Not having a Commission Junction review on this blog is unacceptable, considering that Commission Junction (or just CJ) is one of the oldest, largest affiliate networks out there today. According to Wikipedia:
Commission Junction is an online advertising company owned by ValueClick and operating in the affiliate marketing industry. The company is the largest affiliate network in North America and operates worldwide. Among the top 500 retailers using 3rd party affiliate marketing software, 62% are powered by Commission Junction.
I’ve been an affiliate with CJ since 2001, and have been witness to their tremendous growth in the affiliate marketing industry. Since then I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs with them, the lowest point was when my account was suddenly terminated in 2001/02 and my affiliate commissions disappeared.
I hope this Commission Junction review will shed some light on how CJ works, and what to expect as a CJ affiliate.
Commission Junction Review – Advantages
If you’re just getting started out with affiliate marketing, then Commission Junction would be a logical place to go to. Signing up as a publisher is free and instant, without any manual approvals. Here are some reasons why you may want to try CJ:
- Wide Selection of Offers – Besides having tons of merchants, CJ also offers different type of offers. Besides the typical Pay-Per-Sale deal, you can also find Pay-Per-Lead or Pay-Per-Call offers.
- Established Merchants – Most of the merchants in CJ tend to be of the more established, Fortune-500 type of companies. For affiliates, this means that.
Transparent Performance Stats – CJ’s little green bar and 3 Month / 7 Day EPC (Earnings Per 1,000 Clicks) tells you exactly how individual merchants are doing within the CJ network. This is really useful as we only want to promote merchants who are doing justice to their affiliates.- Tons of Affiliate Banners – Every merchant has tons of banners and marketing material, hosted by CJ. Each banner also displays the same.
- Individual Product Links – You can also link directly to individual products, although this is not true for all merchants. Linking directly to a product, as you may know, is the most effective way to make affiliate sales. performance stats so you can choose to use only the banners that are doing well.
- Centralized Affiliate Payments – All commissions are paid by CJ themselves, not the individual merchants. This means that your paychecks are predictable and secured.
Commission Junction Review – Disadvantages
Although CJ is a great affiliate network, it certainly has its share of disadvantages. Here are some of the most obvious ones:
- Advertiser Application Process – Unlike ClickBank where you’re free to promote any affiliate program you want, in CJ you have to manually apply to individual merchants and agree to individual terms of service.
- Temporary Advertiser Deactivation – Because of the billing process between CJ and its merchants, you constantly get “Advertiser Deactivated” notifications. It’s pretty annoying to know that once the advertiser has been temporarily deactivated, you no longer receive commissions for that merchant.
- Lack of Standardization – Each merchant has their own terms of service (TOS) and refund terms, which means that all your commissions are handled differently. What is ok with one merchant may not sit well with another, for example buying a product with your own affiliate link and using trademarks in your marketing. Keeping track of all these changing terms is a real headache.
- Old-School Conversion Tracking – CJ’s stats and reporting features are outdated to say the least. Their affiliate really deserve more conversion data than just commission date and TID tracking. Although they do provide an API for third-party reporting integration, it would be great if they can provide more details to the affiliates directly.
- Link Encryption and Protection – CJ offers the option to complete encrypt your link so that your affiliate ID is hidden and hijacking is impossible.
- No PayPal Payment Option – I don’t know about you, but I prefer to get my affiliate commissions directly in my PayPal account. Checks are so tedious to deal with and mess up your cash flow. Although CJ does offer an ACH (bank transfer) option, this is only for affiliates from a few countries.
- Reputation for Closing Accounts – CJ has a reputation for closing “inactive” affiliate accounts. In fact my account was closed a few years back even though I was making regular commissions from CJ, and they never responded to my emails as to why my account was closed.
Commission Junction Review – Negative Press
Here’s some not-so-flattering (sometimes downright scathing) reviews of Commission Junction. I believe most are exaggerated, though there may be some underlying truth. Also, some review are much older and may no longer be applicable.
