When you first start out as an affiliate marketer, and you don’t have any track record, it can be very difficult to get approved to promote products as an affiliate – especially in the Internet Marketing niche.
Vendors can be very picky about who they let promote their product, for 2 main reasons.
1. They want to avoid scammers
Online fraud is rife, and vendors (understandably) want to avoid it.
There used to be one very common scam (I haven’t seen it mentioned recently, but I’m sure it still exists).
An affiliate would get approved to promote a product, and would very quickly send a load of sales, with the commissions paid instantly to his Paypal account.
All looked good, until a few days later when the refund requests and chargebacks started to come in. The scam is that all the sales are through stolen Paypal or credit card accounts – and when the real account holders realised that they had paid for something they didn’t actually buy, they immediately refund (or file a dispute).
By this time, the scammer was long gone, having withdrawn has affiliate earnings from his PayPal account and disappeared. The product vendor was the one who had to refund all the fraudulent purchases out of his own pocket.
I have heard stories of marketers losing tens of thousands of dollars through this scam, so vendors are understandably wary of affiliates who they don’t know.
2. They want keep EPCs high
The success of a product, especially with a typical product ‘launch’ in the IM niche, is largely dependent on how many affiliates get behind the promotion. And – especially for the bigger affiliates – the biggest factor is Earnings Per Click (EPC).
Of course, the biggest factor should be ‘will this product help my subscribers?’… but sadly that’s usually not the way the top affiliates operate.
But that’s a discussion for another day.
If the product EPC is high, then more affiliates will get on board and promote. But one of the things that reduces the EPC is bad traffic – untargeted visitors who do not buy the product.
It can be traffic from someone who spams through untargeted emails, or junk traffic sent by traffic software, or Pay Per View (PPV) traffic (where people get paid (pennies) to visit thousands of websites and obviously have zero intention of buying anything).
If an affiliate sends a shedload of this sort of junk traffic in the (mistaken) belief that if he throws enough mud some of it has to stick, the product EPC will plummet.
And as I already said, a low EPC will mean that many ‘good’ affiliates will pass the product over and go for something else.
For both these reasons, many vendors are inclined to only approve affiliate who already have a good track record.
Which, for new affiliates – and we are all new affiliates at some point – means there is a bit of a catch 22.
You can’t get approved to promote affiliate products without having a track record.
But you can’t get a track record without getting approved.
Now there is no 100% sure way to get over this hurdle and get approval every time.
But there are lots of ways that you can VASTLY increase your chances of approval.
There will always be some vendors who only approve proven affiliates.
But there are a lot of vendors who WILL approve new affiliates – if the affiliate just doesn’t make silly mistakes, and does request approval in the right way.
There’s a couple of very obvious things – well, obvious to me, yet I get new affiliates breaking these ‘rules’ constantly, and they always get their affiliate request denied.
Don't lie
I feel that I really shouldn’t have to say this…. but it seems I do have to.
If you are a brand new affiliate, with an affiliate account only opened a few weeks or even days ago, do NOT say that you have got a list of 20,000 subscribers, or that that you have made millions as an affiliate, or that you guarantee to send me a hundred sales.
These – and any other self evidently blatant lies – will lead to an automatic ‘Deny Affiliate’ from me (and from most other vendors).
Don't say nothing
Again, if you are a brand new affiliate, with no sales and no track record, and you apply to promote my product but do not say anything about yourself or how you intend to promote… that’s another automatic ‘Deny’.
Give me some details, tell me that you’re new but want to learn, link me to your social profiles, tell me how you intend to promote.
Don’t say nothing!
More guidance
Britt Malka has just released a short report that explains step by step exactly how to vastly increase your chances of approval when you apply to be an affiliate.
==> Get Approved as an Affiliate
It’s just 21 pages long – Britt does not do fluff and filler – but it is full of common sense, actionable steps that will really help if you are stuck in this catch 22.
There are no upsells. You get everything with the main product.
And at the time of writing, it is less than 4 bucks.
Lots of easily actionable tips here, at a silly low price.
Highly recommended.
