Commission Junction

Hi,
Could anyone tell me is commission junction profitable for merchants?I am planning to list my
site there , but not sure , whether i will get enough return on investment...since their fees are too
high.Do u know any site which has listed and done very well?
If anyone has any idea , pl do mail me on juliepareira@yahoo.com.
Thanks
Julie

Hi Julie,

I answered this question over at my other affiliate forum, but will re-post my answer here too in case it will help anyone over here that is wondering the same thing.

I consult for or manage several programs on CJ. Yes it can be great ROI. I have handled programs and generated 1600% ROI with CJ. I have had several clients selling over 100,000 a month on CJ.

The key is pro-active management and recruiting. Many merchants think they can just launch and program on CJ and the dollars will roll in. Kinda like the old days when people thought you could just build a web site and visitors would come.

CJ has lots of affiliates and some good benefits but there is a LOT of work and knowledge that must go into turning those resources into revenue. Unless you are prepared to also hire a talented affiliate manager or outsource the management to the tune of 2K-5K a month, I think you maybe should re-evaluate.

Also for some companies and markets CJ is not the only or best choice. There are others that can work well that are much less expensive. ShareaSale is a good one to look at.

Hope it helps and best of luck!

Anyone else have any feedback for Julie?

A speaker at a conference, introduced as a Super Affiliate, said, "I don't use programs on CJ because their commissions are too low, probably because the CJ fees are high."

I agree with him. I have found the higher commission programs are NOT with CJ. I go with programs like Shareasale or direct.

So is CJ profitable for merchants? Get top affiliates and you should be profitable. Go out and look for them. Solicit the top sites for your keywords. Many of the top affiliates read these forums (they just hardly post - I heard that too from that super affiliate.)

Remember 10% of your affiliates will bring in 90% of the $$$ (Focus on the 10%)

Quoted from last post:
A speaker at a conference, introduced as a Super Affiliate, said, "I don't use programs on CJ because their commissions are too low, probably because the CJ fees are high."

I have to agree with that. Our program used to be with CJ. Now we have it in house and can offer higher commissions, more lead types to our affiliate partners, and more bonus programs.

I've heard that CJ's fees are a bit high, but their reach is unheard of. Think of it this way, would you want to spend money on a number of people in the online marketing area, or just hire maybe one online marketing person and go with CJ to handle all the marketing even though they get a good chunk of the pie.

Who cares if their reach is unheard of... if within their reach is missing the cream of the crop. Karen, when you were with CJ, did you have the cream of the crop affiliates? How did you get your cream of the crop affiliates? I'll bet by checking the keword on Google and soliciting the top web sites.

The programs that I am #1, I have been told that I make double the #2 person.

Let me repeat myself...
Remember 10% of your affiliates will bring in 90% of the $$$ (Focus on the 10%)

Hi Gail,
I have found that we now have higher quality affiliates within our in house program. We may have had a larger number of affiliates when we were with CJ, but the quality was not nearly as high as it is with our in house program. We are also generating more leads with our in house program than we ever did with CJ. Don't get me wrong, CJ can be a savior to companies that do not have a person dedicated to manage the affiliate program, but if you have the person and the time, running a program in house I think is better for both the merchants and the affiliates.
Gail your note about the 90/10 rule is very accurate. Some managers might even say 95/5. One of the best features of the in house program is that we have more flexibility with our payouts, incentive programs, and bonuses which makes it much more beneficial for our top partners to take advantage of our programs. I think over the next two years, you'll see more and more companies taking their programs in house as more companies like MyAffiliateProgram.com and DirectTrak.com offer in house program solutions that are low cost and easily managed.

Yeah how do really find your affiliates?

I run an in-house affiliate program...my best affiliates are either referred or are targeted by being in the top 50 rankings for Google, Yahoo, MSN. Additionally, I get the daily dregs who sign up by finding our sites, but never produce.

BTW, I see it as an 80/20 ratio.

Cygnus

:-)
Here's a quick summary of how we recruit affiliates:

1. Direct emails to top ranking high quality sites
2. Referrals from existing affiliates
3. PPC ads on PPC engines
4. Participation on the forums
5. Recently an Ad in Revenue Magazine
6. Affiliate Dirrectories
7. Partnerships with other non-competing affiliate programs

Yes, I think Karen covered most of the recruiting bases. FYI I also believe it's the 90/10 rule of affiliate marketing.

Karen,
I'd like to make my own affiliate program too (in house) but i'd like to know: how do you issue checks to affiliates? Do you do the work yourself?

Any advice is very welcome.

Thank you in advance.

Fabrizio Ferrari
Virtual Sheet Music srl
Classical Sheet Music Downloads
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com

Hi Fabrizio,
Generally with in house programs you have the option to cut the checks yourself or pay a fee to have the program owners cut the checks for you. We cut our own checks and find that method works best for us because we often include individual bonuses with the commission checks and personal thank you notes within the envelope.

I need to go on a bit of a CJ rant, because they've screwed up a few "basic" principles recently:

1. Try using backup servers! When the account manager is down for two weekends in a row, some of us publishers can't get our work done.
2. This one really ticked me off...one of the vendors changed the image file name on ALL the products he manages in CJ's product linking; the problem with this is that the vendor has over 2000+ products, which I now must go through and update. Sales drop when people can't see what they're buying.

Okay, I feel a little better now.

Cygnus

CJ Summary:

Lots of Affiliates, but very few high quality affiliates

Very Detailed Reports, but more than what most people would read

30% fees on top of what you pay affiliates, I'd rather pass that directly to the affiliates than CJ

Overall, if you have the time and resources, I'd recommend an in house program. It's less expensive, you have more freedom with the program and your creatives, better affiliates if you recruit them yourself, and more flexibility with commission payments and bonuses.