What does an affiliate manager look at before approving an affiliate

[Vinny O'Hare]

This post is going to be an ongoing discussion about what affiliate managers look at when they are deciding to approve an affiliate into their program.

After realizing that most affiliates in our programs didn't know they needed a privacy policy it occurred to me that affiliates need to know what a manager looks at when doing approvals.

Different programs require different approval settings and depending on how strict the owners of the program want to be. If you are an affiliate manager feel free to chime in. If you are an affiliate feel free to ask why we check some things.

[Vinny O'Hare]

One of the first things you need to do is have an actual website listed in your profile. I have seen this a few times recently and its usually a newbie mistake thinking that you can fill it in later. This morning I am going through doing manual approvals and the first one I saw had no website. I have no way of knowing how you are going to promote the program and I am sure most affiliate managers doing manual approvals will just hit the decline button. If you are a newbie don't make this mistake.

[Jenny8675309]

As an affiliate, I've been applying to this one affiliate program and have been declined. I have a legit site and biz. What else do affiliate managers look for? Could it be traffic to my site? It would be great to know what I need to do to pass muster. THANKS a bunch Vinny!

[Vinny O'Hare]

It could be traffic, although that is one of the last things I personally look at. I know most affiliates just starting out don't have much traffic yet so that stat really doesn't come into play when deciding to accept an affiliate. An affiliate could be joining the program because they saw a product on the merchants site and decided to use ppc with that product in mind so traffic really isn't an issue.

If you want to send me a message with your site I can probably see why you are getting rejected. Different merchants have different rules when accepting affiliates. I will harp on some of the "acceptance rules" as I go along.

[Vinny O'Hare]

I am curious have you sent an email to the affiliate manager explaining how you are going to promote their program? Odds are you will be accepted into the program if you do this.

[Vinny O'Hare]

While we are on the subject some affiliate programs will not accept certain affiliates. Some programs will not accept coupon sites, some will not approve affiliates that use free blog sites like blogspot or .wordpress.com. I think its against their terms of service to use affiliate programs on wordpress.com hosting. The theory here is if you are not serious about your business enough to pay for a real url and hosting you will not seriously promote the program. Some affiliate programs use their banners as branding and don't want to be seen on a blogspot blog.

[Billy Kay]

I would think looking at your traffic is not a serious problem.

Two reasons: We all start out with none. Assuming your site is "normal", I wouldn't want to be the one with a crystal ball deciding with one look weather your site will be successful or not

And two, I have many affiliates who build sites specifically for my products. As soon as they complete the site, they apply - and it's guaranteed that at that moment their traffic will be zip

All My Best,
Billy Kay

[Vinny O'Hare]

Exactly what Billy said! Many affiliates will build a new site after joining an affiliate program. Existing affiliate sites wouldn't apply here.

[Vinny O'Hare]

Another site that has a huge chance of being declined is banner farm sites. These sites do nothing except place 50 to 100 banners on a page, usually all different sizes while they are at it. It is a common newbie mistake thinking that they will put up banners and people will find their site and buy from it.

Another problem that happens with these sites is merchants may not want their banner next to a risky lingerie ad or a dating site with half naked people. We have had merchants that want to be on every site in the world for branding purposes but when they saw their ad next to these they were not happy. They are usually the easiest sites to hit the decline button on.

[Deborah aka Loxly]

I have noticed an increasing number of these sites popping up again, not only applying for programs but asking for help with traffic. If you aren't providing actual written content and reasons for people to visit your site, the traffic isn't going to come and the merchants that are not on auto approve are going to not approve you. Unfortunately there are still "companies" that sell these types of template sites to affiliates and tell them this is a way to make money

[Vinny O'Hare]

Today I go and approve some affiliates and I see a coupon site. Not a big deal until I saw the next application and it was the same exact site with a different url. I checked online for copies of the sites and each coupon site had 15 copies and was obviously bought by many people without the template being updated. The stores were the same and everything. The templates are not that great and odds are will never rank.

Message to new affiliates is watch where you are buying your pre-made sites.