Commission Junction is a reputable website for freelance affiliate marketing. Do you want to earn online with Affiliate Marketing with CJ? I know your answer is Yes!
This website is based on the concept of pay for performance. It aids in the formation of an impressive partnership between advertisers and publishers, allowing this network to connect with a large number of consumers on a daily basis.
Commission Junction was founded in 1998 as Commission Junction before being acquired by ValueClick in 2003. In 2014, it was rebranded as CJ Affiliate by Conversant. However, any affiliate marketers I know still refer to them as CJ. At one point, CJ was the best affiliate network in the world.
Commission Junction, one of the largest and most popular affiliate networks online, is now known as CJ Affiliate by Conversant. It’s a great network for affiliate marketing beginners, so here’s a quick guide on how to get set up and started.
CJ Affiliate Requirements
You must be an affiliate publisher if you want to make money with CJ. This means you own a website where you advertise products and direct traffic to offers. You are paid when the traffic converts into leads or Conversions. CJ, on the other hand, has a few requirements before you can join as a publisher.
1. You need to be committed:
Affiliate marketing is not something you can do on the side for monetization and expect to see significant results. Most advertisers do not want to work with publishers who are not truly interested in the business.
2. You need an optimized website:
Traffic is the key to making money with affiliate marketing, and SEO is the key to traffic. Ensure that your SEO is as flawless as possible.
3. You need quality content:
Nowadays, content is the key to SEO, and users adore content. The days of having a simple website with a few affiliate links are long gone. You will not only be penalized in search rankings but you will also be dropped by advertisers who do not want their reputations ruined.
4. You need time:
Affiliate marketing isn’t a nine-to-five job; you’ll typically work long hours doing everything yourself until you’ve made enough money to hire others to do some of the work for you.
5. You need to generate results:
CJ tracks your commissions and keeps a record of your performance. If you do not produce results for six months, they will close your account and charge you $10. Signing up and doing nothing is bad for everyone involved, so they make it bad for you.
If you believe you can meet those qualifications, you can sign up here. Please be assured that this is not a referral link.
6. Building a Site:
The first step is to have a good, high-quality website. This is no easy task, but there are some things you can do to help.
If you intend to make money solely through CJ, you should conduct some research to determine what kinds of offers are available. Within their network, they have a large number of software and cloud service affiliate programs. Resellers on eBay, Dreamhost, Hostgator, and so on are all options.
A review site is typically the best format for a site selling these types of services. However, such review sites abound on the Internet. To be successful, you must first identify a niche within the niche. Perhaps business-specific hosting, or hosting packages designed specifically for game servers. Take your pick.
Once you’ve identified a niche, begin writing general interest articles about it. Be as specific as you want, but don’t hyper-focus your site on a specific niche until you’re confident you can enroll in the right offers.
7. Finding Offers:
You can register for CJ Affiliate once you’ve built a site with a moderate amount of traffic and believe you can send traffic to the right offers – perhaps you’re already using another affiliate program as a test, here.
When you visit the website, you will be able to learn about the various affiliate programs that CJ has to offer. It really doesn’t matter which offers you choose right away; you’ll need to make changes to your site to better fit the offers in order to promote them. It doesn’t matter if you’re stretching the truth to refer users; just get them to pay, and you’re golden.
The tone and focus of your copy must be adjusted here. Select your offers, and then tailor your content to promote them.
SEO becomes more significant because you want to capture guests who are looking for reasons to join the program you are already promoting. They are looking for positive reinforcement, so you must be both reassuring and realistic. It is a rookie mistake to promote a program as if it is without flaws. Be honest about the flaws, but explain why they’ve been mitigated or why they’re the most minor of the numerous programs you’ve tried.
CJ Affiliate, interestingly, offers a performer program. As a publisher, you can strive to be one of the site’s top performers. The better you are, the more likely it is that you will be invited to the CJ. This performance program provides you with priority tech support, advanced analytics, custom reports, and a dedicated sales representative to work with.
Because CJ takes a cut of every commission, they want to promote their top earners. After all, the more money you make, the more money they make. They devote some resources to analyzing your site and strategy, and they take steps to improve it.
