I had an e-mail from Steve the other day. He like many others wanting to get a start into affiliate marketing was wondering how you got your site approved for a merchant without actually having a merchant to build site content around. Here’s his question: -

Hi Kirsty.

Ah, yes! The age old internet marketing conundrum. How does one create a website without anything to put on it?

Well, I guess you have to make your own egg and take it from there, lol. Being serious, you really do just have to get into things and make your first site about the niche you think is going to help you earn your first affiliate commission.

I know it’s difficult to create a site without merchants whose products you will promote. However, I’m usually inclined just to pick out the merchants I will be hoping to promote and then proceed as if they had already accepted me. OK, in some networks that means you cant get creatives, but there’s nothing to stop you copying a merchant’s banner image without affiliate code behind it just so you can demonstrate to the merchant how their brand will be featured on their site.

Honestly, 4.5 out of 5 merchants would accept your site if you’d done a tidy job putting it all together and weren’t doing anything naughty on the site, like putting their name beside pictures of nude women.

One alternative to building a whole site that often works for me is to create one mock-up landing page showing the site look and feel, and demonstrating its basic structure and content. That way, the affiliate manager should be able to make a judgement about the suitability of your site.

Merchants really want to accept as many affiliates as possible and take advantage of the exposure they can bring. Putting in an application to a merchant for the first time can be a bit daunting, but it really doesn’t have to be. Even if you get declined, most merchants will be happy to tell you why and what they need you to do to bring the site up to speed. I’ve reviewed many affiliate sites during my time as an affiliate programme manager, and I declined very few for the reasons I’ve talked about above.

Seriously, just jump on in and get cracking on the site front. Once you have some form of site the next one will be 1000% easier to get up and running. If you want an opinion on a site, please do feel free to ask me to look at it. I’ll give you my opinion on how merchants would view it.

Hope this helps you along a bit, and don’t forget to link to your favourite blog when you get your first site finished! I’ll give your first site a link from the post too and get the spidering of your site kicked off.