Head of Affiliates: from affiliate manager to head of the channel

In an average online casino the affiliate channel brings in between 30% and 60% of all new players. It is the biggest line in the acquisition budget and at the same time the least transparent: the money goes out to hundreds of outside people, traffic quality only shows up a month later, and part of the payouts is always wasted. The person who holds this construction together is the Head of Affiliates. There are few such positions, employers compete hard for strong candidates, and the salary range reflects that.

How a Head of Affiliates differs from an affiliate manager

The difference is not the number of partners but the kind of questions the person answers. An affiliate manager works inside conditions that are set for him: he has a pool of partners, an approved payout grid and an FTD target. His job is to squeeze the maximum out of that pool. We covered how the work looks at that level in detail in the article on affiliate manager.

A Head of Affiliates decides what the manager is handed ready-made:

• Which markets to grow in. Germany is heavily regulated and expensive, Brazil is cheap but overheated by competitors, Japan delivers high LTV at low volume. The choice of market sets all the rest of the maths.
• Which model to pay on. CPA means fast volume and a high risk of overpaying for junk traffic. RevShare starts slowly, but the partner's and the operator's interests line up. A hybrid is a compromise that has to be calculated partner by partner.
• Where the line on fraud runs. Incentivised traffic, brand bidding on the operator's own search queries, cookie stuffing, partners who bring in bonus abusers. The policy on each of these is the Head's call, and it costs money either way.
• The channel P&L. Payouts to partners against the NGR they brought in, on a 6–12 month horizon. This is the table he defends in front of the CFO, and there is no room in it for “he's a good partner, I've worked with him for three years”.
• The team. Hiring, splitting markets between managers, their bonus schemes and who gets promoted.

What a working month looks like

KPIs: what the bonus is paid for

• Channel NGR and ROI — how much net revenue the partners brought in relative to what was paid out to them. The headline number, and the variable part of the pay hangs on it.
• The channel's share of player intake — how dependent the company is on affiliates and whether that dependence is moving in the right direction.
• CPA against LTV by cohort — the test that volume growth was not bought at the expense of quality.
• Number of active partners — protection against the situation where 80% of traffic comes from three partners who raise their rate tomorrow.
• Share of fraud and overpayments — the metric that most often cuts the bonus at the end of the quarter.

What it pays

The ranges below are monthly net, from the SpinHire profession database. The first column is Malta and Cyprus, the second Poland, Romania and the Baltics, the third remote work and hubs like Tbilisi and Yerevan.

The variable part here is not cosmetic: it is calculated off channel NGR and usually comes to 30–100% of salary. In a good year an affiliate head's bonus is comparable to half his annual income — and the same bonus drops to zero if the channel's margin went negative. For comparison: a senior affiliate manager in Malta earns €5–7K, so moving up to Head is not a doubling of salary but a change in the structure of income. The ballpark for neighbouring roles is in our breakdown of media buyer salaries in gambling.

The path from manager to head

The standard route takes 4–6 years and looks like this:

1. 2–3 years as an affiliate manager. Your own pool, your own market, an understanding of how a partner makes money and why he walks away.
2. Senior or team lead. 2–4 direct reports, responsibility for a whole market, the first budget conversations.
3. Head of Affiliates. Usually at a smaller company — they hire more readily than a large operator does for the same position.

Three things speed this path up, and none of them is about years served.

• Your own network of partners. A candidate with personal relationships at the top comparison sites and networks arrives not with a CV but with a ready-made channel. Interviews look at management experience and at the network, but it is the network that more often decides the outcome.
• The ability to speak in numbers. The unit economics of acquisition, cohort payback, scenarios like “what happens to the channel if we cut CPA by 20%”. Without that language a budget cannot be defended.
• Experience launching a new geo from scratch. The most valuable line on a CV: it proves the person can build, not only maintain.

What is usually missing: management experience and an understanding of the regulatory limits on advertising — what you may put in a creative in Germany, and what will cost you a licence in the UK. English at C1 is mandatory, it is the language of every negotiation in the industry.

Where to grow next

Upwards: Affiliate Director over a group of brands, Head of Acquisition with all paid traffic, then CMO or Managing Director. Sideways: country management, your own affiliate network, or consulting for operators entering new markets. The role has a rare property: the industry connections you accumulate stay with you through any move, and that is exactly why strong Heads of Affiliates are almost never found through job ads — they get poached.

The full description of the role with responsibilities, tools and KPIs is on the page for the Head of Affiliates profession, and open positions in the field are in the section affiliate marketing jobs.