To be eligible for the CJ, you must earn at least $10,000 in commissions per month. That is not a low standard! Don’t be concerned if you aren’t there after a year or two of hard work. You must also work with multiple advertisers, which means you must make more than one offer through CJ.
Above all, you must pass a network quality audit. This audit will examine your traffic to ensure that the visitors to your site and the visitors you send to your advertisers are all legitimate, valid users. You cannot deceive them by buying traffic; you must be excellent.
Understandably, this is not a realistic option for many people. You must strike gold with the right niche, which will take time to achieve. Fortunately, if you’re good enough, you can have the same chances as everyone else.
Commission Junction Sign up Process:
Signing up for a Commission Junction account is not a difficult process. Creating an account is a simple and simple process. Go to the homepage and select the ‘Free Publisher Sign Up’ tab. To begin, click the ‘Sign Up’ button today. On the Sign-up form, select your language, currency, and country, then click ‘Next.’ Read and accept the Service Agreement.
In the following step, you must enter your contact information as well as information about your website. After you’ve completed all of this, click the ‘Accept Terms’ button. Your application will be processed, and you will receive an email with information about your Login credentials. Once you’ve obtained the Login information, navigate to the Homepage and then to the Client Login section.
After logging in, you should fill out the tax information. Your account on this website is now fully operational.
What Brands Can You Promote?
In the past, having big brands on their books was always where CJ kicked the competition to the curb. In that regard, this network hasn’t changed a whit.
Here is a brief sampling of the types of companies you can apply to represent through CJ
CJ continues to have the best selection of big brand names on any affiliate network. When it comes to attracting affiliate marketers and other advertisers to this network, names like Zappos, Verizon, Barnes & Noble, and IHG (International Hotel Group) have a lot of clout.
Ease Of Use
Except for a few cosmetic changes here and there, the CJ Affiliate by Conversant dashboard has remained relatively unchanged over the years.
Fortunately, your main “workspace” is uncluttered
It gives you a quick snapshot/review of your account, and I like the layout – there’s a lot of white space, making it easier to read and explore.
The majority of the actual functions you require are nested within a series of dropdown menus:
(a) Account
(b) Advertisers
(c) Links
(d) Widgets
(e) Reports – for stats nerds
(f) Mail – your internal CJ mail
(g) Placements
(h) Insights
Finding Affiliate Programs
Even though this aspect of their interface irritates me at times, the end result is well worth the effort.
To begin, select ‘Advertisers’ from the top menu, and then conduct quick searches for programs using either a keyword or the advertiser’s name. This works well for broad searches, but the reality is that your niche is narrow, and the programs you seek will reflect that.
You can search not only by categories but also by:
(a) Advertiser type
(b) Advertiser status
(c) Serviceable area
(d) Language
(e) Advertiser’s Country
(f) Geographic Source
(g) Currency
Each sub-menu expands down, making it look and feel cluttered. I’m not sure what the solution is, but there has to be a better way because this is where UX will die.
Having said that, you can save your searches… which is fortunate given the sheer number of parameters at your disposal. But now we get to the good stuff: filtering advertisers based on their profit potential. CJ really sparkles here.
Assume you want to find affiliate programs for your financial services blog
Finding programs is simple when you search by category, but you’ll obviously want to find programs that pay well and have metrics to back it up, such as their EPC.
Every single program on CJ can be filtered by:
(a) 7 day EPC
(b) 3 month EPC
(c) Network Earnings
A trick here is to filter by ‘Network Earnings – high to low,’ because brands with a high score here also have relatively high EPCs and pay well.
When you sort by EPC, you get a lot of brand new and untested affiliate programs at the top. Following that, each program is listed by its actual 7 or 90-day EPC. As a result, it appears and feels clumsy to use. But I forgive them because CJ makes it so simple to find profitable programs.
That is precisely what every affiliate network should strive for. Most CJ programs, in general, have a high barrier to entry. Before being approved, you must generate sales on the network, but you cannot generate sales unless you have been accepted into at least one program.
When it comes to new affiliates, far too many CJ merchants have this chicken-and-egg mentality.
