Get approved for Affiliate Programs

How do you get approved for affiliate programs?

When you submit a request to a company to join their affiliate program, you have to tell them about your website. They will want the name of your site, a description and the URL.

Someone from their organization will then go lo0k at your website to see if you are someone they want representing them. If your website is not relevant to their product, they will not give you their approval.

What do these companies look for?

• They will be checking to see if your website has information that will draw the type of visitors who would be interested in their product.

• They will be checking to see if your mechanics work properly. Do you have any dead links? Do your pages load fairly quickly? Do your graphics show up or are they just red X's? Make sure everything is working right before you apply for any affiliate program.
• They will be checking the layout. Is your website easy to navigate? If it's too confusing, how will your prospective customers find the product you are selling?
• They may or may not be checking if you have your own domain name. Some companies care about this, some don't. If you are serious about building an online business, get your own domain name.
• • NOTE: You will probably be able to find companies that will allow you into their affiliate program without your own domain name. The problem will be finding customers. It is really hard to believe a website is a real business if they don't even have their own domain name. I would never buy from http://www.george.jones.freesite-computer_sales.com, would you?
  • You can buy a domain name for as little as $4.95 a year here, and they will give you free web space.

• They will be checking to see what other types of items you are selling on your site, if any. You will not get any companies to approve your site if you have information about or links to porn, guns, drugs, hacks, or tobacco. So unless those are the types of affiliate programs you are applying to, don't create your website around those subjects. Don't even link to sites that do promote those items. You will kill your website before you even get off the ground.

So, how do you get approved?

You create a nice website that is informative and functional. You avoid too much flash and other graphics that will slow the loading of your site. You get your own domain name. Finally, you stay away from the stuff that wouldn't want to show your mom.

Other Notes:

If you are planning to build a website around porn, guns, drugs, hacks or tobacco, don't. You will be limiting yourself as far as who will deal with you. You will be building a reputation that you may never be able to live down. You will pay huge sums of money to get started. The nice, inexpensive web hosting companies don't sell to those types of websites. I am sure you can find something else to deal in that you will be proud of. Once you have a successful site, you are going to want to build another and another. Don't kill your opportunities right from the start.

OK, enough of that lecture.

I just want to say a little here about graphics and flash. They might be fun to play with but they don't work on a website. Put your logo and a few supporting pictures here and there and that's enough. How long are you willing to sit and wait for a webpage to load? If your pages are too slow, people will click off before they even get to see how flashy your site is.

And my final word on this subject is this. It is possible to get approved for an affiliate program if you ignore all the above advise. Be warned, however, who are you dealing with? You may go through all the work to build a nice site and place the affiliate links and drive traffic to your site and find out someone else is getting all your profits. If a company isn't interested in what your website looks like, chances are they have other bad habits too. There are plenty of good companies to work with, stick with the companies that have rules. Rules work both ways.

Go on, get going, you have work to do!

Get approved for Affiliate Programs