I did two podcast interviews two weeks ago and both asked the question “What does the career path look like for an affiliate manager?” I get asked by HR professionals and recruiters for affiliate manager roles and responsibilities, but this is a different answer.
There are three career paths an affiliate manager can take:
- Corporate desk jockey
- Specialized skill sets up to VP level
- Executive leadership
Note: There is a fourth career path, but it isn’t technically a career in the way people are asking. The fourth is to be an entrepreneur which can mean starting your own affiliate company, or starting a marketing agency.
This is one of my favorite questions because affiliate is how my career expanded. Without having managed affiliate programs or having been an affiliate, I wouldn’t have been able to travel the world speaking at conferences, etc… So if you’re in an affiliate manager role right now, here are three ways you can progress your career. I’ll start with the least interesting and boring one, then go into the real opportunities with the other two.
Corporate Desk Jockey
For the affiliate manager that does not question where traffic comes from, how sales are being made, or why networks give questionable affiliates (and sometimes agencies) awards, this is your path.
You’ll learn some skills with the main one being the ability to talk to people and network. This is a skill set (not a knowledge set) and helps when you want to work in large corporations. You can climb to middle management quickly as you’ll learn to navigate multiple personality types, participate in meetings, put presentations together, and eventually retire.
It is a good life where you go to work, collect a check, and go home. A sign you’re in this boat is your program’s top performers are mostly coupon sites, subnetworks, review affiliates, and browser extensions. You don’t question the program, you go with the flow. Again, this is not a bad thing, it works for a lot of people, and the only one that pays the price is the company you work for.
About the Awards Comment
Networks get paid on volume, so they have no reason to tell you who adds value, and which affiliates and agencies allow them to take credit for sales you’d have had without an affiliate program at all.
Their awards give credibility since the network is the “trusted partner.” If the trusted partner says it is ok, nobody questions suspiciously high conversion rates or traffic patterns. For the affiliate managers that do question each partner and network advice, these are the people that can have a big and rewarding career. They follow the next two paths.
Specialized Skills to a VP Level Executive
Affiliate managers will be exposed to all forms of marketing and multiple professional disciplines including:
- SEO and GEO (website, YouTube, AI)
- Social media (paid and organic)
- PPC marketing
- Conversion funnel optimization
- Upsells and cross sells
- Media buying
- Email and newsletter marketing
- Attribution testing and data analytics
- App marketing
- IT (HTML/CSS, tracking and API troubleshooting, ecommerce and lead gen software)
When the affiliate manager talks to the affiliates, questions their traffic sources, and does not settle for generic answers or no-responses, they are going to learn a lot. SEO affiliates will show how they’re generating traffic from algorithms whether it is Google, Pinterest, or AI. You’ll learn everything from schema and content marketing, to why specific images work for grabbing attention while others work for engagement.
Some will share their PPC and paid strategies on Google, Bing, and Meta Ads where you get to see the innerworkings and how exclusions/negatives work, dayparting can impact traffic quality, and arbitrage. Sometimes the affiliate is taking orders through their own company, and your program is in the upsell or cross-sell funnel. By learning about this you get to learn upsell and cross-sell monetization strategy.
This type of exposure lets the affiliate manager find channels they feel passionate about and gives them an opportunity to learn more. If they fall in love with it, their next roll can be dedicated to that department, and then they can begin title climbing to retirement. Large corporations have paths like SEO assistant, SEO Manager, Director of SEO, and ends at VP of SEO. Or you may discover you love affiliate and take the career path upwards from there following the same title chain.
The advantage of starting in affiliate is that you get to learn each of the channels before committing. Someone that starts in email or PPC can get pigeonholed and stuck. They may want to learn about other channels, but they won’t get hands-on experience making it harder to go cross-department. As an affiliate manager you gain this knowledge and can go in multiple directions for channels you love. And that goes to the last career path.
Executive Leadership
If you are a good affiliate manager, you ask questions and are likely running a top- and mid-funnel affiliate program that adds value to your company. You learned about each of the channels, how they work, and even if you allow end-of-sale, none of these partners are in your top 10 or 20 partners because you turned off the zero-value commissions.
Note: Zero-value and end-of-sale are not always the same. There are some exceptions.
You are now able to use data and technology to analyze cross-channel touchpoints and have discovered attribution testing. You have familiarity with the marketing channels and IT needs for each, and this sets you up for executive leadership. By being able to talk intelligently about each, your next step can be a marketing manager.
This is where you’re managing vendors like an affiliate marketing agency or PPC consultant, as well as team members that are hands on in each channel. When your company is looking to fill a role, you can step in because you know how it works until you can hire the right person or agency. That is why you’re a perfect fit for the marketing manager role when it opens.
From there you gain the skills to become a Marketing Director where you’re in charge of the overall strategy and start to take ownership of revenue and dividing budgets. After this you can become a VP, CMO, or CRO as you’ll have the skills and knowledge. And this all started because one of your first jobs was an affiliate manager where you learned how the entire marketing eco-system works.
Affiliate managers are the ones that have the opportunity to learn and grow the fastest in the marketing and revenue teams. If they sit back and don’t question odd things like a website that doesn’t have relevant content but is making sales, why a partner magically converts at 10%, or how they get a 5 minute click to close time when everyone else is at 10, they’ll be a corporate desk jockey. If they do question these things, they get to learn, and this learning can launch a very fruitful career.
