I have conducted an experiment, and applied to 107 advertiser/merchant affiliate programs which are listed in LinkShare‘s “Premium Advertisers” section:

The results were quite interesting: 18 merchants auto-approved me into their affiliate programs right away (i.e. without even seeing my website), 10 automatically declined my application (again, without even reviewing my website), and the rest of applications went into “Pending” status, which, I suppose, means that they will be manually reviewed. So, here’s the breakdown we have with LinkShare’s top advertisers:

• automatic approvals – 16.8%
• automatic declines – 9.3%
• manual mode – 73.9%

As discussed elsewhere, both automatic approvals (“open door” policy) and automatic declines (lost opportunities) are dangerous. It is certainly good to see that close to three-quarters of LinkShare’s Premium Advertisers have an actual person (and not automatic account settings) control the affiliate applications consideration process. However, the number of those that automatically approve or decline (over 26%) is still pretty high. Don’t you think so?

Over the past few days I have reviewed over a hundred of affiliate applications into a program I manage, but 3 particularly stood out. One of them was from the UK, one from Serbia and one from Indonesia. These applications can be gathered into one group, because all three had one thing in common — established trademarks in the domains of their websites. Here are some interesting screenshots:

Both iPhone and Travelocity are registered trademarks which belong to Apple Inc [TM registered on 9 Feb 2010] and Sabre Holdings Corporation (owner of Travelocity.com) respectively.

None of the above applications were into Apple’s or Travelocity’s affiliate programs. But does this mean there is no reason for concern? Quite the contrary! If they are squatting on trademarks of other merchants, there is no guarantee that they won’t do the same to you. I declined each of the above affiliate applications, and suggest that other affiliate program managers handle such situations in a similar manner.

Related posts:

• Affiliates, Domain Names and Trademark Violations
• Since When Has Typosquatting Become Acceptable?

Nearly every day I get applications from affiliates that are either hoping to get approved by an inattentive affiliate program manager, or aren’t really thinking much about how their application looks to the manager.

If you want your affiliate application declined, here’s a 3-step guide for you (satisfying any 1 of the 3 “requirements” will do):

1. Have a non-resolving website (or use a domain name that doesn’t belong to you)
2. Ignore the affiliate program agreement
3. Tell the merchant your primary method of promotion is spam

…and here’s a real-life example:

Of course, there are other tried-and-proven-to-work ways to get your affiliate application declined, but the above three are some of the most frequently reoccurring ones in my personal practice.

Reporting from the Affiliate Summit West 2010. The question of restricting affiliates from joining your affiliate program based on their geographical location sprung up during the Q&A session after my yesterday’s presentation, and I’ve also heard participants of the “Affiliate Program Compliance” panel touch upon it today. The main difference between my reply and their general consensus has been that they seemed to be mostly for it, and I am against it. In fact one of the panelists has mentioned filtering affiliate acceptance by country with a purpose of blocking certain countries as a good fraud prevention tool. I disagree.

While I do agree that there are countries with traditionally higher percentage of affiliate fraud, the affiliate’s geographic location is a poor reason for declining an affiliate application. Of course, I do see affiliate program managers (or merchants)  who want to make things easier for themselves, and decide to employ the tactic of total blocking based on the affiliate’s country, but here’s my take on it (directly from my “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” book published 3 years ago):

Automatic Rejections of Non-US-Based Affiliates. This can be a tremendous mistake, and unfortunately, this still happens with some affiliate programs that are being run. Never assume that because an affiliate is based outside of the United States, that this automatically means s/he can be of no use to you. According to the statistics published at the InternetWorldStats.com for the year 2006, North America’s share in the world’s Internet traffic only amounts to 21.09%. Many of you may already have one foot out the door to pull up the latest data on USA online trade. There’s no need – I’ll help you out. The United States accounts for close to 50% of the world’s money spent online. However, affiliates outside of the U.S. can be a great asset to your program. Many of them have excellent organic traffic – often highly targeted and interesting to you as a merchant. As an example, I want to turn to the facts about some of the US programs I manage. One of my best collectibles-selling affiliates is in UK, while the other one is in Switzerland; a Dutch and a Canadian are in the top 10 of my ink affiliates; an Indian and one from China are in the top 20 of a magazine merchant. The list of the top 50 affiliates of another collectibles merchant of mine contains affiliates from Singapore, Serbia and Montenegro, Malaysia, South Africa and again Canada, United Kingdom, India, and the Netherlands. I believe this illustrates my point well.

It’s up to you to decide what your policy is going to be, but I would recommend manual affiliate application approval, and always judging on case-by-case basis. At times you’ll be surprised what targeted and valuable traffic they have.

Yesterday I have mentioned how some advertisers/merchants choose to automatically decline affiliates that fit (or don’t) certain criteria. Today I have done some testing, and would like to illustrate what I mean.

I started a brand new affiliate account with Commission Junction, placing my affiliate website into the “Marketing” category, and listing “Web site / Content” and “Search Engine Marketing” as promotional methods. After this I have applied into a program that does not prohibit any of these marketing methods in their TOS. The Home Shopping Network’s affiliate program caught my eye, and I have decided to apply into it. I carefully read through the program’s Terms of Service, agreed to them, applied, and automatically got the following message:

Since I have copied and saved the restrictions from the TOS prior to applying into the program, I went back to them, and found no indication of how my website could be in violation of any of these. Here’s an excerpt from their well-put-together affiliate agreement:

…HSN may reject the Application if the website is deemed, in HSN’s sole discretion, to be unsuitable for the Program. Unsuitable websites include, but are not limited to, those that:

