I Got Rejected by ConvertKit and MailerLite Is Taking Forever. Here’s What I Learned.

I applied to ConvertKit’s affiliate program and got rejected. No long explanation, no feedback, just a flat no sitting in my inbox.

And honestly it stung more than I expected, because ConvertKit is one of those tools you see recommended everywhere in the affiliate marketing space. You see it enough times that you start assuming approval is just a formality, like filling in a form and waiting a day or two before the green light shows up.

Turns out that’s not how it works, at least not if your site is still newer and hasn’t built up much of a track record yet. I’d read a few blog posts before applying that made it sound almost casual, apply, get approved, start earning.

Nobody really talks about the version where you get quietly turned away with no real explanation. So when it happened to me I spent a good ten minutes wondering if I’d done something wrong on the application itself, like maybe I’d filled in the wrong URL or forgotten to tick a box. I hadn’t. It just wasn’t the right fit yet, and I had to sit with that for a bit before it actually made sense.

Looking back on it now, the rejection is easier to understand. ConvertKit’s affiliate program pays 30% recurring commission, which is genuinely strong money per referral when you think about it over a full year of someone staying subscribed. That kind of payout attracts a huge number of applicants, and when a program is that generous they can afford to be picky about who gets in.

From what I can tell, what they’re really looking for is someone with an existing audience, meaningful traffic numbers, and some kind of track record showing they can actually drive signups, not just someone who thinks the tool looks good and wants to write about it. A newer site with a handful of posts and modest traffic just isn’t going to tick those boxes, no matter how good the content is or how honest the intent behind it happens to be.

That’s the part I had to keep reminding myself. It’s not a personal rejection. Nobody at ConvertKit looked at my writing and decided it wasn’t good enough. It’s a numbers game on their end, plain and simple, and my numbers weren’t there yet.

If you’re trying to get a proper handle on the wider affiliate landscape before you start applying to programs like this yourself, my post on affiliate marketing in Australia for beginners walks through the full picture of which networks and programs are actually worth your time when you’re starting from zero.

So after the ConvertKit rejection I applied to MailerLite instead, thinking it might be a slightly softer entry point given it’s generally positioned as the more accessible option for smaller creators. That was over 48 hours ago now and I’ve heard nothing. Still sitting there as pending.

Which is its own particular flavour of frustrating, because the whole reason I switched over to MailerLite in the first place was to get some kind of forward motion after the ConvertKit knockback. Instead I’m just watching a different loading screen. Two days of silence starts to feel like a slow rejection even when, realistically, it’s probably nothing more than a busy queue on their end.

Here’s what I think is actually going on with both of these platforms, once I stepped back and looked at the pattern rather than just my own situation. Email marketing platforms as a category tend to be more cautious about who they let into their affiliate programs, and I think it comes down to cost per acquisition. Getting someone to actually sign up for a paid email tool and stick around long enough to be profitable is expensive and slow, so these companies want affiliates who can genuinely convert an audience, not just people who scatter links around without much thought behind them.

Compare that to something like a WordPress plugin, which is often a one-time purchase or a modest annual fee. The bar for approval tends to be lower because the financial risk to the company is lower too. An email platform is a recurring subscription, and they clearly care a lot more about the quality of the people promoting it.

According to MailerLite’s own data, email marketing delivers one of the highest returns of any digital channel, and once you see a stat like that it makes complete sense why they’d be selective about who gets to represent them out in the wild.

The hope with MailerLite is still very much alive though, and I want to be clear about that because it’s easy to spiral into thinking every wait is secretly a no. 48 hours is not a rejection, it’s just 48 hours.

From what I’ve read, their approval process is manual, meaning an actual person is looking at these applications rather than some automated system spitting out instant decisions, and some applications genuinely sit in that queue for three to five business days before anyone gets back to them. I’ve seen other people online mention getting approved after waiting closer to a week, so the timeline isn’t unusual, it just feels longer than it is when you’re the one waiting and refreshing your inbox more often than you’d like to admit.

From what I can gather, the things that tend to help your case are having a clear niche rather than a scattered one, a real website that actually looks legitimate and cared for, and content that shows you’re writing for an actual audience with actual problems, rather than just collecting affiliate links and hoping something sticks.

If MailerLite does eventually come back with a no as well, I’ve made peace with what the honest answer probably is. The site just needs a few more months of consistent content and a bit more traffic before email platform programs start saying yes to it.

That’s not a dead end, even though it can feel like one in the moment. It’s a timeline, and timelines move whether you’re impatient about them or not. I think the mistake a lot of people make, myself included at times, is treating a rejection like it’s a verdict on the whole project rather than just a snapshot of where things happen to be right now.

In the meantime, there are plenty of programs out there with genuinely solid commissions that don’t require a big audience or a long track record to get approved, and I think it’s worth leaning into those while the bigger email platforms catch up to where the site is heading. Rank Math, WP Rocket, Hostinger, and WordPress.com are all live and tracking for me right now.

Those four alone cover hosting, site speed, SEO and a whole network of other advertisers through the Awin platform, which honestly is a broader spread than it might sound like at first glance. That’s more than enough to build a real, if modest, income from while the site keeps growing into the kind of platform that email marketing programs actually want to partner with down the track.

What I’ve noticed writing about all of this is that the affiliate marketing world doesn’t really talk much about the waiting and the rejections. Everyone loves to share their approval emails and their first commission screenshots, and fair enough, those are the fun parts.

But nobody really posts about the part where you sit refreshing an inbox for two days straight, or the part where you read a flat rejection with no explanation and have to just sort of shrug and move on to the next application. I think that gap in the conversation makes it feel worse than it actually is when it happens to you, because you start to assume everyone else is sailing through approvals while you’re the only one hitting walls.

From what I’ve since learned, that’s just not true. Most people who’ve been doing this for a while have a folder somewhere of programs that said no, programs that went quiet, and programs that took three weeks longer than expected before anything happened.

There’s also something worth saying about how these rejections and delays actually shape the way you approach the rest of your affiliate strategy, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. Getting turned down by ConvertKit pushed me to actually think harder about what my site needs before I go knocking on more selective doors.

It’s easy to apply to programs almost reflexively because you’ve seen other bloggers mention them, without stopping to ask whether your site is actually a good fit for that program yet. The rejection forced that question on me instead of letting me avoid it.

Same with the MailerLite wait. Instead of just sitting there refreshing my inbox, I’ve used the time to keep writing, keep publishing, and keep improving the site in ways that will matter regardless of whether MailerLite says yes or no.

If there’s a practical takeaway in all this, it’s probably that the order you apply to programs in matters more than people let on. Going for the highly selective, high commission programs first, before your site has any real traction, sets you up for a string of rejections that can knock the wind out of you if you’re not expecting them.

Starting with programs that are more open to newer sites, building some momentum and some case studies of your own success with those, and then working your way up to the more selective platforms tends to be a steadier path. It’s less exciting in the short term, but it means the rejections, when they do come, feel like a normal part of the climb rather than proof that you’re doing something wrong.

The rejection from ConvertKit and the ongoing wait from MailerLite are both annoying in their own particular ways. One stings because it’s final and unexplained, the other drags because it’s uncertain and open ended.

But they’re also just part of the process, and I’m trying to treat them that way rather than as some kind of setback that needs fixing. Every affiliate marketer worth listening to has a list of programs that said no before they eventually said yes, and I’d rather build that list honestly than pretend every application sails through on the first try.

Dewi