The waiting game

You know the most annoying thing about working in affiliate marketing? Getting all excited about promoting a certain merchant, planning your strategy and then applying for the program....then nothing....weeks pass...then months...then years...


If you're employed as an affiliate manager, surely it's your job to manage affiliates - that means if someone wants to be your affiliate by applying to your program, you really should let them know one way or the other whether you would like to work with them. You should also let them know really within 5 working days - that's more than a reasonable amount of time to look at a website and press 'accept'.

Recently a network (naming no names here, but lets just say the second part of their name is a measurement of vodka, which I certainly need most of time when attempting to work with them) took over 3 months, yes that's right, OVER 3 months to accept me on to their program. By that time, well, I'd lost interest and couldn't be bothered. But hey Mr Network and merchant, you might have lost out on loads of commission there, but now one of your competitors had got it instead. Unlucky!

Well I was shocked anyway that is took so long, until I spoke to other affiliates who said "that's nothing" and "everyone has had one of those merchants". It's disappointing to hear that it's seems to be standard practice to make affiliates, who could make you lots of sales/money/profit, wait forever in a day to add your links to their site.

I accept that affiliate marketing is not a top priority for all companies who have affiliate programs and that many of these affiliate programs do not have dedicated affiliate managers, but surely the networks should have a handle on this too? Why are they not hassling these merchants or even helping them? What's the bloody point of having an affiliate program if you're not going to pull your finger out and do anything?

Anyway now I have finished ranting, I want to know the longest you have had to wait to be accepted/approved to run a program - the winner will receive kudos and a plastic trophy, if I can find one (I know us bitches are generous huh?).