- Commission Junction is a Joke and a Scam – A pissed off forum user complaining that he “only accumulated $38.70 from 8,000,000 page impressions and 8000+ clicks”. Several other forum member relate similar experiences.
- Commission Junction Deletes Accounts And Steals Commissions – An unofficial report about CJ closing accounts and vaporizing affiliate commissions. No official rebuttals to this report.
Although I personally don’t believe that CJ has any malicious intent towards affiliates, it does seem that their arbitrary actions and lack of communication has pissed off a lot of affiliates in the past. A pissed off affiliate tends to tell whoever will listen about CJ’s faults.
I think they need to either rebrand themselves with another name, or hire a really good PR firm to clear up their increasingly bad reputation.
I hope you enjoyed this Commission Junction review, feel free share it using the links below.
49 Responses
I agree CJ don’t have any malicious intent for their affiliates. I’ve been with them since 2007 and they were the first few affiliate networks that I join when I was startting out. Just wish they have a Paypal payment option.
Commission Junction IS a scam, or at the very least, an unethical business
We had about $30 in commissions stolen from us by Commission Junction. Not a lot of money, sure, but if they do that to thousands of people, it adds up! What happened was that unknown to us, they marked our account as “dormant”, saying that we had not had a sale in 6 months. Maybe that is true, but they never notified us that our account had gone “dormant”, and without any notification whatsoever, starting deducting $10 per month for some type of fee until all of the money was gone, then deactivated our account, again without any notification to us. In the meantime, we continued to promote their links, and made at least 2 commissionable sales, which we were not credited for. Probably CJ got the commissions from the client and just kept them for themselves, since the sales were made through an affiliate link.
Bottom line is, do not trust Commission Junction – it is little more than a scam and a huge waste of your time and effort.
Sorry to hear that, did you try contacting them?
I joined CJ a 3 yrs ago. in the last 3 months i mad 136 euro commission .the 20 agust payment day they canceled my account
The same happened to me too $163 is the commission which is canceled and put improper links auto-response which is not related to any of the questions asked…
yes dear same here .i earn 110$ he mail me and cancel my account because your account show 3 website but i don’t attached any website so i not open your account.
From a publisher’s perspective, CJ.com is supposed to mediate whenever a publisher complains of a commission not received from advertiser. CJ.com instead of taking any active interest will direct publishers to send an email through their platform to advertiser and seem to show that they are not aware of the interactions through emails between a publisher and advertiser. There main advertiser GoDaddy runs an affiliate campaign here which is a big cheater. As a web developer too often I had bought domains and hostings through GoDaddy affiliate links and out of approx ten times I had to recover payment only after citing details that an order was placed by my known client through the affiliate link using so and so payment method, invoice ids… Although my account was active for the last 3 years during which I did receive payments three times but I was aware that it is run as a proprietary business with a risk that at any time the relationship can sour and they can forfeit my balance. Which is what happened today as I write. After complaining GoDaddy and CJ.com for non-receipt of a sale (I know because the client made the purchase through his laptop in front of me clicking the affiliate link of mine), they decided to disable my support menu and as I click Support, redirected to login once again. Also, the accumulated balance on the top which was till yesterday $15 is now $0.
The bigger culprits are advertisers who choose to partner with this cheat company after so many complaints all over the web about cj.com.
I’m surprised this is still an issue, the article is from 2011 🙂
Commission Junction is a Scam!
Exactly the samething happened to me. They incrementally depleted my affiliate earnings till there was nothing left. Except I had about hundred in affilate earnings. I have promoted all kinds of affiliate networks in all kind of niches, and I mean all Kinds (Adult, Casino and many more). Nobody does what they do, and I mean no one does that. Not even the most eye brow raising Niche Affilate networks would bother doing that! Especially a company that size with tens of thousands of affiliates imagine if they did that to just 5000 affilates that is some half a million dollars of cash that they ripped off! Also there is no communication from them whatsoever in my case. They just chose not to answer about anything. Their support is lousy, an outfit their size could easily afford real phone support. They commssion junction have a kind of a lame ticket system which they answer whenever they kind of, sort of feel like.
In other words they are complete crooks.