• display or provide content containing pornographic material of any kind;
• display or provide content that is grossly offensive to the communities served by your website, including blatant expressions of bigotry, prejudice, racism, hatred or excessive profanity or post any obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable content;
• sell or promote any products or services that are unlawful in the
• location at which the content is posted or received;
• introduce viruses, worms, harmful code and/or Trojan horses on the Internet;
• display or provide material that is intended to attract children under 18 years of age to your Member Site;
• post any content or otherwise infringe in any way or violate any copyright, patent, trademark, service mark, trade name, trade secret or other intellectual property right of any third party;
• promote, solicit or participate in pyramid schemes;
• post any content that holds HSN open to public scorn or ridicule;
• engage in any libelous, defamatory, scandalous, threatening, harassing activity;
• post or disclose any personally identifying information or private information about children or any third parties without obtaining their consent in a legally sufficient way (or their parents consent in case of a minor); or
• post any content that advocates, promotes or otherwise encourages violence against any governments, organizations, groups or individuals, or which provides instruction, information or assistance in causing or carrying out such violence;
• engage in unethical search engine marketing or search engine optimization techniques. Examples include, but are not limited to: redirects going from a search engine results page directly to HSN.com versus taking the user to your site’s landing page with HSN related content; keyword stuffing; spamming; cloaking; hidden text or hidden links; or
• operate or utilize (i) a website, or (ii) a link of any kind to a website, that contains or promotes any of the foregoing.

All of the above points require an actual review of the applicant’s website (or monitoring of their “search engine marketing or search engine optimization techniques” if we’re talking SEM/SEO). An automatic denial excludes the possibility of someone actually reviewing the affiliate site.

Apparently, the automatic decision was based on the data that is already reflected in my test affiliate account. The application could have been declined either because of the location of the affiliate (although I highly doubt they do not accept U.S.-based affiliates), or on the CJ’s 5-bar scale ranking (mine is obviously at zero), or on how new the affiliate is to the network (my account was opened just today). Are any of these really relevant to the affiliate’s potential for any affiliate program? Not at all. As mentioned yesterday I have seen new affiliates go from zero “bars” to 4 bars within one month. Suppose CNN.com or Forbes.com just joined CJ as an affiliate, and applied into the HSN’s program. Would a decision to automatically decline such affiliates based on the “bar ranking” benefit the advertiser? Unlikely! It will only do their affiliate program a disservice, hindering its further growth. Remember, the affiliate may never write back to find out why they were declined, and simply go to a competing merchant instead!

Additionally, it is important to mention that if you are declining affiliates based on factors other than the above-mentioned ones, the best practice is to make affiliates aware of these factors before they click that “Submit” button.

Here is a profile screenshot for an affiliate who has applied into one of the affiliate programs I know:

This application got declined on the following 5 reasons. These are the things that are very frequently happening with affiliate applications, and I think it is important to devote my today’s post to it. If you want your affiliate application to be declined, follow the below 5-step advice:

1. Use a made-up name instead of your real one

Coming from a linguistic background, and being born in the Soviet Union, it just makes me smile when I see a Georgia resident bearing such a name. A simple research helps me undertand where they got the name from. There is a person with this name living in Atlanta, Georgia. Additionally, it is apparent that the “affiliate” has confused the state with the country, thereby revealing that he/she is probably neither Cocomonti, nor a resident of Georgia.

2. Assume that website is not necessary

I would argue that it always is essential for an affiliate to have a website (or at least a page) where he/she would explain to advertisers the marketing methods they are planning on employing to promote advertisers. The explanation can be however general, or however detailed you want, but it is hard to imagine that an effective online marketer could have no website whatsoever. The affiliate-stated relevancy of the “Web site” question is all the more suspicious in light of the fact that they have chosen “Web site / Content” as one of the promotion methods that they are going to use. How when you don’t even have a website?

3. Make spelling mistakes

As one can see from the above screenshot, the word “applicable” has been spelled two different ways: neither one of which is correct.

4. List yourself in an random category

Not all affiliate networks require affiliates to place their websites into categories. Commission Junction (which is the network on which this application has happened) does, and this affiliate has chosen “Cars & Trucks” for his notapplicaple.com nonexistent website. Any randomly filled-out information (name, location, website, categorization, etc) may be taken for an attempt to deceive an affiliate program manager.

5. Ignore emails asking for clarification of intent

If you have received an email from an affiliate program manager who wants to clarify how exactly you are envisaging working with their affiliate program, a non-reply is the worst thing an affiliate can do.

I could have also mentioned the free email account, but many affiliates choose to do this for obvious reasons, and I’m certainly not going to recommend declining an affiliate application based just on that.

Lester B Pearson, a Canadian Prime Minister who is often acknowledged as the greatest Canadian of all times, said that “the chief distinction of a diplomat is that he can say no in such a way that it sounds like a yes.” This is exactly what affiliate program managers should learn to do when dealing with affiliate applications that may not seem to fit the affiliate programs they manage. Never assume that you can be 100% right in your decision of declining an affiliate application. Even when saying “no” give them a benefit of the doubt. Phrase the text of the e-mail you send out to the declined affiliates in such a way that does give them another chance, if they want it. Here’s the text I use for one of the programs I manage:

Unfortunately, your application to the Langbridge.com affiliate program has been declined. If you feel that it has been done in error, please contact me, the company’s owner, directly at geno@langbridge.com and I will be happy to discuss this with you. I do not want my company to miss out on opportunities to collaborate with promising partners. So, if you believe that your application has been declined in error, please do e-mail me, and I will get back with you within 24 hours.

Yours Truly,

Geno Prussakov

Do not burn bridges. You can never know for certain what exactly the affiliate that applied to your program had in their mind. Give them an opportunity to communicate it back to you prior to making the decision to decline, and if they don’t, decline their application, but don’t burn the bridge.