Rejected by Affiliate Marketing Managers and Merchants?

Introduction

If you are going to do Affiliate marking or in other words, become an affiliate, you need to sign-up with merchants or outsourced programs. This can either be done through an affiliate network or via an in-house program. Regardless of whether you sign up with an affiliate program via a network or not you are going to be facing rejection. In fact many merchants and affiliate program managers are what I call deny-happy. Why, you ask, because they deny affiliate program applications from affiliates on a whim. Most don't even bother telling you why. Instead of letting you know why, they send a form letter with lots of possibilities which most likely none of which apply to you, or worse yet they just send a form letter saying that you are not a 'good fit' and that it doesn't reflect on you or your sites. They do not actually tell you on what it is actually based on.

Personal rejection and denial examples

Sometimes their replies are worse than their lack their of.  I had applied for the Target affiliate program thinking that their products would be a good match for a housewares site that I was just starting.  I got a reply from them saying that I had been denied because I was missing a Privacy Statement.  I don't know which site they were referring to so I went through each and every site that I had and I added a privacy statement and I e-mailed them. I got another reply stating that they couldn't find the privacy statement on my site. If the privacy statement were a snake, it would have bit them. Since I am patient, I sent the URL to a couple of them for two sites.I later got a form letter stating that I had been rejected from their affiliate program.  I made the extra effort to meet their requirements and they rejected me anyway and without comment. I did not bother continuing the application.

Another example is of the time around November that I had applied for TinyPrints's affiliate program. They sell greeting cards and considering how I have several websites about holidays, I thought that they'd be a good match. People often buy greeting cards and other cards for Christmas, right?  Anyway, I had applied for the program and got rejected with no comment. I reapplied to join and again I was rejected. I then contacted the affiliate program manager and I explained how I had holiday sites so it is relevant. I got a reply from the manager agreeing and telling me that I'd be approved. I reapplied several more times and each time I was denied.  I of course was very frustrated by this, so I e-mailed the AM and asked what was wrong and this time I was finally approved.

I started adding links to my very relevant websites and guess what? Not a single sale has tracked (registered) for this merchant although I get plenty of click-throughs from my websites. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you are being denied by affiliate managers when applying for affiliate marketing programs, do not worry about it. Just promote their competitors.

 What you can do to reduce the chances of being rejected or having your affiliate application denied

There are different things that you can do to reduce the possibility that deny-happy affiliate manages and merchants will reject you.

1. Display in the affiliate network profile the most relevant websites first. I mean if you are applying for a housewares affiliate marketing program, list your housewares website as your main or primary site. Most affiliate managers are very lazy and they won't bother to even look at the names of your websites to see if a related site is listed.

2. Make sure that your listed websites are not "under construction". They should be up and running and be attractive with some content.

3. If you are rejected or denied and you really think that is a good program for you, then e-mail the affiliate manager and explain how you'd market their site and products on your relevant website.

4. If you truly think  that this program is the best and the e-mail didn't work, then look up the affiliate manager's telephone number and call them.

My recommendation

In all honesty, there are few good reasons for an affiliate manager to reject an affiliate. I'll go into reasons and excuses made by affiliate managers in another post.  You really should not bother with most of those companies. If you get rejected and your websites are good, look for another company in the market and sign up with them. Yes, that is right, sign up with a competitor. no, it isn't blood-lust or my desire to get back at them. It is simply the fact that you are working on a website and you need programs to promote.

The best affiliate management programs are the ones that auto-approve or approve applications within 24 hours. I think If I go through the affiliate programs that bring the best conversions, they all approved within 24 hours or immediately.