Make sure your website is up-to-date, is operating correctly, and contains no obvious errors, such as 404 page errors. No spelling mistakes; they make your site (and you) look sloppy and convey that you don't pay attention to maintaining a professional appearance. Affiliate programs may feel you won't present their products in a professional light either.
Today most affiliate programs realize you may be a member of several programs, and most no longer demand exclusivity of their affiliates. So you may have a website that has some existing Amazon affiliate links. You're not going to delete all of your moneymaking Amazon links so you can apply to another affiliate program. But make sure your site is still complying with all of Amazon's requirements. For instance, if a program sees that you have Amazon links but do not have the required Amazon disclosure, they may come to the conclusion that you won't follow their requirements.
You are setting up a relationship with an affiliate program that will be paying you for your promotional efforts for many years. In fact, if you ever decide to show that your site is earning money with affiliate links, evidence of past income can dramatically boost the selling price. Take as much care as you can to present yourself in the best possible light on your website to convince the network program that you will make an excellent affiliate for them.
Although your methods are not as critical a factor as when you are applying to an affiliate network, they are still important. The affiliate program you're applying to may have methods of promotion that they prefer and others that they prohibit. For example, some prefer the help of an
SEO consultant whereas some rely solely on adwords. Find out what the affiliate program is looking for and tailor your application appropriately.
In most cases the review process is automated, and rarely are you given an explanation for a rejection. In many cases, however, appealing a rejection is possible, and that appeal is a manual, human-driven process. But with thousands of applications, the appeal process is often slow, and the outcome is uncertain and rarely in the affiliate's favor. Our advice, if you aren't approved or don't hear from an affiliate program about your application, is to move on and apply to a different affiliate program. There are thousands of fish in the sea, so choose another.
Affiliate networks bring together thousands of different merchants and affiliate offers into a single marketplace. They are the intermediary between you, the affiliate marketer, and the merchant -- the person or company providing the goods or services. They often provide the affiliate programs and support for smaller companies that either don't have the technical support staff to develop an affiliate program for their company or would prefer to have someone else develop and support their affiliate program.