Welcome to a new interview part of Champions of Performance Marketing series, that is soon to be a regular podcast.
In this last interview we’ve met Stefan-Paul Muehlbauer, a known speaker in the affiliate marketing industry and expert in affiliate program management.
Stefan is a true pioneer who’s done it all in the affiliate space. From commanding stages at industry-leading conferences to literally writing the playbook on affiliate program management, Stefan brings a wealth of knowledge that’s simply unmatched.
His work with AffPal Consulting has transformed countless affiliate programs, and now he’s revolutionizing career opportunities in our industry through AffJobs,.
We are excited to share this interview with all of you, and hope you will find it as interesting as we did.
Here is the entire interview on Spotify to listen to it:
Q: Tell us about how you entered the affiliate marketing space?
Stefan: How I entered here is actually not something that I decided. It was not something that I planned. I did not even know this industry existed. Most probably, I fell into many stupid affiliate offers or something like that when I was just working a regular job selling insurance. I had a friend who owned an affiliate program. He still owns it, Christian Bayer from IMAX.
After speaking a little bit with him about insurance stuff, he offered me a job as a sales director in his company. And I accepted 15 years ago and never thought about how cool it would have been to stay in the insurance space. That’s how I ended up here.
In the meantime, I’m managing the affiliate program Masters in Cash. Once again, I did that before, but I stepped a little bit down to buy some restaurants that all went bankrupt. However, the story of how they went bankrupt was already documented in a one-hour documentary about my career.
I made mistakes with the restaurants and in the business in general, but I overcame them. For four years now, I have been working full-time again in online marketing with a Masters in Cash affiliate program. I have focused heavily on consultancy, education, recruitment, and AffPal and AffJobs for three years.
Q: Can you tell us more about AffPal and AffJobs?
Stefan: It was also like many things in my life, not something I had planned. I never had the ambition to make a recruitment company, a consulting company, or make speaking and education on a professional level. I have enjoyed being on stage since I was a small kid.
I was invited to speak in Dubai for the Affiliate Grand Slam, which is practically a part of Sigma.
And, of course, you cannot go to Dubai and speak about dating and not too much self-promotion. So I came up with the topic of affiliate management, found out that there are practically not too many people providing services and education, and got a lot of great feedback after the speech.
Over time, it all developed into writing a book about it and running two YouTube channels. In the meantime, I had it as a company. I practically documented everything I saw and spotted in this field and then generated my speeches about that.
People were reaching out and saying, “Hey, this was very interesting. I share this opinion with you. Hey, can you give me a small consultancy?” and so on. And I provided all this practically as a favor for free.
But then it got into a dynamic where people were starting to sell. I would not say information, but they monetized the things I provided big time. So I decided to make a business out of that.
The same was true of recruitment. I arranged jobs for people, and recruiters took my services and brokered the deals, but they never cut me in. It’s not a problem if I don’t request it. However, when I inquired about a small incentive, they told me it was their business. And I start doing it myself. Now, they are working for people at AffJobs.
I mostly do consultancy on my own, and it’s not too much because I have to focus on running the Masters in Cash affiliate program. So, it has to be an interesting project. However, recruitment has been managed a lot by other people in the meantime, and it has now extended to the AffJobs job board, which is a very successful and enjoyable project.
Q: How does recruitment in this industry differ from other sectors?

Stefan: I cannot judge it from other sectors because we do it only in affiliate marketing. But what is for sure, in our case, is the personal connection. We have personal connections with our candidates and our clients, but often it happens that we connect candidates with clients, and they say, “I know the guy. I know the company.”
The people are applying over AffJobs, which is often anonymous. So this is a very interesting thing to spot that is different from other jobs.
Often, we can give our personal notes to these people as well. And even when my employees are managing the day-to-day business, I see the CVs that are coming in. I practically have a CRM system, and I see the names, I see the companies, and I see the jobs.
I can often comment on this as well and tell my employees, “Hey, I know this guy. He’s applying for a director position, but no, it’s not working. Tell him that he should try one step lower.”
Also, we have people who were giant managers, and then the company closed, which is often not even their fault. They say, “I need a job quickly, and I want to work just as an affiliate manager to relieve the stress.” But this is also wrong because if they start a job like this, they will not be happy, will not be fulfilled, and will leave after a few months.
The professionalism of the candidates and the companies is extremely low if it’s not a big company with its own HR department when it comes to CVs and job descriptions.
That is great for us because we have an additional value to add, and there’s a rule of thumb: the worse the CV is, the better the candidate is often.
And I will tell you why. Some CVs are super nicely designed; everything inside is by the book. And the other ones are very bad because they have 10 to 15 years in the industry and have not applied. So they don’t know how to make a CV. And because they have this kind of arrogance, because they come from higher up, they are not even researching how it’s done correctly. So, the CV is very bad, but the profile is very interesting. So we help them to fix that. If somebody has a perfect CV, this person usually has a routine in making CVs for a while.
It’s the same with job descriptions.
For example, the company started as a media buying team and now has a network. Previously, it worked only with its friends. It has reached a point where it needs to grow further and needs external help. However, it doesn’t have proper job descriptions.
So when you ask them: What are you looking for?
You get the answer: I need a head of sales who has to know this and has to know that.
You: How much money do you want to pay?
They: I will pay what you tell me
So this is the maturity of our clients.
But actually, companies are often very generous with salaries because they want to keep their employees. It’s one thing to take somebody for a low salary and be happy with the great deal you make, but at the end of the day, if this person is leaving after half a year because the salary is so bad, it’s also not helping you.
It’s not only the salary. We help them with all the preparation, and we give recommendations about the salaries they have to pay and so on.
Q: What’s the difference between AffJobs and AffPal?
Stefan: So AffPal is practically making boutique recruitment. And this is really where we have people working. Then you have AffJobs, where people upload their jobs.

