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Why do affiliate networks accept only experienced affiliates?

Anastasia AdCombo

Affiliate Manager
Affiliate Manager
AdCombo
Good day, dear friends!

Traffic monetization is a tempting business. It attracts more and more newbies. At the first stage of planning amateurs are full of enthusiasm, though when it comes to a registration in an affiliate network they become disappointed – most of the networks do not accept newbies.

Why do affiliate managers refuse to accept amateur affiliates? Why can’t affiliate networks give a chance to novices? How to gain own experience if everywhere only mature affiliates are needed? In order to have these questions answered read further.



Affiliate networks are (unexpectedly!) the part of the service industry. An affiliate network is a platform where its clients (affiliates and advertisers) are served. And the platform’s revenues depend on the intensity of client’s interaction. In order to increase the revenues there should be more clients. The question asks itself: why do affiliate networks refuse to accept affiliate-newbies? None of the existing mature webmasters was born with the profitable schemes in mind. Although, affiliate networks always request confirmation of your experience in the field.


In order to have clear vision why it happens and what a newbie should do, you need to gain insight into the specificity of the interaction between an affiliate and an affiliate network. The specificity of this interaction entails strictly partnership approach – mutually profitable, based on oral agreement, without any written contract. That means: though a webmaster agrees with the network’s terms and conditions during his registration in the network, still nobody owes him anything. The terms and conditionsthemselves are designed the following way: either a webmaster or an affiliate network can cease their interaction any time and not be obliged by legal obligation. In other words: NOBODY OWES ANYTHING TO ANYONE. Nothing personal, just business.


Bearing this unsteady condition in mind, imagine how difficult it is for an affiliate network (being a mediator and guarantor at the same time) to carry out its obligations under the agreement between an advertiser and a network. For example, an affiliate network negotiates with an advertiser on the certain volume of leads. But it is difficult to give guaranties on leads since a web master owes nothing either to the network or to the advertiser. At any moment a webmaster can stop sending traffic to the network’s landing pages and transmit the flow to another offer of into another network. The supply is growing on the market and that allows a webmaster to have no obligations and change the networks he works with like a woman changes clothes.


In order to survive in the area of affiliate marketing a webmaster needs to be flexible. There are always changes in the operational principles of the ad selling platforms, the perfect schemes may not be useful anymore, and offer’s seasonality influences the quality and quantity of the sales. There are not so many types of offers that can bring large amount of money all the time. You need to transform you working approach, as well as traffic sources, offers and banners. It is quite common that webmasters join several affiliate networks at the same time in order to use good opportunities from each of them. The web masters’ race for easy money doesn’t allow him to stick to one and the same affiliate network. So, affiliates chop and change all the time.


Every network, in turn, always interested in new affiliates. Every network has a guarantee obligation owed to an advertiser concerning the quantity of the leads. In this connection, at any time every network has to have a certain group of affiliates who generate leads. Affiliates leave from time to time: some of them have their perfect scheme to become useless, others test a new offer somewhere else; some have lost the money on this or that offer; others moved to another sphere of business. Traffic monetization is an unsteady way to get income. Due to this affiliate networks constantly in need of new affiliates. If there are no new affiliates – the volume is low, the revenues are low and the network is in trouble!


Why do affiliate networks accept only experienced affiliates? The thing is that nobody wants to raise newbies. Other professions are taught at schools, colleges and universities. But there is no institution to teach how to send and monetize the traffic. Yeah, you can try your luck at hiring a mentor for you, but in most cases it is money down the drain. Raising a newbie in affiliate marketing means raising a webmaster from scratch: a newbie needs to be provided with opportunities, be motivated and be shared the experience of their mature colleague. All this demands extra efforts from the networks’ staff.


It is quite hurtful when you train an affiliate from scratch, and he right there moves to another network. As it was stated above, an affiliate owes nothing to a network and teaching a newbie is time-consuming and labor-intensive. So the result doesn’t match up to the spent resources. Consequently, affiliate networks accepts mature affiliates who: a) can generate leads right along, b) do not ask dumb questions and c) do not require all the time to pay out their hard earned 50$.


A newbie asks millions of questions off the subject, demands a successful scheme, asks for help, advice, control check and etc. – though it’s normal. For such cases affiliate managers should be right away. Affiliates with no experience are the main source of problems: a lot of complaints, pretensions, and angry posts in communities.


To sum up:


Despite the fact that affiliate marketing is developing as a business and becomes more popular around the world, the procedure of getting an access to the affiliate network for newbies will be the same for the next few years for sure.


To start working in affiliate marketing from the very beginning it is necessary to find a network which collaborates with beginners. Or you can also try to convince an affiliate manager that you have a required experience and you know how to behave in this business and not to cause any problems.


Making the first step is always difficult – you doubt a lot, you are afraid of unpredictable future and huge responsibility you are going to endure. Among other things, even affiliate networks sometimes put spokes in a newbies’ wheel and demotivate them to start. The beginning of the journey is always the hardest part, but don’t forget that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Who does not make steps is going round in a circle. And who is moving (even slowly) – will achieve incredible results.


