Every day I bump into people complaining about not being accepted into affiliate networks. Most of them assume that they were rejected due to their country of residence. Being a curious person I actually spoke to a bunch of these guys and asked them to go through their application process with me. I was astonished at the lack of common sense. After fixing some of their obvious mistakes I was happy to see most of them get accepted. Here are a few common mistakes that people make when applying to an affiliate company.
Sound professional
Make sure you communicate in the formal manner. If English is not your first language make sure you get an English speaking friend to go through your application with you. I would not go into business with somebody who can’t string a sentence together, nor I would want to deal with anyone who sounds like an 8 year old kid. Use correct punctuation.
Its all about quality
Affiliate companies look for people that can generate them quality leads/sales. A free Blogger blog created on the day you apply is not going to get you accepted. Get your own domain and hosting. You can start from as low as $30/year. If you can afford internet access you should be able to afford hosting. This will make a whole load of difference. When setting up your website make sure it looks professional, original and has some quality content. I suggest you go for a tech/shopping niche. Most affiliate companies have tons of offers related to consumer electronics and therefore need more people to promote such offers.
Numbers
When asked for traffic stats most people assume that the more traffic they receive, the greater the chance of them being accepted. Most just end up making the number up. Affiliate companies don’t mind if you generate 300 daily uniques rather than 10.000, however they do mind when you start lying to them. Its is pretty easy to get a rough estimate of your traffic. When you say that your brand new blog with 0 backlinks and no internet presence generates 5.000 daily uniques you would get rejected just for your lack of honesty.
Have a plan
Have a plan ready. How exactly do you plan on promoting the offers? Go into reasonable amount of detail, use examples and be specific. With some affiliate companies this level of detail can actually save you from tons of questions later on.
The dreaded phone call
Some affiliate networks might want to speak to you on the phone before accepting your application. For some reason this is the part many people wish to avoid. In reality there is nothing to worry about. The whole conversation usually takes a few minutes. You will usually be asked a few simple questions about your websites and methods of promotion. If you are worried that you won’t be able to understand them, ask your English speaking friend to help you out.
PS: Looks like Google has now given ExposedSEO.com an authority status. Search for exposedseo and see for yourself. I also appear in Google search suggestions for various seo related keyphrases. This is quite funny considering that not that long ago I was spanked with PR:NA. Google obviously had a change of heart.
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Hi!
Just want to congratulate on your new PR status. I think Google just don’t want their reader to missed this great site.
See you around.
Heheheheh! Great to see that Google loves you again! I was reading a post on another blog about John Chow sticking to his guns and out-staring Google. Whilst not quite the same situation here, it does seem like there is flinching going on that side!
Hiya Ilia! It’s been a while since you’ve posted anything. What’s up with you? I got a question on affiliate marketing & geo-location. Living in South Africa we are very limited. Do you have any affiliate programs that does international work, and more specifically African work that you can refer me to?
great your post.hhhmm……what recomended afiliate program?