Like many affiliate marketers, I used to talk about my deep dislike of Commission Junction. The bulky interface and link systems, the approval processes, the bad tracking, and the complete lack of support were all issues with the network. Have those issues gone away? Not really, but I have made peace with CJ and here’s why.
The main reason you have to use CJ is: the offers. They simply have more offers and better advertisers than any other network period.
The sheer volume of advertisers is incredible. You can find an offer to promote for almost any niche you can image. Unlike most smaller affiliate networks you aren’t limited to ringtones, dating, weight loss, etc.
Product offers are large percentage of CJs offers. If you like to target specific product sales in your niches, no one can touch CJs product sales.
The quality of the advertisers are far superior to other networks. Where you have rebranded third party insurance lead resellers on smaller networks, the big boys like Allstate and Esurance go directly to CJ.
So while I still don’t like most of their systems, I feel an affiliate really has no choice but to embrace CJ. What do you guys feel about them?
Offers great. Monthly payouts – no so great.
Commission Junction is one of the first affiliate networks I ever worked with. I’ve consistently made profits with them over the last several years. I still to this day make a couple thousand dollars a month from CJ on auto-pilot (seo driven website).
I personally prefer CJ over Linkshare. I agree that you can’t beat the sheer number of offers CJ has and the quality of them. It’s hard to really compare them to the traditional “CPA” networks in regards to the type of offers.
However, they do seem to have very frequent tracking issues. I also believe there are a lot of anti-spyware programs that block CJ cookies. I also wish they had more lead type offers.
They funny thing is after working with them for over 5 years I’ve never received a phone call or a thank you. I don’t even think you get your own dedicated affiliate manager with CJ?
10k / month for at least 3 months gets you one
Love the advertisers. Love the payouts. Hate the reporting. Hate the support.
I haven’t logged in to my CJ account for 2 years.
Have I been missing out? Hmmm
Your account should be closed due to inactivity. That’s my biggest issue with them – as they close them and you can’t get it reopened if you decided to come back later.
I hate that the tracking isnt real time. The quantity of offers is awesome but having to apply to each offer separately completely sucks. If you come up with a great idea and they have an offer that fits it, you can literally wait months to be approved by some merchants.
The consolidated payment by the network is a lot better then dealing with linkshare.
CJ can actually work into better affiliates’ hands. Their fees are so high for advertisers compared to other networks, that it is much easier if you’re pushing serious volume, to get a white-label or go direct.
I have to say that I much prefer CJ over any other network I have worked. I keep going back to CJ time and time again to find merchants and they always deliver. I just find some of the other networks a bit clunky to use compared to CJ, especially Linkshare. Now that is terrible to work with and Shareasale not much better.
At a recent conference, I had the chance to talk with a couple of CJ people and one of the first questions I asked them was why they had such terrible support. They said that CJ has 60,000 affiliates and it would be hard for them to help everyone. They supposedly have a “Business Development” group that helps affiliates grow their business but it was a dead end for me. I guess you have to reach a certain level for them to give you the time of day. Thanks for posting this.
Nice post. Actually CJ is one of the first network in affiliate marketing but It has some issues. As chad says CJ facing many problems. Personally I have done affiliate marketing with CJ for 2 years. All payments are made but not on time. Reportings are delay. So I left that network. Still one thing which I can say is that CJ has great offers for leads.
Your articles is very good. Thank you for your sharing.
agree with Kitty. you can learn a lot from your post
Thank you for posting such useful post here.
Cj has its reputation till date. However other networks also growing but still CJ is one of the big giant of this field.
For better promotions of our products we need to go with this necessary evil.