Ask-Me-About Forum

[Loz]

Question:

I am some what familiar with the affiliate marketing industry. However, from the limited exposure I have with CJ and Linkshare affiliate networks. Isn't it true that merchant partners need to evaluate an affiliates website before approving someone to market there products? If you’re totally starting from scratch theirs nothing for a merchant partner to evaluate. I'm sure the course will cover this, but I’m curious about the process.

Answer:

Not all programs manually review affiliate applications. Some programs are set to auto-approve which means they automatically approve most applications.

Some advise when applying to a program as a newbie ...

1) Put up a place-holder site that will explain the site or business that you're planning to develop. This will give the affiliate manager something to review during the application process. Include your phone number and email address so the affiliate manager can contact you if he needs further explanation.

2) Don't use someone else's site when applying. People who don't have their own website, trying to apply to programs with domains such as google.com or yahoo.com. These will almost always be rejected by an affiliate manager.

3) Use the website description field in the CJ Account Manager to explain your business model. This is your chance to explain to the affiliate manager what type of site / campaign you intend to build and why they should let you into the program.

3) If you flag your account as incentive you may be auto-declined before an affiliate manager has the chance to review your application. If you do use an incentive model to generate leads / sales then you should open up a second CJ account that contains your incentive site(s) only. This will give you one 'clean' account and one "incentive" account to increase your chance of acceptance into various programs.

4) If you're in development mode, and you don't plan on generating commissions until your site is done, email the affiliate manager and tell him this so he doesn't boot you out of the program for lack of performance.

5) If you get denied, try again. If you get denied twice try and contact the affiliate manager. A lot of affiliate managers us un-trained assistants to handle publisher applications. These assistants are often not able to determine opportunity as efficiently as the affiliate manager himself. Make an effort to contact the affiliate manager directly.

Most merchants list an email contact for their respective affiliate programs off the "affiliates" link at the bottom of the home page. Call the merchant and ask why you were denied. You might even find the affiliate managers contact info in the denial email itself.

6) Most respective programs process publisher applications at least once per week. If you haven't received an acceptance email and it's been more than 1 week it's time to move on. If it takes an affiliate manager more than a week to respond to an application its a good indication they don't pay close attention to their program which doesn't lend itself well to timely assistance when needed.

Source: PPC Classroom