Preparation - signing up for affiliate programs

[bizkit]

Hi Marc and Daniel

Having spent sometime signing up for affiliate programs for the niche websites I am building I was wondering whether this should be in the preparation?

It's a tricky one because some affiliate programs request website details which you may have not yet built.

Regards
Jakki

[dturner]

Hmm, good point, it should be a part of when you build the site, again, I don't even think this is even written in the book, it is just assumed, i'll correct it.

Again thank you

Daniel

[spikey]

Jakki and Daniel,

From personal experience...many good aff. programs won't approve a concept or blank domain as I'm sure you have both experienced... personally I wait until I have my intial 5-7 pages indexed and I've completed dir submissions prior to adding aff's or adsense.

So just being devils advocate here but I think locating aff. programs prior to building a site is important to know there is a lucrative market to work with but rather then applying for them I tend to lean towards starting to build rapport with the aff. mgr for the program.

I send a breif introduction of me often with a few links to some of my other successful sites and tell him/her I'm starting a new project in their market area and would like to represent their products etc. etc. Just sort of gives me a foot in the door then once my site is up to snuff getting a trickle of traffic a day I email them again tell them my application is on the way in...and it normally gets approved same day..

It goes a long way I find as I tend to request what info they'll give me for conversions, what landing pages/products are working best. etc. Most aff. managers have a wealth of info available from aff. that use PPC.

Sorry I babbled on there way off topic...MY point.. I think researching and setting up the right channels is important right from the beggining but I might suggest not rushing to sign up for aff. programs until you can produce... Just my 2cents.

-Ian

[dturner]

Hey Ian,

Man you go to a lot of length!

Makes sense though, I did that when i first started out, but now I just apply and if I'm not accepted I will email them and explain what I do, and am usually accepted then, or just move on to the next one that fits.

The only ones I have trouble with is usually CJ where they want to verify the domain, (depending on the settings the affiliate program has put) and make sure you're not doing anything naughty, i.e. spam emails.

But particularly with singular affiliate programs, my application goes through fine.

Daniel

[bizkit]

Hi Ian

Great tip, thanks

On the subject of CJ , it might be worth mentioning that within your account area you can add websites, so it is a good idea to add all of your 90 day plan sites as you build them, so that those aff progs that don't automatically approve you can see you have a website in their target area.

Just thought there might be people here who do not know that.

Cheers

Jakki

[dturner]

Hey Jakki,

100% spot on... another thing to add

Daniel