Creating Affiliate Links:
There was a time when creating affiliate links on CJ was a simple process. It worked, but it wasn’t particularly noteworthy. However, times have changed. The standard method of creating links has remained largely unchanged – you click on Links and then Search.
Then, select your advertiser and go over the creatives on offer. This layout is a complete mess, owing to their emphasis on mobile-optimized offers, which pushes the types of links you can create down off the main menu. Pepperjam’s tabbed layout is far superior to this. To compensate for this shortcoming, CJ provides two useful additional link creation tools.
The expected bookmarklet for your browser is the Deep-link generator, which allows you to create a link to a specific page of a joined affiliate program.
However, you also get the Page-based Link tool. You install a single JavaScript link onto your site, and then every link you generate can be just a plain old URL with no affiliate sticky-on bits. And you continue to be credited for all sales. However, it does not end there.
Product widgets can also be created for your website:
Essentially, this allows you to make a slideshow, collage, or grid of products from any affiliate program you’ve joined:
And because the entire process is drag-and-drop, even a complete novice can create product tables.
We’re not sure why they’re called widgets, but the important thing is that they work. Finally, we should mention Placements, which are opportunities for advertisers to buy advertising space on your website: Although their affiliate link creation systems aren’t perfect, CJ is still far ahead of the competition in terms of innovation.
Getting Paid:
It is now time to go over when affiliates are paid, how you are paid, and how much you must earn before being paid.
Payment Timeframe:
Affiliate commissions are paid on a net 30 basis, which means you’ll get paid for your referrals roughly 30 days after the purchase.
Payments for locked commissions earned are scheduled for the 20th of each month, and you must then wait for your check or direct deposit to arrive. This usually takes no longer than 7 days.
Payment Methods:
You have the option of receiving payment by check or direct deposit:
You can, however, be paid into a Payoneer account via CJ International Payments. The only thing missing is a PayPal option, but not every affiliate requires or desires one these days.
Payment Threshold:
Affiliates must earn at least $50 in commissions before they can be paid.
Publisher Help:
Ideally, you should never need to contact your affiliate network for assistance, but this is not always the case.
So, what kind of assistance does CJ provide?
The Support Centre, which is essentially their knowledge base, is their default option. The majority of affiliates will find an answer here:
It’s also extremely well-designed, and the search function returns very accurate results. However, if you require human customer service, you can reach them via the Contact Support menu option. And from there, you can use their contact form or web chat support for your affiliate marketing question:
However, if you want to hear a human voice, there is no easily accessible phone number… However, a quick Google search will reveal it. Overall, CJ’s customer service options are adequate but not exceptional.
Pros:
CJ Affiliate by Conversant possesses various advantages:
1. The advertisers and merchants on this website sell products and services that belong to famous brands, which in turn, ensure good quality of the services and products. This makes the website extremely trustworthy.
2. One of the best features is that the payment is done by the website and not by the merchants.
3. The tracking system is simply awesome because it provides the option of encrypting links.
4. The application of the publisher gets approved immediately without any delay.
5. Another amazing advantage is that you can also transfer your account to someone else easily without any hassles.
Cons:
1. Even though this website gives you the option of choosing from various merchants, not all of them will approve you as an affiliate. For this, you need to give an application to each merchant individually.
2. The products and services offered on this website are of high quality because they belong to famous brands. This results in a low payout for affiliates because the profit margin is very low for merchants.
3. Customer Care support is available only through e-mail, which is not beneficial in cases when you need support urgently.
Comparison with other Affiliate Networks
Various alternative websites are present online which offer freelance affiliate marketing. Getting used to Commission Junction is a bit more difficult as compared to ClickBank.
Commission Junction is better than ShareASale because it offers products belonging to famous brands unlike Share A Sale, which offers products belonging to small brands.
The commission rate on CJ is much less as compared to the commission rate on ClickBank. The quality of the products and services offered on CJ is much improved than its competitor websites.
The top-notch publishers around the world prefer Commission junction to promote their products because of its popularity and authenticity. If making money by blogging or expanding your affiliate business is your major aim, Commission junction is definitely the best option for you.
