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How do people hire and trust a media buyer?
Katrina L

The volume of work increases with income, but you still only have two hands. In one – coffee, in the other – a mouse from the computer. How to manage?

Perforce you think: if only you could find an intelligent media buyer and delegate tasks. So that productivity will increase.

And where to look for one? How much to pay? Percentage of revenue or salary? To teach or not to teach? How to trust? How to share traffic sources, campaign details? How not to be fooled?

So many questions, so few answers. In the new article, we tried to answer all of them.

01
Media buyer
What does a media buyer do? Checks analytics, controls traffic, turns it into working bundles, scales campaigns.
Uni or three-month courses will not help. The niche is active, it develops and changes. Eternal dynamics, eternal chase. Here you need to adapt to the market - literally on the go.
02
Tasks for a media buyer
  • Scaling established bundles and searching for new ones
  • Test of new approaches/ways
  • Evaluation of traffic and effectiveness of advertising campaigns
  • Buying traffic
  • New ads, bundle testing, search and creation of ad creatives
03
Training from scratch or ready-made experience?
If they have any or not - it does not play a major role in the search. Attitude to work, approach to business - they cannot be scanned beforehand. Only in practice can you see how the employee works, whether you can get along. Five years of experience is not an indicator of an ideal media buyer. Everyone has issues. But understanding digital marketing, knowledge about different traffic sources, skills in working with spy services, trackers and TDS is a plus and a bonus. It will definitely make life easier for both you and the employee.
Having their own cases is also a plus. No one requires ROI 200%+, specific verticals - too. The main thing is the real experience, that a person can launch with profit, work with different sources, GEO and advertising formats. If they empty their own budget, that's good too, people learn faster from their money. Sit down and create job opening requirements. Highlight the skills you need. Describe working GEOs and verticals. If the candidate has no experience, but a lot of interest, and you can/know how to teach - why not. Explain, show, share. Affiliate marketing is available to everyone, if they want to work it will work out.
04
Where to look for a media buyer?
Finding an employee for a ready-made list of specific cases makes the task easier. You will find them faster than you think. 
Where to look? Forums, other sites for webmasters. There is always a place to post vacancies. Also- traditional sites for job search, portals for freelancers. Conferences are a good place to get to know a potential candidate.
05
How much to pay?
If you look at the labour market and run through the vacancies, everything is quite simple. Minimum wage and part of the media buyer's profit. This is a common pay scheme in this industry. The percentage of income is growing, the increase is from 5% to 15% of the campaign's profit. The more an employee does, the more profit you make. In that case you can increase the percentage.
Much depends on the amount of work, tasks and complexity. Only you determine how much to pay. Candidate - agrees or not.
Fixed salary? For a person on a full time schedule, this is important. After all, he needs to pay for food, housing and the Internet. Every day in the race for a successful campaign and profit - can be tons of stress. You might get a nervous tic, but a normal result is unlikely. Therefore, the average salary in the media buyer's country of residence is a good starting option. To calm the nerves of the employee.
06
How to trust a media buyer?
What are the options here? This is not a copywriter, even with an advance payment. This is a completely different matter. In the most unpleasant scenario, an unscrupulous media buyer copies your campaigns, whitelists, and tested creatives. And uses everything for himself.
Delegate what you have done yourself. What you understand. So it will be clear where and how the media buyer will try to cheat. Do not give assignments that you do not understand yourself.
You can sign an NDA - non-disclosure agreement. Because even if you are working physically together, it insures nothing. Anyone can steal anything. Set a trial period so that you can safely refuse to work with each other, cut ties. If suddenly it didn’t work, you didn’t get along, or something went wrong. Do not give all accounts, accesses and bundles. Create separate accounts with specific access. Think over the system of communication and control of tasks. Start with one thing - see how a person will behave. How responsibly he approaches his work. Then - go further or move on.    
07
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a business. Let's take it as an axiom. For the time being, you may be the sole owner, manager and employee of this business. The scaling and development of any business requires delegation.
If your plans are to increase your income, then you are no exception. You will have to delegate. The more free time you want, the more tasks you delegate to others. Have you thought about hiring a media buyer to help out?