If you are looking for a half decent affilate network try linkshare.com. Checks are on time, perfect phone support.
Man, thanks for the heads up! I was literally getting ready sign up before I read this.
“They never notified us that our account had gone “dormant”, and without any notification whatsoever, starting deducting $10 per month for some type of fee until all of the money was gone”
The same thing happened to us. Highly unscrupulous business practices. Would strongly recommend not wasting your time with CJ.
We are currently in dispute with them as they marked us dormant while we were generating commissions. They say they will fix it, but at this point we aren’t holding our breath.
Apparently a lot of these folks didn’t read CJ’s contract before signing up. After reading a good part of their contract I could almost feel the lashes across my back from my master. I didn’t sign up.
Thank you! I read the terms very carefully and it seems too risky for me (and probably the advertiser who is the one who pays). I just dont have any faith in CJ, and think there are other affiliates I prefer and trust more.
Hai Can u please tell me the other affiliates whom u trust
Shareasale.com is best for ever. I am satisfied for this network. because is so cute. No problem here, It so simple give sale get commission.
If you want to know what’s really going on with Pay Per Call marketing read below. Name with held for the moment……
I thought I would write a few lines about a pay per call program I recently was approved for. I would never have thought that as much time and energy that I spend promoting my affiliate service provider’s programs that I was actually being victimized, at least with this particular program. I had applied to one of their PPCall programs few weeks ago, made some pages, got indexed, and sent out some emails with the advertiser’s phone number, I had noticed over the last few weeks that I had some calls logged, but none had reached the time per call requirements. Since I have been interested in just how the program works and the obvious high commissions, I came across a friend that was in need of the services this pay per call program offered. I suggested that she call the number listed on the advertisement on one of the pages. I asked that if she called, to please document her actual time she spent on her call, and then get back to me and let me know what had transpired.
It is important to know that I intentionally did not let her know I would make a commission on the program. However, due to my relationship with my affiliate service provider, I have decided not to mention their name at this time in this posting. You might find the results interesting
The friend makes the initial call. After 2 minutes she was handed off from a prequalifer agent to the closing agent. She was placed on hold. Before the handoff, she was required to leave her phone number just incase she was disconnected***
While she was on hold, she was indeed disconnected. This occurred at approximately 2.30 seconds into the call. (The time required by the advertiser is 3 minutes before commissions are paid.} According to my friend, she was a bit frustrated by this, until she received a call back by the advertiser. The initial call was documented on my affiliate control panel log as 1.47 seconds.
The second call according to her phone was 4 minutes and 34 seconds. However on my log it showed that she was online on the phone for only 2 minutes and 42 seconds. I was essentially screwed out of my commission. Total phone time by her phone was over 6 minutes but the control panel showed two calls under 3 minutes each.
So what did I do next?
I borrowed a phone from an associate and made a call to the same phone number and carefully documented each stage of the process. I made the call and spoke with the prequalifier. This took 6 minutes and 28 seconds at which time I was put on hold for the closer handoff. Again, I too was disconnected. I also received a call back from the closer and began the interview again. I intentionally kept interrupting the closer to continue adding more time on the clock. I kept the closer on the phone for 22 minutes and 35 seconds.
The results from the control panel as follows.
There was only 1 entry on the log that showed a total time of 6 minutes and 47 seconds.
I did get my commission this time. However, the time was totally incorrect and off by over 25 minutes.
Considering the total amount of calls showing on my log, yet no commission shown except for the call I made, I suspect I have been screwed out of a substantial sum of money. Like I said, I have not mentioned the name of the Advertiser, or the Affiliate Service Provider but, I can assure you that it is one of the biggest if not the biggest affiliate service provider on the Internet.
It is my intention not to collect or cash the earnings from this program or the provider. I will however do one more test to confirm the numbers. If this situation holds true for the next call, I will contact an attorney, and the two of us will sit in on another test. If it again holds true and the numbers are similar, then I will initiate a class action law suit on behalf of all pay per call affiliate marketers and notify all of you to join in on the suit. I myself am a bit pissed off actually.
