What is "bidding"? And what does

[yuri21]

Oohkay I might have found at least a couple of affiliate programs not listed at CJ(which rejects sites with low-traffic, right?). Still trying to figure out how reputable SAS, Linkshare, Linkconnector, etc. are.

For a certain site, they have this PPC policy: "bidding on competitors"? Erm... confused. What does this mean?
And a ton of other stuff including landing pages that are all related to this policy. Huh?

Asking now 'cos I don't feel like shooting myself in the foot when I start signing up.

[jkgourmet]

Bidding refers to bidding on adwords and similar advertising tools in Bing, Yahoo, etc. You are not allowed to bid on certain words that the merchant uses for advertising themselves - you'd just be running the price of their own ads higher by bidding against them. does that make sense?

If you are not going to do PPC, you can ignore this. But you WILL need to get a clear picture of what is involved before you do PPC.

I do not agree that ALL merchants in CJ or Linkshare turn down applications for new or low traffic sites or affiliates. I've only been turned down by a couple and I've appealed them successfully (still waiting on one). I have no experience with LinkConnector.

[yuri21]

I actually have little idea why people bid on keywords, huh. Oh, I meant that don't you need to be slightly successful in order to join CJ? I've heard of people being rejected or turned down.

[cindybidar]

As far as I know you don't even need a website to join CJ. I joined with only one brand new site with no traffic, and I didn't have any trouble. I have been turned down by some advertisers, but the majority accepted me.

[yuri21]

No website, huh? And you got accepted right away? Hmmm... okay.

[jkgourmet]

I had a domain, but nothing on it. and was accepted by quite a few merchants. I explained a bit about my experience off line on the application, which may have helped, but who knows. . .

[yuri21]

Heh okay. I guess I'll put up some posts then (which I'll alter later on when I've any products to promote) and see.

[cindybidar]

Every merchant has different criteria. Some automatically approve everyone, some (I suspect) automatically reject everyone and force you to appeal. Some decide on your application immediately, probably based on some algorithm that uses metrics from your CJ stats, and some manually approve every application.

The point is, there are hundreds of merchants on CJ, so you're bound to find several in your niche that will approve you. Everyone starts somewhere, right?

[jkgourmet]

Every merchant has different criteria. Some automatically approve everyone, some (I suspect) automatically reject everyone and force you to appeal. Some decide on your application immediately, probably based on some algorithm that uses metrics from your CJ stats, and some manually approve every application.

The point is, there are hundreds of merchants on CJ, so you're bound to find several in your niche that will approve you. Everyone starts somewhere, right?

Quite right! And look for those merchants that do auto-approvals. they are listed or flagged somehow on all the networks I've visited. Those are a great place to start!

[yuri21]

Woohoo, thanks everyone for the advice. I'm sure it will be very valuable for those looking to join affiliate networks too. :P