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?
I think it’s not the case that there’s no actual person to review your website. I think when you apply to LS first time and give your websites for review they assign some category and also some other criterion to your website which is used for automatic approves/disapproves by advertisers then.
Or maybe it caused by current media strategy of particular advertiser. Or maybe they do decline or pend your request if they want your real contact – you to call them and discuss your promotion plans.
Let me know you opinion on what I’ve said.
Thank you for your experiment 🙂
Interesting ideas, Maria, and thank you for taking the time to comment.
I guess, we won’t know how exactly it works unless someone from LinkShare chimes in, but I still stick to my belief that there are no circumstances where either automatic approval or automatic decline helps the advertiser’s marketing. What if a large content website opens a new affiliate account (it must be mentioned that the website on my test account was classified as a content one), and starts applying into affiliate programs? I’ve actually had this happen on another affiliate network. I’ll be honest with you, as an affiliate program manager I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought someone is just using their URL (as a fake URL on a new affiliate account. So, I reached out to the owners of the actual website, and apparently it was them trying out monetization through affiliate marketing.
I’ll try to see if I can get someone from LinkShare to comment on the situation described in this post.
Hi Geno & Maria –
There are basically 2 processes by which Advertisers can approve/decline affiliates. Auto & Manual.
The Manual Approvals are done by human beings whereby the Advertisers typically review each site and review the criteria input by the Publisher and decide if it’s a fit for their affiliate program.
The Auto approve/reject process is pretty simple. Advertisers can set up parameters based on the various inputs we collect from Publishers. If they meet certain thresholds set, they’ll get approved, or otherwise rejected. Yet, if a Publisher is rejected they’ll get an e-mail from the Advertiser stating this. In this email, we recommend that Advertisers provide their full contact information so Publishers have the opportunity to contact the Advertiser directly and provide additional information.
Hope this helps.
Adam Weiss
VP, Network Development
LinkShare
Adam, I appreciate you taking the time to chime in with an explanation of how things work.
Do publishers receive some kind of training on the best practices for the review/processing of affiliate applications (e.g.: outlining the dangers of automatic approvals, or even the auto declines)?