Why Do Merchants Turn Down Affiliates?

by un
2 replies
I can understand when a merchant turns down a site that would in some way make them look bad, but sometimes there's no good reason at all.

Just in the past few days I got turned down by three different merchants/affiliate networks for three different reasons:

1. Webgains.com turned me down because my whois info didn't match the info I gave them. Of course it doesn't! I use private registration and I can't believe I'd be their first customer to do so.

2. Gettington.com turned me down because I didn't have enough traffic. What am I supposed to do drive traffic to a site with no links? And how would low traffic on an affiliate site negatively impact them?

3. Target.com - This was the most humorous. They sent me an email with a list of 22 possible reasons why my application was rejected, none of which applied to my site.

I'm not really concerned about it, these were all kind of "extra" merchants for what I'm doing and I found others that were suitable. I just don't get their reasoning for rejecting people that don't clearly violate anything in their policies.
#affiliates #merchants #turn
  • Profile picture of the author bigbrian
    It can be for various reasons... Some merchants are very picky about where their ad is placed and another factor they will go by is determining the quality of traffic that will be delivered from your website. Sometimes merchants will also deny you because your website is created just to promote their brand. Another reason might be they feel your low traffic might not be worth the hassle or risk of them having to look over your conversions from a compliance standpoint.

    Everything described above are only a few reasons why a merchant might deny your website but they are just the ones that come off the top of my head.

    I have found over my years doing this that if there is a hassle up front or the merchant wants to nit pick about things it's better to just let them be and move on. More than likely you don't want to work with a merchant that is ultra picky because then you are going to be walking on eggshells throughout the lifetime of the campaign anyhow.


    Brian
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  • Profile picture of the author gettington_bill
    Originally Posted by un View Post

    2. Gettington.com turned me down because I didn't have enough traffic. What am I supposed to do drive traffic to a site with no links? And how would low traffic on an affiliate site negatively impact them?
    Hi un,
    I work for Gettington.com and just came across your post. Sorry about the poor experience you had with our affiliate program. Will you PM me your LinkShare account ID so I can go to my account manager and get to the bottom of this? I will get back to you with either an approval into our program or a better explanation of why you were declined.

    Thanks,
    Bill
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