6 sure ways to get your affiliate application declined

Jack applied to join an affiliate program, but his application was declined. He's both surprised and confused. He does have a plan on how to promote the merchant for whose program he applied, but the merchant chose not partner with Jack. Why?  Perhaps he didn't provide the merchant with enough information to enable him to understand how this could be a mutually beneficial partnership.

Over the past few days I've been reviewing literally hundreds of affiliate applications to a brand new affiliate program we launched Friday afternoon. 32.3% of the applications were declined because the applicants committed at least one of the following 6 mistakes. To help affiliates avoid this fate, I decided to put together this post.

Here are the 6 more widely-spread ways to get your affiliate application declined:

1. Ignore the program's Ts & Cs

If you want your application to be declined right away, ignore the affiliate program's Terms and Conditions. I have had several "adult"-related affiliates apply to a Christian-themed affiliate program. What are they thinking? Have they even glanced at the merchant's ToS?

Save everyone's time. Review those T's & C's before submitting an application!

2. Don't list a website

Another frequently repeated mistake is no website listed on the affiliate account. Here are two real-life examples:

and

Don't expect your application to be approved if the details of your affiliate page look like one of the above examples.

3. Don't bother updating your websites' URLs.

Another extremely common error is having URLs of old and already-inexistent websites listed on your affiliate account. If all the URLs you list on your account land on pages like:

and

and

...you can just forget about being accepted into an affiliate program. Why would a merchant want to partner with an affiliate who's that disorganized?

4. Listing a new website, keep it textless

If you're new to affiliate marketing or  just started a website on which you hope to promote the merchant into whose affiliate program you are applying, keeping the website textless can (and often will) do you a disservice.

Here are a couple of examples:

and

Same goes for default Plesk landing pages that website visitors see when the domain hosting is not fully configured, and also parked domains.

5. Don't bother understanding the basics

If you don't take the time to understand the basics of affiliate marketing, you can run into problems as well. I recently blogged about how affiliates confuse coupons for incentives when in the affiliate marketing context incentivized traffic has traditionally meant something very different (namely, rebates, cashback offers, freebies, etc). However, I keep seeing affiliates that list their websites as incentive ones when in reality they are not such. I review every affiliate application manually regardless of what it says on the account. Many affiliate managers will choose to automatically decline "incentive affiliates" due to the nature of their affiliate programs. Therefore, if in reality, you are not an incentive affiliate, but have listed yourself under this category, your application may be automatically turned away.

Here's one of the funnier examples of an affiliate explanation as to why he thinks he's an incentive affiliate:

6. If located outside of an English-speaking country, don't bother listing English language website(s) on your profile

In A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing I mentioned automatic rejections of non-US-based affiliates as one of the common mistakes affiliate program managers commit. I wrote that "affiliates outside of the U.S. can be a great asset" to any affiliate program, because "many of them have excellent organic traffic – often highly targeted and interesting to you as a merchant." Having said this, when I get an application from a new affiliate whose website looks as follows, there's simply no way for me to tell how he'll be able to promote my client:

The beauty of Thai text simply doesn't help here. If the above-quoted website is the only one you listed on your affiliate account, don't be surprised if your application is declined.

Have I missed anything else? Affiliate program managers are most welcome to post their own observations in the "comments" area below.