Got rejected by pepperjam
Pepperjam is the outfit that the website people at Horse.com use to approve your website as worthy for the Horse.com products. My website is myusefuldressage.com. I'm just developing it, and I'll be honest I was insulted. The Pepperjam people gave a few reasons as to why the rejection might be the case. They include inappropriate content, incomplete website, the webiste doesn't do what I say it does, not enough traffic, etc.
Okay. Who's fault is this? Maybe nobody's. Maybe this is the way the affiliate world works. The thing is where I'm at in my training with WA has not prepared me for this kind of rejection. The training video by Kyle said simply Sign Up with Two Affiliates. I got one and was working on the other one, actually applied for it, and then got rejected.
I think the mismatch here is that some Affiliate Programs may require that you have a mature website with lots of traffic and connections before they'll approve you. That is not the case with me. I'm just starting. I will let Kyle know this through the comment section after the training video in question. The way the training goes right now it sounds like you just ask to join somebody's afflitiate program, and they'll say, "Of course. We'd lo have you." Not so.
There is another problem. Affiliate programs in my niche are just not that prevalent. I talked about this in an earlier blog. But boy this business of being rejected after you've been putting your heart, soul, and effort into your website, mature or not, is frankly hard to take and a disappointment.
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Hi Carole, I know that feels bad as we do a lot of work on our sites. If its any consolation my site is 15 months old with quite a lot of posts and I was recently rejected by a large affiliate because my site was too young. Seems strange to me.
You're doing everything right, just keep going you will succeed.
Shane.
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I've been doing this for 20 years, so I have a few things I can share with you on your experience.
Your site does look new. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but some merchants like more mature sites and others don't. Same thing with some networks. It seems like there are only 5 posts on there so far. Perhaps apply when you have 10-12 so they get an even better feel of where you are going with the site. You don't have to have a ton of traffic and be mature to be approved, but you do need more than 5 posts normally.
I think you're off to a good start. For now, just put in links to the merchants you want to use, even if they aren't monetized links. That will also show them what you are doing. You may not want to start any more articles with that person's name. Unless someone knows dressage, they may not understand why you are doing so.
Don't give up. Keep working on this, and understand that there's a huge difference between brand new site and mature site. The spectrum is long and you are at the very beginning. Add a few more posts, then try again.
This is excellent advice, Jeannine. I got into this predicament by simply following the training. Where I'm at in the training wants me to sign up for two affiliate programs. But clearly it's too early to be doing that. I will write a comment to Kyle which, hopefully, he will read.
Concerning the articles that feature the name Alois Podhajsky: My niche is dressage, and there are not many key words out there for me to use. I could probably count them on my right hand. So the title of an article may repeat a key word with a qualifier after a semi-colon explaining how this article is different from another article with the same key word.
In general, my plan is to tackle the theory of dressage and then go after the exercises which support that theory. This is an informational website, not al product website. So it's a bit difficult to sandwich my plans into a few keywords.
So my question is this: Should I just stop the training and write a bunch of articles? Because without a bunch of articles, I'm not going to get affiliate programs interested in me. Or should I just fudge it, check the box off the says I've signed up for two affiliate programs, when I haven't, so I can continue the training?