This is a very common thread topic at Digital Point. It happens quite often and can be concerning and frustrating, but I do have a tip for everyone. I too get these, and get them often. People at Digital Point will almost automatically ask where you are from. It appears that immediate declines are indicative of filter rules that are in place at CJ. These rules could be the number of earning bars within your account or the location you listed with your account. Manual approvals take longer, and can often lead to declines as well. Since it’s a manual decline, it means that someone physically looked at your request and possibly visited a site or looked closely to your account.

Earlier this year, I received a notification that I was being dropped from a program. I replied to that email and asked the affiliate manager the reason why I was being dropped. He emailed back stating that they drop inactive publishers on occasion, and I was the only one to write back. Because of this, he said he would reactivate my account. This got me thinking. I started to see the position of the merchant. They probably receive thousands of publisher requests, and only a handful probably do any work for them. Could this be part of the ‘test’ when dealing with manual approvals? I thought I would give it a try. So this year, I was declined by a few merchants that I really wanted to promote. Instead of giving up and complaining on a forum, I thought I would pursue it a bit more. Each one of these I replied back to the affiliate manager with a nice email. Basically, I would thank them for considering my application and requested that they give me another look. I also explain how I was planning to promote their products and what sites I would promote them on. I wanted to give them a ‘action plan’ to show that I would be a proactive publisher. Sure enough, within a day or two, I would get a request to join the program.

The bottom line, if you’re really interested in the product or merchant, don’t give up and seek opportunities for acceptance. Remember, they want affiliates to promote their products or services, but they don’t want deadbeats. So if you get accepted, start promoting them!

I hope this helps with your CJ success.