How to affiliate with a company – As simple as a few clicks!

If you are very new in the field of online business or affiliate marketing you may find it unknown and somewhat challenging to know how to affiliate with a company, what date are they going to ask you? How long is the process lasts? Are they asking for your SSN or other sensitive information from you? Are there some restrictions to apply? Is there any kind of contract to sign up?

Let’s try to answer these questions by using a few typical examples that can help you see what this process about is and what you need to go through it

Affiliating vs. applying for a job

It is important to say first that affiliating with an advertiser it is not the same as applying for a job. What you should bear in mind is that regardless of the time you have been in online business either one minute or several years, you are now a business owner who looks for associating with another partner, yet this partner could be a giant the relationship between you and them is just strictly as pairs not as boss and employee.

When applying for a job you are required to show several credentials like your curriculum vitae of course, but also your expertise, maybe some sample of your abilities and competencies and recommendations from past employers.

When it comes to affiliate to a company or a network the most important thing is if you are a reliable partner, one who can somehow guarantee a minimum of quality and opportunities to thrive into a profitable partnership. It is fair to point out here that many people complain about the low threshold that affiliate programs impose over its partners so it is possible that almost everyone can sign up lowering the quality standards to something barely formal.

Examples of requirements from some affiliate programs

Let’s try first with Clickbank, which is one of the most known and authoritative affiliate networks in the world. They gather thousands of offers of digital products from a similar amount of sellers within almost all the potential niches available.

Clickbank (CB)

What’s the process for registering with ClickBank? For creating an account, you need to fill out a three-step sign-up form, first with your personal data, including name, address, phone number, and email address.

Then you are required to give some data about banking information. For US citizens and residents as requested by IRS, Clickbank will ask your EIN (Employer Identification Number) or your SSN (Social Security Number) especially for those people who are going to earn more than $600. If you are non-US citizen tax Clickbank will not require this kind of taxpayer information, but that doesn’t mean you are going to stay under the radar of the tax collector system your country, but you are going to comply with it by other means.

After you have entered in the second tab your banking information, at the end of it you will be required to check the box acknowledging that you read the terms and conditions. This box is deactivated to prompt you to open up the client contract. While you can just open it up and close immediately as many people do, it’s advisable that you take the time to read it thoroughly. Not only because it has relevant information about payments, deposits, transfers, or taxes but because it will provide a whole framework of what affiliate marketing is in case you are starting in this field.

The final step takes you to set up your credentials, your nickname and password to create and enter to your account.

Once inside the Clickbank dashboard, you’ll be presented a light survey to know more about you and your level or experience, use of tools and expectations as vendor, affiliate or both, mainly to show that Clickbank has its own coaching arm known as Clickbank University which is optional to subscribe in.

After you fill out the survey, you’ll have several resources to explore, which surely will be a topic for future posts. However is enough to say here that you’ll be able to enter the marketplace where you can find a vast amount of affiliate offers from which you can get the specific link from the one you choose, called the hoplink for inserting in your content and track your movements. That’s it!

Commission Junction (CJ)

This is together with Clickbank and probably JVZoo the other affiliate network giant whose influence extends all around the world and has been trusted by very renowned brands as Office Depot, Lowe’s or Barnes & Noble just to give some examples.

Likewise, with Clickbank, there is a lot to learn about this network, but for the sake of this post, let’s focus on the registration process.

There is also a Commission Junction contract named Publisher Service Agreement which mainly contains the same legal terms like the corresponding to Clickbank which you should agree in case you decide to follow with the process by checking the specific box, as well as the privacy agreement and the declaration of adulthood.

Unlike Clickbank, vendors within Commission Junction not only sell digital products, in other words, ebooks but a vast range of physical products and services too. The process in this case usually implies not only getting a link (hoplink) but agree with the own terms and conditions of the particular advertiser in addition to the CJ’s agreement regardless if you are looking to promote in your website a dentist, an airline or cosmetics.

Amazon

Amazon is not a network but a brand on itself, although it allows other businesses to advertise and sell their products through this channel. However, it behaves as a single merchant when it comes to signing up to its affiliate program and for paying commissions.

Likewise, other affiliate programs Amazon will ask you some general and banking data, and if you are US citizen, it will ask for you taxpayer information. Otherwise, you should comply with some terms to validate your tax status for being approved as an affiliate.

Amazon will need that you tell them which websites are you going to post over so they can have track your activity. As stated in another post, Amazon is particularly careful about an affiliate clearly disclose in a website his/her relationship with them and how a member manages its links, especially regarding not inserting in hidden places like emails where Amazon can’t monitor them.

