Affiliate Application Declined – Why? What Now?

Did you receive an “affiliate application declined” email?

Thank you for applying to the XBrand affiliate program but we have chosen to decline your application at this time. This program is professionally managed by Apogee and we are looking for the right set of affiliate partners to promote our products.

If you did, let's talk about why you were denied. One of our roles here at Apogee is to manually approve or decline every affiliate application submitted to each and every client on our roster. This is an important part of a professionally managed affiliate program and while time-consuming, it is a very worthwhile process and one we strongly believe in. You'll read a little later what you can do to appeal our decline decision because this might not be the end of the road for us.

Affiliate Application Declined: Why We Did It

Every application is vetted by an affiliate manager to ensure only the best partners are granted access to our programs. Your application doesn't have to be perfect, but we must understand how you will promote Apogee clients in order to make our decision. We need to see your site or social profile and quickly determine your method of promotion to make sure it aligns with the brand.

Here are some things we look for on your site and in your application that can or will lead to a decline:

1. Coupons/loyalty — We have a hand-selected group of coupon and loyalty sites approved in our programs. We are not adding new ones at this time. If your site is predominately coupons or deals, you will likely be declined. The exception to this is content-led deal bloggers.
2. Scraped or Duplicate Content – We have a zero-tolerance policy on scraped, cloned, or duplicated sites. If we find that you have stolen content from another website to present as your own, you will not only be declined from our programs but reported to the network as well.
3. Site issues — Your website is not loading or is still under construction at the time of consideration. Many creators want to build sites behind a “coming soon” page and incorporate affiliate links before going live. Unfortunately, that is not a good strategy and not one we can allow in our programs without prior discussion. We need to see content, not parked domains.
4. Relevancy — This is a very important part of our vetting process and one that is most often a problem. If your website has nothing to do with our client and you did not explain your strategy in the application notes, you will most likely be declined. Be sure to also make sure that all of your domains are listed on your ShareASale profile and take the time to explain how you will be promoting the brand in your application.
5. Negative Feedback — Every affiliate account has a section where managers can give feedback about working with you. If we see that other managers have left negative feedback about your method of promotion, T&C violations, and other negative feedback, we will decline your application.
6. Paid traffic — No PPC, PPV, or media buying is allowed in any of our programs without permission and full coordination with the management team.

But I Was Already in the Program…

First, make sure you were declined by Apogee and not the network. If you were declined by the network, reach out to your affiliate manager and they can assist you with appealing the network ruling.

For those of you who were declined by an Apogee program specifically, we offer different reasons for your removal.

1. Violation — You violated our affiliate agreement. Most likely by purchasing trademark keywords in paid search, but there may have been other reasons.
2. Previous violations — You may not have violated the current terms but you most likely did in one of our other programs. If you violate one program, we will likely remove you from other programs.
3. Re-launch — Apogee has just taken over management and is relaunching the affiliate program. Our standards above apply to all programs.

Appeals and How to Win Them

If you feel we missed something, such as an important detail about you or your site, we are more than happy to listen to an appeal then go back and hit the approve button. We are humans too and can make mistakes, and are happy to admit when we are wrong.

The fastest way to appeal is to hit reply on the “affiliate application declined” email as that will route you directly to the affiliate manager for that program. All you need to do is explain how you plan to promote the affiliate program and on what platform. We will review your appeal and let you know our decision within 24 hours.

Our job as affiliate managers is to recruit the best possible partners into every program. Apogee clients rely on our judgment for a fair playing field amongst affiliates. They are looking for a positive extension of their brand to help influence customers and close the deal. We look forward to hearing from you.