Managing who is allowed to promote your product is a critical part of running a healthy affiliate program. By default, you can choose to auto-approve everyone, or manually review each application.
Manual Review Process
If you have manual approval enabled:
- When a user applies through your Affiliate Portal, their status is set to
Pending. - They will see a message in their portal stating their application is under review.
- Go to Affiliates > Pending in your dashboard.
- Review their application.
What to look for when reviewing:
- Website / Social Media: Did they provide a valid URL? Does their audience align with your product?
- Promotion Methods: Did they explain how they intend to promote your product? Beware of affiliates who say they will use "Google Search Ads" if you forbid bidding on your brand keywords.
Approving vs Rejecting
- Approve: The affiliate is moved to
Active. They immediately gain access to their tracking links and dashboard. - Reject: The affiliate is moved to
Rejected. They cannot access the portal or generate links. You can optionally provide a reason for rejection (e.g., "Your audience does not match our target demographic").
[!TIP] If you reject an affiliate by mistake, you can always find them in the 'Rejected' tab and manually change their status to 'Active'.