Affiliate Programs

[arelene]

How long does a website have to be up and running before you can apply to be an affiliate marketer.Do a lot of these companies allow anyone to participate or are there strict guidelines.Any good suggestions for some reputable companies?

[moratraffic]

It depends on the company really. Some require a min amount of visitors to your site or even a certain Alexa ranking before they accept you. I know that CJ.com doesn't require this and I am not sure about Shareasale but I think they also don't have a min. There are tons of affiliate networks out there, so if you explain your business plan and how you plan to promote their offers, most will approve you anyways.

[BillGatesJr]

It's not the idea on how long your site is...

It's the idea of having the right content, features and offers... However, if you're site's niche is good (e.g. finance), plus you bring valuable traffic, You can be successful in affiliate programs like CJ.

[arelene]

So I need to submit my site for review along with a business plan? What should this plan include besides the nature of my site?

[Fergal]

Hi Arlene, your website can be brand new and you can still get approved for Google Adsense (https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/?gsessionid=s70x5e28KNI). They do however, have restrictions on the types of sites that you can display their ads on. For example you cannot display Adsense ads on sites with adult or gambling content. Also you cannot display their ads on pages that have other contextual ads.

To the best of my knowledge all of the above also applies to Amazon.com's affiliate marketing programme (http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join).

Different companies have different policies and some companies do require that your site has a certain amount of traffic before they will accept you on their programme. You should read the terms and conditions of whatever affiliate programme you are considering joining.

Google Adsense and Amazon.com are a good start because their programmes are quite straight forward and are very user-friendly.

Good luck with it and let us know ho you get on or if we can be of further assistance.

[avi007i]

It totally depends on the publishers ( affiliate programs)
Some publishers like clickbank, Amazon etc do not have any restrictions about how old your site is , how many visitors are you getting per day, or about the site/blog quality.

but some publishers like cj, are very much into the quality of your sites and number of visitors per day for your website etc.