Wish you a lot of traffic and conversions. And thank you for reading.
 
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Good day, dear friends!


It is quite hurtful when you train an affiliate from scratch, and he right there moves to another network. As it was stated above, an affiliate owes nothing to a network and teaching a newbie is time-consuming and labor-intensive. So the result doesn’t match up to the spent resources. Consequently, affiliate networks accepts mature affiliates who: a) can generate leads right along, b) do not ask dumb questions and c) do not require all the time to pay out their hard earned 50$.

Hi Anastasia,

Pleased to e-meet you, could to see you vouching your own perspective. But I think I have some contradictory opinion to yours, because Affiliate Network like any other business wants growth and understand that influx of new affiliates into the industry will help them get to that level, so wouldnt shut their doors to new affiliates, but as we all know, the industry is porous as there are legitimate affiliates, there are fraudulent affiliates as well who uses the world newbie to perpetrate fraud activities, hence affiliate network tightened the gap to only associate with the ones vetted to be proven or have genuine interest in learning and becoming an affiliate.

Secondly, the purpose for forums, masterminds, groups and Google(our friend) is for affiliates to have the needed knowledge thats required in the affiliate market place :) .... If an affiliate approach me with this perspective ; I'm a newbie and registered on affiliatefix, and other forums, I have been learning on pop(or any other type of traffic) for awhile, watched couple of videos, understand traffic source to start with and am looking for help with tracking or the right offer to test out with as a newbie..... Do you think any network will shut their doors to such prospect whom could end up raking millions for them ? Compare to a newbie who says, I'm new to AM and looking to get started with your network, hope you can teach me all I need to get started.......

Thats just my perspective, affiliate networks are open to newbie and at the current age, this is the time that has seen most newbies, I could remember 8years ago wasn't like this, that networks doesnt even accept third world countries.....
 
Hi Anastasia,

Pleased to e-meet you, could to see you vouching your own perspective. But I think I have some contradictory opinion to yours, because Affiliate Network like any other business wants growth and understand that influx of new affiliates into the industry will help them get to that level, so wouldnt shut their doors to new affiliates, but as we all know, the industry is porous as there are legitimate affiliates, there are fraudulent affiliates as well who uses the world newbie to perpetrate fraud activities, hence affiliate network tightened the gap to only associate with the ones vetted to be proven or have genuine interest in learning and becoming an affiliate.

Secondly, the purpose for forums, masterminds, groups and Google(our friend) is for affiliates to have the needed knowledge thats required in the affiliate market place :) .... If an affiliate approach me with this perspective ; I'm a newbie and registered on affiliatefix, and other forums, I have been learning on pop(or any other type of traffic) for awhile, watched couple of videos, understand traffic source to start with and am looking for help with tracking or the right offer to test out with as a newbie..... Do you think any network will shut their doors to such prospect whom could end up raking millions for them ? Compare to a newbie who says, I'm new to AM and looking to get started with your network, hope you can teach me all I need to get started.......

Thats just my perspective, affiliate networks are open to newbie and at the current age, this is the time that has seen most newbies, I could remember 8years ago wasn't like this, that networks doesnt even accept third world countries.....

Thanks for your opinion! Many men many minds)
 
Great article Anastasia <3 Many of these points can also be applied to ad networks as well. It's not that any networks are 'evil' and don't want to accept you, it's just that many don't want to take any risk that can be adverse to our business practises
 
Why do affiliate networks refuse to accept affiliate-newbies?
The solution is pretty simple. Before applying for an affiliate account, the least you can do is have in your portfolio a good looking website, without any affiliate links on it, since you don't have an account yet, lol, and decent content on it. Spend a month to do that, and you will be fine. Then speak decent English, and do not ask for everything while you have nothing to offer. Lack of knowledge can be fixed, stupidity can't.

It is quite hurtful when you train an affiliate from scratch, and he right there moves to another network.

If this is an excuse, then tangible world companies would not train their employees because they might move to other companies, which they literally do all the time. So it's a very lame excuse for the affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs won't even further train affiliates that bring 4-5 figures a month to their pockets, I can safely state this after 15 years in adult affiliate programs.

I believe the explanation is different, and the following points do not exclude each other.

1. In some situations, the affiliate programs lack the infrastructure to do that.

2. The affiliate programs lack the knowledge to train affiliates, new or old.

3. They are incapable of seeing the benefits of fishing a few new affiliates that would pay back the time investment, taking into account even the failures and the people that move to other affiliate programs. Because if one has an affiliate that has turned into profit what he has learned with the one that continues to advertise you, he/she will most probably teach his/her friends and family to do what he does, more even if one offers a 5-10% webmaster referring fee. It's not really the affiliate fault if he/she leaves because one's affiliate program is weaker than the other. That's what happens in real life all day long in all kind of companies.

