Ask Scott Fox: How do I get affiliate program merchants to accept me as an affiliate?

Dear Scott Fox,
How do I get affiliate program merchants to accept me as an affiliate? Although it's really easy to become an affiliate for sites like Amazon, others seem to just not want to do business with me. My goal is to showcase their products and get people to click on the link and buy their products. So why are they turning me down? Am I applying too fast to their affiliate programs? What can I do to get accepted? 
Thanks
J.S.
Click Millionaires Member
Montreal, Canada

Scott Fox’s Answer

Hi J.S.,
Here are 5 strategies that should help you get accepted into more affiliate programs:

1. Start small. If you’re having trouble getting accepted by bigger or more selective programs, get started by joining smaller ones or Amazon.com's Associates Program, where it’s easy to get going.

2. Make sure you’re using a legitimate domain name that hosts your own site. So don’t use a site hosted by a free service, a domain that looks like part of somebody else’s company or service, or a poorly designed site that looks like it’s not a real business.

3. Apply using your own domain’s email address. It will help demonstrate your legitimacy if your email address matches the domain name of the site you’re claiming to represent. (Again, using free services like hotmail.com make you look less legitimate.)

4. Contact the affiliate program manager directly. If you can make a reasonable business case as to why you should be accepted despite lacking a track record, they will usually approve you, too. To have that conversation I would prepare some bullet points that you can email or discus. Sharing your marketing plan and why you expect to be a good performing affiliate for their products should help convince them to accept you into their affiliate marketing program.

5. Try again when your traffic has grown.  Many affiliate programs may reject you just because you don’t have much traffic yet.  Those programs limit their affiliates to higher traffic sites so that they can concentrate on promoting high revenue generating partners. You may need to get your traffic numbers up before those more selective affiliate marketing programs will approve you.

Also, I wonder if you are hosting on a .ca domain but applying to US based affiliate programs? I have no data on this but since I know this issue has been bugging you for a while, I wonder if part of the issue may be that you are non-US based. That might be worth asking CJ.com customer help or the affiliate program managers of any program that particularly interests you. 

My Special Report "Making Money with Affiliate Programs" would also be helpful to you.  It's over 100 pages of my "plain English" guidance on how you can profit from affiliate marketing, including from Amazon.com, Clickbank, SiteSell, and more.  The step-by-step details (including lots of screenshots) can help anyone new to affiliate marketing quickly learn to make more money online.

Best,
Scott Fox

Does anyone else have advice for JS that might help his new web site get accepted by more affiliate marketing programs?

Comments

[Richie]

Great site Scott.Good flow easy to follow.
Good Luck,
Richie