Webmasters like me often write about our earnings through various affiliate programs — not only Amazon.com’s popular Amazon Associates product referral program, but also places like Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareaSale and other places that are especially growing more popular in light of Amazon kicking out affiliates in Illinois and California and other states due to the online tax battle.
But what we don’t often write enough about is our frustration we’ve felt when we signed up all gung ho with some of these places and tried to apply to certain advertisers and were met with a big old “rejected” or “denied” application response. (I got rejected responses from places like Groupon before I applied some of the techniques described below and then got accepted by Groupon, and have been making money via promoting their deals. More on that later…)
Some programs in CJ.com will give you the “Congratulations. Your application has been approved and you are now a member of the advertisers program” message immediately after you apply for them, while others say something like “this advertiser approves manually” and they make you accept terms and conditions by actually clicking on the link and going down to the bottom of the terms and conditions and clicking “accept” — while the ones I hate the most are the ones that automatically reject you based on certain pre-determined and unknown factors.
But I am one to try and try again and push boundaries and see where the line of success is until I reach it. For this reason, I’ve set up different CJ accounts and tried various factors and inputs in my accounts to see which ones give me the “accepted” response after I’ve received “rejected” replies in other accounts. Some advertisers make you wait 90 days to reapply and even when you reapply with the same factors, sometimes it’s the same rejected answer — so I don’t always want to wait and I move forward…
How to Get Approved for Some Commission Junction, LinkShare Major Advertisers
I’ve been online for years, and have gotten millions of pageviews through various venues, and some major retailers still rejected me when I applied for different advertisers.
So setting up different CJ accounts under different email addresses helps, as well as checking your settings and entering the best options available to you to increase your favor of getting accepted.
Check Your CJ.com account settings
In your CJ.com account, under the Account tab –> Web site settings –> you can choose “Edit Settings” and try to point to the URL of your most-trafficked, highest-profile, best and highest Google Pageranked site (or site you write for) and in the description, boast about any highest stats you can honestly claim, like if the website you own or write for gets 3 million hits per day, proclaim it there.
Under Account –> Administrative Settings –> “user settings,” I am classified as a “superuser” status — and I think I may have put that in myself, if memory serves.
I also have the name of my LLC peppered throughout, in places where they ask for business name and the like. Not sure which of these factors helped me get approved, but thank God for them and try them all if you honestly can.
That way, I am able to write about Groupon deals like this one for CoolSculpting stuff around Texas:
Find Today’s Daily Deal on the Best in Fort Worth!
And then I noticed places like Ashton-Drake, which are related to the Bradford Exchange place that I just realized I received $26 for one sale with them based on an article I wrote a while ago.
The same philosophy I used to get approved for Commission Junction advertisers can be tried for LinkShare and other referral programs where you experience rejection.
Hopefully all these things will help you get approved for CJ and many other advertisers.
Leave me comments below and let me know what works and how much moola you make from CJ and LinkShare and other sites…
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Well, thanks for the advice. I recently got rejected by a major affiliate program inside CJ.
I was disappointed because the website I wanted to promote their links on gets about 1,000 uniques a day. That traffic is almost all from Google and it is very targeted. I am convinced that it would convert quite well.
I am not sure what criteria they were looking at when they rejected me. But, I can’t imagine a major retailer rejecting someone who can obviously send them conversions. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, my daily 1,000 visitors isn’t all that much. But, it has to be good compared to a lot of sites out there.