I had joined Commission Junction about a year ago to market some security products on an information security blog.  However, I kept getting rejected by companies like Symantec for no apparent reason.  This hindered my effort to monetize the blog.  I searched on how to get merchant approvals and for an explanation on how this works on the backend.  It has to be an automated process because the denial is immediate.  Maybe it’s based on pagerank, backlinks, or some algorithm I am not aware of.  Regardless, I found a solution.

Many large and medium companies do not put all their eggs in one basket.  Symantec in particular was part of the LinkShare network as well as Commission Junction.  I decided to give it a try and joined LinkShare, applied to become an affiliate marketer for Symantec, and somehow I was accepted.  What generates a denial for one affiliate network and not the other, I do not know, but it is a work around that has allowed me to monetize the blog as I had intended. 

Go figure.