And this makes it very interesting because this AffJobs has a gigantic reach. So first, we have a database that is practically reserved for AffJobs with more than 2,300 candidates. Then, all the jobs that we get are also uploaded to the affiliate world forum in a dedicated section for AffJobs.
The affiliate world forum, which is known as STM, is also putting us in the newsletter with all these jobs. We have a partnership with the native hub. So all the native and arbitrage jobs and really interesting media buying positions are sent out to their 6,000 people in the database there.
Companies that have established their recruitment processes in some way are getting a lot of exposure, but they have to do the work themselves, so they need a little bit of experience in hiring. The others prefer to go to AffPal and use the boutique service.
Q: Can you explain more about the boutique service?
Stefan: This is practically the case where we are pairing up candidates with companies. I did it myself for about one year, and it was not like something professional. After this experience with the recruiters not cutting me in, I was just pairing people landing on my desk. But then we came to a point where I sometimes got 25-30 requests, and it’s not my job. My job is to run an affiliate program, Masters in Cash. And everything else is just like a very lucrative and interesting side hustle.
Q: What qualities did you look for when building an affiliate management team?
Stefan: You have to split it practically in three. You have to have a business developer. You must have an affiliate manager hunter and a normal affiliate manager. And of course, if you are like a smaller operation, you can combine that.
And all of them need to have different qualities. All three of them, at the end of the day, have to be coachable. That’s the most important thing. And this is not something that I made up. This is something that HubSpot made a year-long research in the online marketing industry. And I can really confirm that the people who are hungry to learn something are also the ones who are more hungry for success in the long term, and they also can adapt easier to the requirements of the company, to the changes in the market, and also the fast-changing demands that the company is having.
For example, I again once see it in my affiliate program, Masters in Cash, today. We focused on launching our own US offers, and we did that. So everybody focused on that, and we also had a new guy in this company. Now, an opportunity arises for us in certain European markets, so he needs to learn again what the insights of our European offers were. When the stuff was improved, nobody from the sales team looked much into it because we had a different focus.
So, you must be coachable if you are a new guy, moving from one moment to another in completely different markets.

Now, these Facebook traffic affiliates are coming back to us after the sweepstakes on social media were shut down a bit. So, you have to learn about these traffic sources. It is becoming increasingly important to prepare data for the affiliates. So, you have to understand data analytics, which is also coachable.
If you are unwilling to learn this, you cannot give your affiliate the right advice.
Q: What are the challenges in finding good support staff?
Stefan: It’s hard to find somebody who knows the lingo in affiliate marketing but is also tech-savvy because they need to know the tech. They need to understand software as well. In the back end, they need to understand marketing. They must understand how a campaign is set up and what’s working. And it’s tough to find somebody willing to learn all these pieces because you don’t have to be an expert in all of them. You just need to know about everything.
Q: What affiliate program communication issues do you face?

Stefan: Even when someone is coachable and comes from another company, we face communication challenges because different companies and affiliates use different terms. This creates big issues if you don’t define everything properly in the affiliate program. Here’s an example:
When discussing CPL offers, you might hear: “Your conversion rate is behind.” “Why are others performing better?” The issue here is that you haven’t specified you’re comparing toy offers with different toy offers.
Another example is with caps. Someone says, “We’ll give you a cap of 50 per day.” But this raises questions:
- Is it per country?
- Is it per offer?
- Is it per sub-ID?
- Is it per device?
When these details aren’t clearly defined, it leads to problems.
The affiliate might exceed the cap because they misunderstood it, and their traffic won’t be reported appropriately.
Or the advertiser accepts too many leads, leading to disputes: “Hey, we agreed on this!” “But you didn’t say if it’s total or per campaign.
These miscommunications happen to everyone, even experienced managers like myself. We’re all human, and affiliate managers are usually juggling full desks of work. So even when you know better, these miscommunications can still happen. The key is to be as clear as possible whenever you can.
Q: What’s your view on being an industry expert?
Stefan: Just because I do all this coaching, have won several awards, and created the book and academy for affiliate managers does not automatically make me the best affiliate manager in the world. It makes me somebody who documents this and trains it correctly. Can I implement this with my character on every affiliate I work on?
No, I cannot.
And there are people out there who are in the second row and may never forget this kind of stuff. But they are just a little behind, and people don’t know them. So that’s the case.
It’s the same with affiliates. They are coming to affiliates for various shows, and super affiliates are making this and that. And they are making them 10 % of what some guy is doing somewhere in Eastern Europe and never goes to a conference. It is as it is.
Q: What factors can make or break an affiliate program?