If you can’t trust your affiliate service provider, who can you trust?
I’m curious what ended up happening with this… I feel like I could have been the victim of the a similar situation.
@Incognito – Nothing you said surprises me. I think we must all face reality in that people now are greedier than ever. Especially people doing business online. And especially those doing business with affiliates. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that PPC requires a minimum connection talk time in order to be compensated. This plan was initially designed so they could ripoff the affiliate.
I can’t see why anyone would or could say that CJ or any other network doesn’t have malicious intent. They would never confess it. But the business model makes it quite easy to be deceptive. I knew going in that there was a high probability I would be ripped off at some point. It goes with the territory. If I caught them, I would surely prosecute just as Incognito mentioned. They all need to be slammed for running a criminal enterprise.
Yes they are fake. Claim to have sent a cheque but no record of it entering australia. When pushed on when, were and at what post it was sent. The only reply is extra 25 usd for re issue. When asked why they dont use USPS tracking well no reply on that matter. Shall terminate the account as clearly no accountability and inform the affiliates of it.
Dude! they have limit of minimum 100 USD , CJ does not pay amount less than 100 USD through checks
I made two bookings with two different vendors using my CJ links. When I did not see the bookings recorded in my account I emailed CJ the following:
==My email to them==
I did two bookings yesterday – one with Vendor1 and one with Vendor2. I used my affiliate links to do the bookings. Why dont I see the commission in my report? I also dont see any statistics that 2 sales have been made.
==Their reply==
Thank you for you inquiry about a missing transaction. I reviewed your account and it is registering clicks and impressions so it appears your tracking is fine.
This is an infrequent occurrence, but the transaction may have been missed for any number of reasons. We suggest to contact the advertiser through the “mail” tab in your CJ account manager with any information regarding the potential missed commission. Please allow enough time for them to research and respond. If after this time frame they do not reply, contact client support and we can reach out to them on your behalf.
==
I have booked own trips 2 other times before and it worked. But this time it did not and CJ reply to me is not satisfying at all. I dont think I Will continue working with them.
It will be interesting to know who are the people operating cj.com and how they can manage to bring so many big advertisers into their platform without having an open credible support.
It’s hard for me to believe Commission Junction is anything near a scam. It features some of the largest number of advertisers and quality merchants. This is probably one of the best elements that separates it from Clickbank. Clickbank will let anyone promote their products, as a result some of the crappiest most annoying MadeforAdsense websites are plastered with Clickbank products. In contrast, many CJ retailers are incredibly picky about who they allow to join their program. Some have requirements for Pagerank, others history of use, others number of indexed pages, etc. Many have to be manually approved by someone from quality control on their affiliate network.
You are right though about the negatives. Some Advertisers take forever to pay. A few merchants I promote are on the ball every month. One however, really likes to take its time, regardless of the balance. The other issue of deactivated merchants has become a real annoyance more than anything else. Most of the time it lasts less than a day, hardly enough to make it worth changing all of the links to something else and back again.
One element that is incredibly beneficial which I haven’t seen in your article is that CJ, like others offers a great opportunity for your commissions to be in one account, allowing for quicker payout. Can you imagine applying to 15 different programs and waiting 2-3 months to hit the payout threshold. With CJ I hit it every month from one lead here, a sale there, another lead there.
PS- not only did they scam me out of my $100, but my remaining balance of $30 will also be lost because I will never reach the min $50 payout. I am also out $40 in associated cost of generating those leads.
The same thing happened to most of the people. I everywhere read about CJ unscrupulous business practices. I am not going to waste my time
Having launched a Commission Junction account on my very active site (500K visitors in the last few months alone and growing), I have had word from several people that have signed up for various services and bought products through the various ads, but I have never received a dime in commissions. These people contacted me by social media, email, etc.
This shows that Commission Junction is obviously a scam situation and those that have made money are only getting pennies on the dollars that they should have made.
In comparison to the results, I have activated Google Adsense (which is not my favorite affiliate program) on the site and in less than two weeks have nearly hit the minimum for payment.
