Rejected By An Affiliate Manager…

Nobody likes to be rejected. I don’t care how thick-skinned you are. We are all hard-wired to despise rejection. And there is nothing worse than having a site rejected by an affiliate manager. In reality, that happens to the best of us. I personally have had my sites rejected numerous times. Affiliate managers are out there to maximize sales in the affiliate channel. Some go about doing that by accepting all kinds of affiliates. Others focus on only a handful few affiliates and build stronger relationships. I am not going to argue which approach is better here as it really depends on how you want to set up your affiliate program. But getting rejected by affiliate managers is a constant part of affiliate life.

What really annoys me is when affiliate managers reject you and fail to provide you with a specific reason. Just to give you an example, one of my sites was rejected by a merchant for having “questionable content.” When I contact them to figure out what they meant by that, I got the silence treatment. As an affiliate manager, I always took time to respond to all legitimate inquiries in person. By giving affiliates silence treatment, you are not really solving anything. It’s one thing to say “I don’t like you.” But it’s another thing to give you a broad reason but not get specific.

Affiliates are out there to make a living. Affiliate managers are out there to make sure affiliates have the best chance to make money. There is no reason for these two groups not to communicate properly and try to build new relationships. If you are an affiliate manager who love to reject affiliate applications, think again. Even terrible looking websites can still produce results. You just don’t know!