Stefan: First, you absolutely must have reliable payouts. If you’re behind with payouts, you lose affiliate trust, this is especially crucial if you’re a network rather than a program. Here’s why: A big part of your business comes from affiliates trusting you with payouts. They might know the advertiser, but if the advertiser is “three young punks,” can they trust them with payouts? These advertisers might only pay monthly, while networks pay weekly. Plus, networks offer crypto while advertisers send checks or wires.
Second, you need great offers – preferably exclusive ones. Sure, you can make money without exclusive offers. But here’s the problem: if you don’t have exclusive offers and aren’t attracting people with easier payouts (even with higher payouts), you often end up with affiliates who were banned by other advertisers or networks for poor traffic quality. To build a really successful network, you need exclusive offers.
To get exclusive offers, you need either:
1. A business developer or owner finding deals
2. Or build your own signup pages and brands, then funnel through an API to someone’s backend (since not every advertiser gives affiliates API access)
If you’re an offer owner, it’s a bit different. You just need good offers and to clearly present what you stand for in the market. Even if you’re not the number one provider in a market, you’ll still get traffic. Even poorly performing offers get some traffic. So focus on the offers that are already working, then tweak them until you dominate that market.
From there, you tackle other markets. But remember – it’s constant improvement in all aspects:
- Tracking
- Maximizing user revenue and sharing it with affiliates
- Optimizing landing pages
- Maintaining good inbox rates
Today, you can attract people by adding features like “AI-powered” to your network (even if it just means using ChatGPT for newsletters). But the key is appearing prepared for the future – this industry is incredibly dynamic.
Q: What trends do you see for the future of affiliate marketing by 2030?
Stefan: Looking ahead, I see smart contracts automatically triggering affiliate payouts using stable coins in real-time. We’ve had a few attempts at creating industry-specific coins – some big players tried it, but it never took off. What I really see coming is a system that stores all conversion data on the blockchain, with smart contracts handling instant payouts.
Think about it: If there’s no fraud flag and you’ve had the lead for a month, why wait another 30 days until month-end, plus more time for the money to arrive?
It doesn’t make sense. If we know a lead is real, we can detect that early on, so why not pay instantly when it is generated? Sure, this might not fit current accounting practices, but we could develop tools that collect all this data and report it to the CFO daily or weekly.

This change would have two major benefits:
- Better cashflow for affiliates
- Instant validation of affiliate quality
But there’s more coming. I see prediction models and big data analytics that will justify and update payouts in real-time. Here’s how it would work:
Let’s say an affiliate is currently earning a CPA of 150 euros. The system predicts they could earn up to 200 euros on upcoming payouts. The API would automatically notify the affiliate through their entry point about this change, updating in real-time – similar to how we update offers now, but faster.
Of course, this works both ways, if we need to reduce the payout from 150 to 100 euros because of poor activation rates or ARPU, the affiliate needs to know immediately.
Check the interview with Stefan Muehlbauer on Spotify here or on Youtube:
Conclusion
In this first part of our interview with Stefan Muehlbauer, we’ve gained valuable insights into the evolving world of affiliate marketing recruitment and management. From the unique challenges of industry recruitment to the essential qualities of successful affiliate managers, Stefan has shared his wealth of experience in building and maintaining a successful affiliate program.
Stefan’s journey from insurance sales to becoming a respected voice in affiliate marketing demonstrates how passion, adaptability, and continuous learning can lead to success in this dynamic industry. His work with AffPal and AffJobs shows there’s a growing need for specialized recruitment services in our industry, while his candid insights about the future of affiliate marketing, including blockchain integration and real-time analytics, give us a glimpse of what’s to come.
Join us for the second part of this interview, where Stefan will share more about:
- Working with different traffic sources and verticals
- Building and scaling the affiliate program
- Essential tools and technologies for affiliate managers
- Industry trends and opportunities
- Managing relationships with advertisers and affiliates
Don’t miss these valuable insights from one of the industry’s most experienced voices. Stay tuned for the second part of the interview!

Author: Julia Draghici
Julia is the CEO of CPV Lab and CPV One ad trackers. She has 15+ years experience in the software industry, from development to management. For more than 6 years she is helping marketers get the best out of their marketing campaigns by using a performant ad tracker. Passionate about entrepreneurship, business and performance marketing, Julia loves helping people!