Being rejected by merchants to run campaigns on my website

[DebRobinson]

Hi

I was just wondering if there is any way I can find out why I have been rejected by some merchants to run their campaigns on my website.

This happens most often with the financial products such as credit cards, loans, etc from the big banks and financial institutions and I find it really frustrating because most of the women who come to my website are high salary earners (business owners, senior executives, etc) and these campaigns could do well on my website. I have been approved to run the lower end financial products but my readership isn't interested in debit cards or lower end credit cards at all!

To be fair, this problem is not unique to Commission Monster. I have found all the other affiliate programs view my website the same way and I don't understand why. My site is a very reputable site with ethics and integrity - the site was good enough to be included in the databases of the National Library of Australia (less than 1% of websites are listed) and to be linked to from the Telstra Business Womens Awards website - but the site isn't good enough for the financial institutions.

Deb
www.australianwomenonline.com

[HarveyJ]

I'd say the simplest way to do it is to ask your manager to pass the question up the line to find out for you.
If they can't, you can call the company direct, ask to speak to whoever is in charge of their online marketing so you can attempt to gear your site more towards their target demographic.

Considering you run a site for women in an affluent country with an over arching consumerism=love mentality (Yay Australia!), I'm amazed that credit card companies are trying to shiv each other to get onto your site.

[DebRobinson]

Originally Posted by HarveyJ

I'd say the simplest way to do it is to ask your manager to pass the question up the line to find out for you.
If they can't, you can call the company direct, ask to speak to whoever is in charge of their online marketing so you can attempt to gear your site more towards their target demographic.

Considering you run a site for women in an affluent country with an over arching consumerism=love mentality (Yay Australia!), I'm amazed that credit card companies are trying to shiv each other to get onto your site.

Thanks for the response Harvey.

I am hoping one of the guys from CM could explain to me what these type of merchants are generally looking for when they choose affiliates because as you pointed out, it makes no sense why they are not taking advantage of a website like mine to increase sales of these type of products.

[DebRobinson]

I just want to let you know that I did receive an answer from Tom at dgm who explained the situation to me. The information was sent to me by Tom in response to an email I sent to him at dgm so I'm not going to publish what he said here.

I'll just say that the affiliate marketing programs are aware of the situation and are trying to address it, but it's difficult to change the attitude of some of the merchants and as we all know, at the end of the day it is the merchant who have the final say.

[jhayward]

Great Question Deb - I have always wondered the same thing what does it take to promote the products. I have been wanting to build something for littlenomads.com.au for some time but find it very difficult to get approval..odd!

[newbie]

Originally Posted by jhayward

Great Question Deb - I have always wondered the same thing what does it take to promote the products. I have been wanting to build something for littlenomads.com.au for some time but find it very difficult to get approval..odd!

j,

You may be shooting yourself in the foot with the redirect from .com.au to .com

Smarter people than me probably have another opinion but I see it like this.

You should have littlenomads.com.au with Australian Content and littlenomads.com with US content and run them as separate websites.

The reasoning is that GGL will automatically target the .com.au as Australian regardless of where it is hosted.

I do not think search engines like multiple sites carrying the same content.

[jhayward]

Thanks Newbie good advice and its the dream to do this eventually be able to host different content on each domain. Any ideas on how to do?

[newbie]

Originally Posted by jhayward

Thanks Newbie good advice and its the dream to do this eventually be able to host different content on each domain. Any ideas on how to do?

J,

Sorry - I do not understand the question, unless the answer is as simple as using a separate domain for each country's content.

[mynethost]

J

Most hosting companies will allow you to host more than one domain per account these days, if you are on a cPanel server it is extremely easy to have different content on each domain.

Check with your hosting company there is no point in me explaining it if you aren't on a cPanel server.

More than likely they all work much the same, you just have an addon domain and the content of this domain is kept in a folder much the same as a subdomains content is.

Hope this helps.

Jamie.