handle this situation? I would tell them no. Really? That’s the extent of your answer? No, that’s a terrible answer.How would you proceed if an affiliate is breaking the rules? If you provide a thoughtful answer and I think, wow, that’s just, that’s not the way I would handle it. I don’t care. I want to know how you think. Right?
I can teach you the Right answer. I can teach you what to do, but what kind of thoughtfulness do you put into your answer? Please describe why you’d make a good affiliate manager. I want to know about that. Let me give you one tip.Since you’re a podcast listener, what do you like least about your job or business is not an invitation to complain about your current job or business. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. All right, so talk about what you like least. Be honest, but don’t complain.There’s a difference. So, again, if you’re Interested, go to mattmcwilliams. com agencyapp mattmcwilliams. com AgencyApp Again, we’ll put that link in the show notes, go check it out and, apply. Apply.
Thoughtful, thorough application. And, hopefully I’ll see you in the training. So if you’ve got questions about this or anything else, you can text me anytime. 260-217-4619. Text me anytime with questions about what we talked about today about the agency about hiring us.You know, obviously we’re looking for affiliate managers for a reason, because we’ve got more potential clients than we have people to run their programs. considerably more. We have considerably more demand than we have supply. You know, great problem to have. It’s just that we’re leaving a lot of people on the table that we could help.I’d like to serve five times as many people as we’re serving right now, and we can’t do that with our numbers. So if you’re interested in hiring us, you can reach out to me there as well.
Make sure that you subscribe and share this episode with somebody that you think that it might be a good fit for. And, the next episode’s a little bit of a surprise because, I actually don’t know what it’s going to be yet. I’m recording this so far in advance and I don’t know what the next episode’s gonna be.So, be interesting. We’ll find out together. But make sure you subscribe because you don’t want to miss it. I’ll see you then. Thank you so much for listening today.Remember to check out all of our deep dives into affiliate marketing at TheAffiliateGuide TV. And if you have a question, ask it at AskTheAffiliateGuy. com who knows, maybe you even be featured on an upcoming episode. And lastly, if you haven’t yet, make sure to leave a rating and review wherever you’re listening to this episode. See you soon.