I have applied for an affiliate program in Awin but recently received an email that my application was rejected. There are a couple of reasons why my application has been rejected. And to avoid the same case from happening again, I realized that I need to consider some of the things here:
- Must At Least Have a Website or Any Platform to be Used
- Have A professional looking website
- Ensure that Your Target Audience Matches the Affiliate Program
- You Must Have Quality Contents
- Ensure that You Met the Minimum Required Traffic
- Have a Way To Get Paid
- Don’t Provide Fake Information
1. Must at least have a Website or Any Platform to be Used
If you wanted to apply for an affiliate program, you must have a specific medium or platform that you can use to advertise the affiliate links from your chosen affiliate programs. The likelihood of being approved for those who doesn’t have any website is almost next to impossible, unless you are using Youtube or your Social Media account for advertisement.
However, bear in mind that you can only use your Social Media account if you are an influencer with good number of followings. If you are using your personal social media account, there is a very high chance that you won’t be accepted especially if your personal account don’t have any significant followings.
Please never ever spam any affiliate links to avoid being banned. There are some people who uses the affiliate links and just spamming those links all around web forums and private groups. This is not the way affiliate marketing works!
If you don’t have any website you can consider signing-up with WordPress and create one.
2. Have A Professional-Looking Website
You must understand that having a website will not guarantee your approval. The Affiliate Programs often request for your website link and they usually check your website and its performance. You need to ensure that you have a professional looking website as it initially shows that your website has the capability to deliver customer to the affiliate marketers.
If you needed help in creating a professional-looking website, you can consider some service provider sites in the internet such as Fiverr. They can help you design your site for a reasonable price.
You can check Fiverr here in this link if you are interested of hiring someone to create and design your website.
3. Ensure that Your Target Audience Matches the Affiliate Program
According to Awin, one of the reason why I got rejected was mainly due to my target market (my target market is mainly US). Awin is mainly in UK and Europe area however, I feel like that is not really the case. I asked for the countries they are accepting but never received any response.
There are affiliate programs that mainly focus on consumer products, thus, you have to ensure that your website or niche matches the affiliate programs. For example if you are on the business software niche, it is unlikely that you will accepted if your affiliate program provider is related to camping or outdoor activities.
You can’t just select an affiliate program based on who paid the highest but also need to consider whether you will be able to promote those affiliate links to your audience and if it matches your niche.
4. You Must Have Quality Contents
Having a quality content means everything for both your traffic and monetization. Affiliate managers also looks at the content of your site and assess whether the contents you are publishing can bring value to them.
The likelihood of being accepted is very minimal if you only have 10 articles on your website, also, bear in mind that your contents should have significance in terms of what the affiliate program is.
For example, your contents might be too focus about making money but never mentioned about the software for editing. You affiliate program for software might be rejected for the reason that it is unlikely for you to provide any value to the affiliate marketers.
5. Ensure that You Met the Minimum Required Traffic
I think this is the main reason for my rejected application from Awin. In order for you to be accepted bear in mind that you need first to have a traffic.
Having at least 10,000 page views per month is a good indicator that you already have a good traffic and can advertise any products or services from your chosen affiliate programs.
Each affiliate programs may have different minimum required traffic. Thus, you have to check their website for this specific details to ensure that you are qualified before sending any application.
I also suggest for beginners to focus first on building traffic in your first 3 months (if you are just starting) before adding any affiliate links to your site. Monetization always comes after you have built the audience and gained the traffic to your website.
6. Have a Way To Get Paid
Since you are now applying for affiliate program and commissions are being earned every time someone makes a purchase though your affiliate link, you need to ensure that you have set-up you Paypal account.
There are different ways that an Affiliate Marketer can pay you but the most common is through Paypal. Ensure that you have set this up if you are applying as they normally request for this details.
There are also some affiliate programs like Awin who requires you to pay a $1 deposit using your credit card in order for them to do the verification of your personal details.
7. Don’t Provide Fake Information
Never ever put any fake information, there are some affiliate programs who are only based on a specific country and faking your information just to join these programs can ban you from getting any commissions.
All information should be provided accurately and correctly, you affiliate marketers won’t trust you if your information are fictitious.
What’s next?
I hope these information helps you to secure an affiliate programs in the future.
If there is one thing that I wanted to emphasize above, it’s that in order for you to have successful website and be accepted for affiliate programs you need to consistently publish quality contents.
Quality contents leads to more traffic which significantly increases the chance of being accepted from any affiliate programs.