We’ve already talked about how many people you need to open an affiliate network on a shoestring. Quick reminder of the answer: one founder and a cat. That option suits those who want to test a hypothesis fast and cheap without torching their last dollar on it.
But what if you want to go in seriously from day one? The money’s there, the ambition’s there, the offers are waiting. Who do you hire so the network runs in style?
Let’s agree up front: not a word about salaries here. I’ve collected all the price tags into a separate estimate — you’ll want to be sitting down for that one. Here it’s only about people: who they are, what they do and why you can’t do without them. You, the founder, aren’t on the list: you’re the CEO here — holding it all together, negotiating with the big advertisers and making sure the dream team doesn’t turn into a nightmare team.
Your cabin crew
Each affiliate network always has a face. It isn’t the one webmasters see in promotional materials — where, more often than not, you see asses (albeit attractive ones). The true face of your network is the team that works with webmasters and advertisers — a team comprising various roles.
Support
Affiliates write all the time: day, night, weekends and December 31st. Where are my stats, why was my lead declined, when’s the payout. Replied by evening? Consider that affiliate already running traffic to the network next door. Support is the face of the network: an affiliate judges you not by your pretty website but by how fast and how usefully they got an answer. “I’ll pass it on to my colleagues” is not an answer. That’s why there should be at least two support people: so someone can sleep, get sick and take a vacation without the network going quiet.
Affiliate manager
Fights on two fronts at once. On one side, they hunt for new affiliates and talk them into trying your offers. On the other, they babysit the ones already running traffic: payouts, caps, custom terms, post-mortems. And at the start they also carry the analyst’s job: they watch the stats and are the first to notice where the approval rate is sagging. A big affiliate runs traffic where they get messaged first, where their caps are remembered and their payout gets bumped in time. So a good AM is your insurance against that affiliate quietly walking off to a competitor one day. A sort of elevated form of support, although in some networks the roles of affiliate manager and support specialist are merged into one.
Advert Manager
Think of it as an affiliate manager role, but focused on advertisers. There are two main areas of responsibility. The first is sourcing new advertisers with great offers, negotiating partnerships, and securing favorable terms. The second is managing existing partnerships: monitoring offers and traffic quality, and resolving any issues that arise.
BizDev
A wizard who pushes the boundaries of the possible. The BizDev is the one who ensures an affiliate program isn’t crushed by competitors, devising ways to stand out and simply become better and more attractive. Want top-tier advertisers and great terms? He’ll conjure them up. You’d only overlook someone like this if growth and scaling aren’t in your plans. Otherwise, he is essential. When a network lacks the budget for both a good affiliate manager and an advertiser manager, it invents a “bizdev” role to save on salary costs. Personally, I’d prefer two solid specialists who can coordinate their workflow over a coffee break, rather than one specialist with eyes full of exhaustion-induced misery.
Behind the Scenes
Not all staff members are meant for the public eye; every affiliate program has crucial technical personnel — people whose existence ordinary affiliates never even consider, yet without whom everything would collapse.
Analyst and fraud hunter
If resources allow and the affiliate manager is drowning, hire an analyst to help them. Their job is digging through the numbers: which offers and funnels actually make money, where the approval rate looks suspiciously pretty, and where the traffic looks suspiciously like bots or the duplicates come in by the batch. I have a soft spot for this character: a ton of fraud is one of the reasons my own network died once upon a time. So a fraud hunter isn’t paranoia. It’s hygiene.
Accountant, a.k.a. the money person
An affiliate network is money flowing in every direction at once: advertisers pay in, affiliates withdraw, the server and the advertising eat. Without proper accounting all of this turns into a lottery very quickly: who owes whom how much, and where that hole in the cash box came from. The money person’s turf is reconciliations with advertisers, paying affiliates on time, and answering the founder’s main question: are we even in the black? By the way, built-in accounting is already there in AlterCPA Pro: balances, receivables, payables, cash flow. So they won’t have to jury-rig it all in spreadsheets on their lap. If the network doesn’t have many transactions yet, hire them part-time.
Integrator
Again, we at AlterCPA can take all the technical stuff off your hands — as a package or as one-off tasks. If you’re not working with us, you need an integrator. They set up offers, connect advertisers’ CRMs and other people’s networks, generate all sorts of tracking links, configure postbacks, and find out where the leads went if they suddenly didn’t arrive. This is the person who gets the Friday-evening call that goes “the leads aren’t coming through.”
Good news: half of their routine is covered by ready-made hacks these days. Need server-side conversions in Facebook that get past ad blockers? Plug in fbpix and you’re done — instead of spending a month writing the same thing from scratch. Need to load a batch of leads from Excel? importxls, and no more copy-pasting them one at a time. The integrator won’t run out of work; they’ll just have time freed up for the things that actually take brains.
CMO
The marketer responsible for anyone finding out your network exists at all: positioning, advertising, conferences, social media, content. The main question they must be able to answer: why is your network better than the hundred next door? If the CMO doesn’t have an answer, nobody does, and affiliates will be the first to feel it. Optionally, they’ll want a designer and/or a copywriter to help: creatives, landing pages and copy won’t draw themselves.
The takeaway
That’s the general staffing set for a network that runs in style. But nobody carved the structure of an affiliate network in stone: roles can be combined, split and re-cut to fit you. The CMO can draw the banners, the affiliate manager can catch fraud, and the money person can be part-time. The main thing is that every function is covered by someone. And if the budget can’t carry the whole team at once yet — no big deal: grow one person at a time, starting with the ones without whom the network would grind to a halt by tomorrow.
Now pay attention: notice who’s missing from this list? Programmers. Not a single one. And no, I didn’t forget — I insist. An affiliate network is a business about traffic, people and money, not about code. Programmers on payroll are for IT companies, and you’re not an IT company: you sell leads. You already have an engine: AlterCPA Pro on your own server or Cloud on ours. Whatever it’s missing for your particular needs gets bolted on with hacks. And the technical stuff is handled by our techies.
A dream team is people who bring in affiliates, sell the network and count the money. Not people who spend six months writing you yet another affiliate network when a finished one is already sitting on the shelf. What such a team costs in dollars, and why I dislike home-grown engines so much — read the estimate for doing it in style.