Has your affiliate program application been declined? I'll explain why that happened and what you can do to appeal the decision.

Affiliates complain regularly about shrinking affiliate commissions in their favorite programs across the industry. The trend is to lower payouts, reduce the tracking gap (cookie) and/or limit the number of products eligible for commissions. The ones speaking up are bloggers, datafeeders or SEO affiliates. They say brands aren't listening to them and they don't know how to reverse the trend.

You must have patience to be successful in affiliate marketing; you must also ask questions, always. I'm not suggesting you act like a four-year-old and repeatedly ask why why why why why without waiting for, or paying attention to, the answers. But you need as much information as possible to make decisions on strategy and direction.

Affiliate marketing isn't easy. It takes time, resources and dedication. It's not something you can learn overnight and start making money with immediately. Normally, when I write about unrealistic expectations, I write about merchants—in fact, a chapter of my book is about just that. Today, I'm talking to affiliates—new affiliates, mainly. I'm talking to affiliates who might have some wild ideas about how quickly they can make six figures in this industry but have discovered that their unrealistic expectations led to disappointment. Affiliates who might be asking, "does affiliate marketing work?"

By now you may have heard at least a little about Conversion Lines technology from ShareASale. We mentioned the technology recently in our client announcements and every client newsletter that has gone out in August had two paragraphs about them. Maybe you saw some industry connections talking about them on Facebook, or on Twitter. We at Apogee are big believers in the power of attribution rules, and today, I'm going to teach you how it works to make the landscape more fair for everyone.