CJ is a scam, I’ve promoted some of the best companies that have affiliate programs and I’m very surprised that none of them got me any sales….I had over 400 clicks alone with a video software company alone with no sales. I just believe CJ is in trouble with the company and won’t pony up the $$$ that I earned rightfully. CJ will get a report from the BBB for stealing commissions.
There is no point reporting BBB as cj.com over the years have prospered despite all the complaints and negative reviews. I believe they have an understanding with some of the biggest advertisers including GoDaddy of sharing profit accumulated through duping publishers. Else, a brand of GoDaddy stature would never partner with cj.com.
I am newbie on CJ, what i am hear here they scam, maybe i must stop promote and working with them, my earn now about $29 is to low to get payout.
is any possible they make web impression down?
thanks.
Same here , I had $178.00 reported commission and I received a check for only
$67.00!!! they had told me that some fees were apply to my account !!!!
I closed my account , those people just manipulate vendors.
Have you used CJ yourself? Do you think for small publishers it’s worth giving them a try or skip it till you get bigger? It doesn’t seem right they can only hold payouts under $50 for 6 months. I can’t find that on their website.
CJ is great to start with. However you will need to apply to each merchant individually and that can be a pain.
Hi everyone,
I ran a promotion for a month or two promoting London Eye on Commission Junction which I made commissions over £100. I have new been waiting a year since those sales were made for payment and every month they say London Eye have not paid. I am some what confused though as to why this company is still promoting and live on Commission Junction and why it is fine for me to do work promoting a company for them to choose not to pay for over a year. Its not exactly a small company either. Terrible service and will not use this network again after such treatment.
Normally, a merchant is “temporarily deactivated” when they don’t pay. I’m not sure how it this case someone like that is still live on the platform..
So if Cj is not a good program to do affiliate marketing, what program is? What about the merchants/vendors? Do you know of any affiliate programs that would be a good place to start with little to no start up cost?
Commission Junction stole over $600 by closing my account for no reason.
Shareasale have also voided hundreds of dollars in sales from 1 URL on my site and lied about it when i contacted them
Generally i’ve found Most U.S affiliate managers and merchants steal from non U.S affiliates.
They are very reluctant to steal from U.S affiliates.
You are absolutely 100% right. That is why I stop all my affiliate marketing activities. Amazon is one of the guilty ones too. So long as you are not from the U.S, be prepared to be defrauded by Commission Junction, ShareASale, Amazon and even Adsense. It seems that Linkshare is the safest one for now but they could turn to scamming the Non U.S. Affiliate too.
Question: How should I mention on my blog that I am part of an affiliate program? Should I be honest at the end of the post and say a blurb about it or add a page and explain which programs I am currently a part of or just not mention anything at all? What do you think? What would be the best way to do this?
I think you can just put it in your privacy policy as a blanket term for all pages on your site.
Hi,
I’ve been approved by some advertisers with CJ & am trying to decide whether or not to encrypt links & hide tracking codes. Can you tell me why that was listed under Disadvantages in your review? What are the disadvantages of these options?
Thanks!
There is a lot of skimming that goes on in the affiliate industry. Basically you’re relying on a company to tell you what you’ve earned. The trust is completely one-way. Check out the founders of this company and the people at the top and make your own judgements. I work in the gambling industry and many of the same charlatans work in this industry too – like the example above where someone published millions of page views and made next to nothing, affiliates are being shafted across the world
CJ is a SCAM! They beat me out of $680.00 worth of commissions an lied about sending it to me. They originally stated that a check was sent to my address which i never received. After calling Commission Junction several months to resolve this matter, a supervisor by the name of Ashley then lied again and said the funds were deposited into an account i no longer have open. These people are Scammers… Please stay away!!!!
Right now, I am finding their support cooperative and payments reliable. I am not sure if my earlier complaints were a result of problem with the usage of software.
They are! Many times, i observed with my friends purchased using my affiliate link from CJ on sidepole.com, from Godaddy & Fiverr but CJ didn’t record the transaction and commission was not credited to my account
They are crooks I earned $6500 never got paid commision junction is a scam