If you’ve been looking for affiliate marketing jobs, you may have noticed that they can be difficult to find depending on which part of the world you live in. Many people who own affiliate marketing businesses in the U.S. tend to outsource many of their projects oversea’s.

So, what are your options if you don’t happen to live in a Country where most of these jobs are exported to?

I’ll cover several topics to give you a better idea.

The Kind Of Jobs That Are Available
Educational Requirements
The Cost To Acquire Those Skills
Potential Earnings

Affiliate Marketing – Marketing Specialist

A marketing specialist is responsible for several different aspects of marketing including (but not limited to):

Development and implementation of marketing strategies to increase product awareness
Collaborating with teams to execute projects that support those strategies
Analyzing the effectiveness of these strategies and presenting them to company leaders
Keeping up with cutting edge affiliate marketing methods and strategies
Monitoring marketing methods and strategies of competitors and developing new idea’s
Using survey statistics to to find area’s that need improvement

Educational Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in marketing
Experience with and knowledge of SEO, social media, email marketing and possibly video marketing
Familiarity with various brands of software (Will differ from one employer to the next)

The requirement listed above are fairly typical within the industry. Some employers may have fewer or more requirements.

Educational Costs

The cost for obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree can vary widely from one educational institution to another. If you’re considering obtaining a degree to work as an affiliate marketing specialist, a degree from a community college should be adequate.

The Washington Post has an article on how you can obtain a Bachelor’s Degree for as little as $10,000.

Learning affiliate marketing is an entirely separate deal. You will have to pay for course materials that will train you for the different skills required to learn affiliate marketing.

Potential Earnings

The average salary for an affiliate marketing specialist, according to careerbuilder.com, is $60,698 per year.

Affiliate Marketing Manager

These are some of the typical responsibilities of an affiliate marketing manager.

Recruiting affiliates and managing affiliate relations
Solutions to help affiliates grow their revenue
Analyse results and make recommendations
Generate reports for affiliates; clicks, orders, conversion rates etc.
Understanding of customer traffic flow (Which site lead to which landing pages)
Provide general support for affiliates
Keeping up with changes in the affiliate marketing industry
Understanding of how traffic leads to conversions
Other related tasks

Educational Requirements

Degree in business, marketing or communications
2 to 3 years of sales and marketing experience
Proven track record of past online marketing experience or website services
Excellent understanding of what drives traffic and converts that traffic into customers
Knowledge of HTML and possibly other types of code

Educational Costs

The lower end of obtaining a business degree will cost $10,000 per year and up.

Additional courses to learn the many different aspects of online or affiliate marketing.

Potential Earnings

The average salary for an affiliate marketing manager is around $109,503 per year

Independent Affiliate Marketer

You can always become an affiliate marketer of an independent nature. There are definitely pros and cons to this approach. I’ll discuss a few of them here.

Pros

No requirements to get started today!
You can choose whomever you want to be affiliated with
You won’t need to relocate (A necessity for some of the jobs listed previously)
No degree or formal education of any kind is required
Work wherever and whenever you want
Run your affiliate marketing campaigns the way YOU see fit (Not the way some stuffed shirt tells you to)
You can be earning money while you’re sleeping (You gotta love that)

Cons

There is no salary or guarantee of income. It’s completely up to you to generate revenue
It can take several months to a year to start generating consistent revenue
Requires self discipline (YOU are the boss!)
No gold watch when you retire (Sorry, I am struggling to find cons)

Keep in mind that weather you go to work for another company, or if you decide to go the independent route you will still need to learn about affiliate marketing. In other words, you still have to deal with the cons so you are really only giving up the pros by seeking employment in this industry.

Educational Costs

The cost of a great affiliate marketing education is only $359 per year. $47 per month if you prefer to go on a month to month basis.

Try before you buy

Potential Earnings

Unlimited! People who haven’t spent any time around this business think that’s an exaggeration. When I tell my friends and family about a couple of affiliate marketing legends who made $18 million dollars in 1 weekend from a product launch, they are usually astonished.

Questions or comment about affiliate marketing jobs? Leave them in the comment box and I’ll be happy to respond.