You can easily run tests to see if the possible candidate is capable of understanding and delivering the goods if taught, starting with a letter of intention, live IQ tests, common sense questions, English knowledge, etc. And work with the qualified ones. A smart newbie won't ask million questions, will almost always stay at the point. It's not like an affiliate program should teach all the world about affiliate marketing.

4. The affiliate programs would rather employ people with fix wages that will do what an affiliate can do, without the payout percentage. But most probably only the big guns afford this, because it's good to have a wide range of affiliates, since most of the affiliate programs can quantify the type of traffic sent from affiliates and learn from their work. And you can learn a lot from individuals too, not only for big companies. The bulb was invented by Edison, not by a huge company or 500 individuals.


So, bottom line, most probably there are more reasons and explanations, I am not the grandmonkey of all knowledge.

But I do know one big french programming company that trains people offering free programming courses in my country, a place where to sleep, infrastructure ( the building, teachers, computers, etc, etc, etc ) with no contract that requires the students to work for them after the classes are completed.

The classes last around 3 years, can be less or more, depending on your intellect, and to apply for that first you send an intention letter, then you take an IQ test, then you have an interview, and if you qualify after these 3, you are trained 1 month.

After that month you have a test. If you pass it, you have free studies. Else, good bye, you can return next year. Most of the people that reach that 1 month give up after the first week. It's the people that don't want to work, that do not like responsibilities, that imagine that programming can be done by starting a PC and then playing a game. Because that month training is not hard, and the test is not hard either. But it requires to be responsible and to take commitments.

Most of the people start working for one of the group of companies related to this after the first year, and most of them continue to do that after they finish the full courses. But absolutely nothing is mandatory, you can quit the courses, you can start working for other companies whenever you want, etc.

The building that hosts the classes has free snacks, food, juice and beer for everybody. :) The rooms have flat screens, xboxes and a lot of games. Moreover, if you are accepted, you are asked what food, snacks, beer, juice you prefer, and the fridges will always have that. If you feel that you want to play a game all day long, you can do that, nobody gives a damn about that. You will be most probably joined. I know the details because I have a friend that follows their classes. If you think that's insane, well, I thought that too at first :ninja: But it seems that it's a calculated risk that pays back.

That is innovation. Taking and assuming risks. Most of the affiliate programs out there ask the affiliate to take all the risks and that's it. Good bye.

Cheers :)
 
If this is an excuse, then tangible world companies would not train their employees because they might move to other companies, which they literally do all the time. So it's a very lame excuse for the affiliate programs.

Hi there, Stefan.

The fact is most of the affiliate networks are similar. I mean, they have the same conditions, the same offers and the same level of support. And the affiliate may choose any of them if he is an experienced one. Upbringing the affiliate from a newbie to a 5 number monthly budgets is a tough thing. It is a REALLY tough thing to do this.

Let us agree, there is no any way to obligate the affiliate to deal with your network. I mean = you cannot avoid them leaving if they want. In this way, before starting to train the units, you should be a best network to deal.
That is why most of networks do not start training affiliates.

Moreover, We will start very soon :)

And thank you for such a great feedback. I like it very much!
 
Great article Anastasia <3 Many of these points can also be applied to ad networks as well. It's not that any networks are 'evil' and don't want to accept you, it's just that many don't want to take any risk that can be adverse to our business practises

Well, Networks are not at all evil. They are just looking for risk-free investments. Experienced partners are considered to be good from that point of view. Newbie ones are not, as they may bring zero profits to a network.

But at the same time it is a good thing for a company to grow its clients and partners.
 
Just gone through the post and I think I will like to share some of the views that I have on the same. The reason as to why the networks accept only experienced person is hat they also want to make money. They are in the business of making money. So when you have people who do not know how to make money, then you will end up also not making the cash. Another thing is so as to have some standard on the same. It helps avoid the jokers on the network.
 
Just gone through the post and I think I will like to share some of the views that I have on the same. The reason as to why the networks accept only experienced person is hat they also want to make money. They are in the business of making money. So when you have people who do not know how to make money, then you will end up also not making the cash. Another thing is so as to have some standard on the same. It helps avoid the jokers on the network.

It is a controversial issue anyway.

Needless to say that it is rather risky for an affiliate network to accept newbies, although newbies need to have an opportunity to learn how to successfully operate in the sphere of the affiliate marketing. Besides, out of 10 newbies there can be 2 or 3 truly good professionals in the nearest future who will be able to make a lot of money for themselves and an affiliate network as well. And both sides will be satisfied eventually.

Speaking about newbies it is obvious that irresponsible and reluctant amateurs most likely are not going to be accepted by any affiliate network. But if the person is truly oriented towards learning and absorbing the experience, and has elaborated a certain plan how he is going to perform with the help of an affiliate network, has thought about how to test traffic sources and etc, it will be much easier for him to get accepted by a network.
 
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