affiliate link approval processIf you’re new to affiliate marketing, working your way through the affiliate link approval process might seem daunting.

Signing up for your first program and placing that first affiliate link on your website is a major milestone on your way to success. That said, there are a lot of rules and regulations that programs put into their contracts, and actually signing up for a program is sometimes more difficult than you think it should be.

Here are a few suggestions to get you going, or you can click here for a step by step walkthrough.

Understand Your Terms

I have another post on common terms included in affiliate agreements, so I’ll just mention this briefly here.

Reading your affiliate contract before you sign up is very, very important. It will outline the details of what constitutes a sale, commission rates, and how you’ll get paid, as well as any restrictions the program has about where and how you’re allowed to incorporate affiliate links.

Affiliate Link Approve Requirements

When it comes to getting your application for an affiliate link approved, there are huge variations in requirements.

Some programs will approve anyone who applies, while others require you to submit a URL for the site, but approve all applications that have a website.

On the other end of the spectrum, some affiliate programs will do a short review of your site, checking for basic content standards or, in rare cases, looking at the total size of your site.

In these cases, the approval is usually done automatically; there’s rarely a real human on the other end clicking through to your pages. They’ll simply scan the website and search for certain trigger words, for example: adult content is likely to be banned immediately.

Related Post: The #1 Tip You Need To Succeed Online

If You’re Not Approved

If you apply for an affiliate program for which you’re not approved, don’t worry.

Chances are, your site just didn’t meet one of the requirements when it was reviewed by their algorithm. Usually you can just send the support team an email and have a real person review (aka: glance at) your site and approve your application.

If that doesn’t work, be sure to carefully review the program’s requirements. If your site is still very new, many programs will simply want to wait to see the page develop into a “real” site first.

Keep producing quality content and updating your site, just as you would anyway, and apply again in a few weeks.

For a more complete beginning affiliate guide, you can read this post, or find a good beginner training program here.