Amazon commissions could be considered at the lowest side of the spectrum of affiliate commission, being the highest of 10%, overly short when compared to affiliates who offer you 50, 75% or more in commissions. Besides Amazon set up a minimum amount of $100 to send you a check the first time you’ll receive revenue from them, then you can choose $10 as a minimum for a direct deposit in your bank account the subsequent times.

Uber

Uber is an example of a single brand, one you can affiliate to without using an affiliate network and also which unlike Amazon will offer you just a particular kind of service: referring people to become Uber drivers.

The signing up process is very similar to the ones described above regarding the form to fill with your general and taxpayer data as well as the website where you want to show your uber affiliate advertising.

There will be no waiting time to get approved, and the only thing you need to do after it is to insert your tracking code where you consider more suitable within your site.

Airbnb

This an excellent example of a very niche-targeted partner, because you will need to have a travel related business to have chances to get approved by this company.

A format to fill your general data and website is also available. However, in this case, open questions will be asked to you to explain in a detailed way the reasons why you consider yourself and your business a candidate to create a partnership along with some other information of your websites like the demographics of your audience or the purpose and functionality of your site.

Approval is not immediate, and you should wait like in other cases the time the company last to review your application. After it there are three possible answers:

1) You are approved, and then they will provide you with a tracking code and maybe supporting materials for you to advertise in your site

2) Your business niche is according to the mission of the company however your website is not yet consolidated because of the number of visitors, so you’ll be invited to apply later on and

3) Your business doesn’t match the mission of the company, so your application is rejected.

These are just some representative examples of hundreds or maybe thousands of cases that you can face out there regarding affiliate programs, which can help you to identify some critical similarities and differences about the way what you can establish a partnership with different companies.

Wealthy affiliate is a renowned and authoritative platform to learn everything you need about how to build an online business. It has the advantage that you can join as a starter member without paying anything but with the right to promote an affiliate the site if you decide to do so and get nearly 50% in commissions of each monthly or yearly Premium subscription. If you want to know more about this platform and its affiliate program, go here for more information.

Choosing the least complicated options

As you can see, there are a lot of options for affiliate programs to apply. Some of them should require from you barely some general data, and you can get almost immediately a tracking code to start advertising in your website while others will need a much more in-deep knowledge of you and your business to approve it as a partner.

Which one is more suitable for you? It all depends on your niche, the purpose of your business and website and your goals, however, once you have those well defined, the recommendation if you don’t have previous experience is start with the least complicated to sign up with. After all, you can change anytime the partner you associate with, but the idea is to get to know what all this affiliate field is about.

If you get lost with a long and complicated agreement or contract start with the easiest ones of them. Later when you have more experience, you’ll become an expert on choosing the right affiliate program to partner with for a long time, the one who offers you the higher payments, or the minimum requirements or both.

No more than a few minutes

Unless you have decided to sign up with one of those companies which
need to review your application first for weeks to wait to approve you
as an affiliate, in most cases there won’t need to wait so long but just
some minutes to get approved and be in the position to insert your
affiliate offer wherever you want or need in your website or funnel
sales campaign.

Take into account that if you are serious
regarding your business, and not taking in just as a hobby then you´ll
need a sense of urgency, you´ll want that thing happen as fast as they
can in order to keep a momentum which allows you to build your business,
positionate it and consolidate it quickly to reach consistent income.

If
you wait weeks or months for some things as the approval of a company
to become an affiliate and you don’t have a faster option to start
you´ll be at risk of losing motivation and a potential business could
evanish just because inaction.

Setting up the payment

Once you get approved, it is crucial to setting up the payment configuration. It seems a redundant thing to talk about however you would be surprised at how many people forget this essential step and then they complain or don’t get any profits despite they are working hard, getting visitors and clicks over its affiliate offers.

Some companies like Amazon would set a minimum threshold to overcome to get the first payment. However, after it, you can configure a specific amount after which you can dispose of your revenue, as well as the periodicity in some cases and the mode in which you like to get the payments either as a check or as direct deposits in your bank account.

Obtaining all the necessary tools

The last but not the least thing to do is to look for any supporting materials your partner have designed to help you to improve your advertising tasks.

Sometimes you’ll get only an affiliate link to insert within the content in your site. However, we all know that many of us are visual and as the saying goes: “A picture says more than a thousand words,” and of course advertisers know this very well too. That’s is why many of them have designed whole imagery around its brand and products and services to increase the level of engaging once the visitors have reached this adds in a specific site.

Obviously, this imagery is not a complete guarantee of success. However, it will help the message of your content, giving it more power. So don’t underestimate the value of this material which is available in an HTML mode containing your tracking code to insert right away. Be careful though, of not abusing of adding this resources indiscriminately because the excess, as well as lack, can be harmful as well.