What Are The Requirements To Become An Affiliate Marketer?

Quick Answer: Some specific affiliate programs may have age limits or country restrictions but in general, affiliate marketing as a whole has no minimum requirements meaning that anybody can do it. Qualified or unqualified, we’ll teach you how to become an affiliate marketer.

Can anybody do affiliate marketing? Or are there some minimum requirements to become an affiliate marketer?

Those are 2 questions we frequently get asked here at Commission Academy & so we decided to take the time out to publish a blog post answering them once & for all.

In this blog post, we’ll walk you through exactly what’s required to become an affiliate marketer & we’ll also list some of the most common minimum requirements imposed by affiliate programs.

So if you’ve been thinking about becoming an affiliate marketer but are worried that you may have what it takes, be sure to keep on reading because this is the exact post you need to read.

Minimum Requirements To Become an Affiliate

Despite what you may have been told or led to believe, there are absolutely no minimum requirements to become an affiliate marketer.

• You don’t need any qualifications.
• You don’t need to understand coding or web design.
• You don’t need any money.
• You don’t need to be a certain age.
• You don’t need to live in a certain country.
• You don’t need to have a following.

Anybody can truly do affiliate marketing.

It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, how old you are, how much money you have in the bank or whether you achieved good grades at school, you can do affiliate marketing & you can still stand the same chance of seeing massive success.

In fact, I would argue that the less you have, the higher your chances of success.

Why?

Because chances are, if you have nothing, you will be even more hungry to achieve success.

But there is one important thing I need to point out here & that is the fact that I am referring to affiliate marketing as a whole when I say that there are no minimum requirements to become an affiliate.

Some individual affiliate programs, however, do impose certain restrictions & requirements.

The good news is that regardless of where you are in the world or what your personal situation looks like, there will still always be affiliate programs that you can get approved for, even if you don’t meet the requirements of some.

But what types of requirements do affiliate programs often impose & why do they impose them? Let’s take a look.

Affiliate Program Requirements

As mentioned above, whilst affiliate marketing as a whole does not have any entry requirements, some individual affiliate programs do impose certain requirements.

But what requirements do, or might they impose?

1. Minimum Age Limit

There are many affiliate programs that impose a minimum age limit but often this is not by choice, it’s simply because it’s also imposed by their payment processors. For example, if an affiliate program only offers PayPal payments & PayPal is only available to those aged 18 or over, it doesn’t make sense for the affiliate program to let anybody younger than 18 into their program.

Similarly, if the affiliate program is related to products or services that are age-restricted then they will potentially have to follow the age restrictions of the products.

2. Country Restrictions

Country restrictions is another big one. There are many affiliate programs that restrict affiliates by country (to the frustration of those living in those countries) but again, this is often not by choice.

For example, Nigeria is a country that is commonly blocked from affiliate programs because the statistically high fraud rates in Nigeria make it nearly impossible for many affiliate programs to deal with Nigerians.

Of course, there are many Nigerians who are completely honest & would never even think of committing fraud, but sadly it is a case, in this instance, of the many ruining it for the few.

The good news, however, is that there is a potential means of getting around this block & that is by using a VPN.

A VPN can make it seem as if you are located in another country by masking your IP address & thus, you could use it to join an affiliate program. Do be aware, though, that if you use this method you will also need to make sure that will be able to receive payments… And if caught, your affiliate account could be terminated.

Do we recommend using a VPN? No – but we do want to let you know that it’s possible.

3. Traffic Requirements

Traffic refers to the number of clicks you can send to an affiliate program & there are many affiliate programs (especially the more popular ones) that have certain traffic or even sale requirements.

So, essentially, this means that you will need to be able to prove that you can send a certain number of visitors through to the links each month or generate a certain number of sales.

But why would an affiliate program require this?

Well, it’s essentially just a case of “if you’re not generating sales, what’s the point of your account taking up space?“.

And to be honest, you shouldn’t even really be signing up unless you’ve got traffic anyway because if you do, you’re only wasting your own time as well. Your time at that stage would be better spent focused on generating traffic as opposed to looking for (and applying to) affiliate programs.

But I get it, I get it… As a new affiliate, you’re eager… You want to see that it works & you want to get that first commission ASAP. Thankfully, the majority of affiliate programs don’t impose any traffic requirements.

4. Quality Requirements

Would you turn up to a job interview in just your underpants? I’d like to think not…

Well, applying to an affiliate program with an unfinished website or a finished website with really low-quality, spammy content is essentially just like turning up to a job interview in your underpants.

Do that, and you’ve got a high chance of getting rejected.

And I think this is a pretty darn reasonable one. You see, as an affiliate, you’re essentially going to be representing that company’s brand & they just want some reassurance that you’re going to do it well.

They don’t want some hungry-for-money fool that’s just going to spam their links all over social media.

They want somebody who’s focused on a long-term vision of building a reputable, high-quality brand that will send targeted customers to the affiliate program.

So always, always, always make sure that you focus on building your website prior to applying to affiliate programs. That way you’ll save yourself the annoyance (and embarrassment) of being rejected.

What If You’re Rejected By An Affiliate Program?

The reality is, at some point through your affiliate marketing career you will be rejected by an affiliate program.

Heck, even after being full-time affiliates for over 10 years, myself & Simon still get rejected from affiliate programs from time to time. It just happens.

But if you are rejected, what should you do?

Well, the first thing you should do is try to figure out WHY you were rejected.

Was it because you hadn’t established your website enough before applying? Was it because you didn’t have the correct affiliate disclosures in place?

Reach out & ask them, if they didn’t state the reason behind their rejection.

The good news is that affiliate program rejections aren’t final, meaning that once you’ve remedied the issue you can simply apply again & hopefully, this time around, get approved.

So if the reason was that your website wasn’t established enough, establish your website first then reapply.

If the reason was that your traffic wasn’t high enough, reapply later when you have more traffic.

Whatever it is, make the necessary changes then simply reapply.

Sometimes, however, you’ll find that the affiliate program managers are simply just incompetent & that they reject you simply because they do not understand your business model or your means of promotion.

In those instances, there’s not much you can do other than wait it out, hope that they get a new program manager & look for other affiliate programs in the meantime.

But ultimately, just know that getting rejected from an affiliate program isn’t the end of the world.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs you could join and we’ve listed hundreds of them here at Commission Academy.

Some examples include:

• 22 Best Web Hosting Affiliate Programs
• 20 Best Bodybuilding Affiliate Programs
• 13 Best Woodworking Affiliate Programs
• 16 Best Retirement Affiliate Programs
• 10 Best Alternative Medicine Affiliate Programs

So if you’re rejected, stay calm – it doesn’t mean “you’re doomed”.

You can still go on to make lots of money as an affiliate.

Wrapping Up

If you’ve been nervous about getting started with affiliate marketing because you’ve been worried that you may not have what it takes, I hope this post has eased your mind.

You don’t require anything to become an affiliate marketing & our free step-by-step affiliate marketing course explains how you can get started, even if you’re just a beginner.

And as we mentioned at the beginning of the post, you don’t need any technical know-how whatsoever.

Young or old, smart or stupid, you can do affiliate marketing… And our free course will show you how.

So if you’ve been (or still are) on the fence, take the plunge. And of course, if you do still happen to have any additional questions or comments, don’t hesitate to leave them below.

We always love hearing from our readers. 🙂