Response to Commission Junction "evil & smells" post:

[fonzerelli_79]

I'll take it that everyone knows who CJ are.

Is there anyone else out there annoyed at the fact that merchants remove their programs after on average 4 months (and yes i worked this out mathematically)


50% of the ads i had with CJ are defunct and link to a page saying 'Sorry this merchant does participate in this affiliate program anymore - why dont you visit CJ instead'

Obviously this is annoying. Surely they could at least link to the merchants home page instead of their own.

This sort of thing relects badly on us nice friendly webmasters.

to re iterate

CJ are ugly and stink of old mans pee

(Note to CJ : I do not mean offense by the above statement)

(Note to HTML Forumers : I do mean offense)

See ya turnips

[Unregistered]

hahahahahahahahahahahah

I could'nt have put it better myself, but I would'nt have been so polite

but seriously, your right, I have been reading a lot of bad stuff about them on various forums lately and have had similar experiences

take a really good close look at the merchants websites

visit them, look at the source code, are you getting any credit for the traffic your sending?

or are the just stealing your leads?

some of them are being very naughty, and I bet that anyone that takes a good close look at their merchants will end up dumping half of them

good luck

[fonzerelli_79]

they also stink of pee!!!

[Judy]

I'm new here so I hope I'm not breaking any rules, but here goes: I also have noticed that many Commission Junction affiliates suspend their programs after just a short stay. Many LinkShare, search engines and other affiliates that have their own programs do it, too. I think it's a deliberate a scam... they stay long enough to get a FREE boost of traffic, FREE advertising, FREE sale of products, etc. from our sites, and then bail BEFORE they have to pay. And many, many that stay will cut their payouts drastically after a short while--without saying at the gitgo that the initial payout is an introductory offer. I am so sick of getting screwed over by these scammers, plus all the work to replace them. We've had our site up less than a year and are learning the hard way. Would greatly appreciate feedback/suggestions. Thanx, Judy

[jollyfactory]

hey Judy, I thought you'd be new. If you want to reply to a thread click 'post reply' you probably clicked 'new thread' which started a new topic!

Well yes I do agree with you. Many of the programs out there are scams. Like *ahem* popup traffic who haven't paid me yet and don't reply to my 4 e-mails.

Well my 2 cents!

[Nephthys]

I've seen this happen and have been a victim if their premature closure of their affiliate programs, that is the one reason why I like Commission Junction, they pay you from a pot of $$ that you have earned until the date, it's not directly from the company, it's consolidated into one check from CJ. Other places like Linkshare and Reporting.net, you are at a loss because the company is the one that pays you and if you haven't reached a minimum for each company, then you are out of luck. CJ you only have to reach one minimum which is the CJ minimum.

[jollyfactory]

Yeh I heard how it works. I'm thinking of signing up with it. I heard theres like a few advertisers to choose from and you can choose which one to use until they all accumilate the minimum payout check.

[Paul]

What I hate about these programs is how hard it is to make money with them. Most programs pay only about 2-5 cents a click. Also is it true that CJ is closing their CPC program? Oh and CJ isn't a scam I got my payments every month, that's what is nice about them. I've lost about 3,000 dollars in the last 6 months because of these damn affiliate programs ripping me off. I'm really pissed off at bulkclicks.com and all sites in the SI network. They never reply to my e-mails and never told me they deleted my account.
Good Luck,
Paul

[Nephthys]

Unfortunately, CJ *IS* stopping all the CPC. They will only be using affiliates that pay per leads and sales. CJ has sent me payments too, that's why I like their services. They also have great reports, tools, and you can easily sign up or remove yourself from affiliates. Unlike Reporting.net that doesn't have an option to easily remove yourself from affiliates. You actually have to write to each company.

[The Dreamer]

CJ is by far easier to deal with then many of the other affiliate programs out there. I tried BeFree and a couple others early on... and dropped them pretty quick.. or as quick as I could considering I had to contact each merchant. Can we say PIA? :p

CJ on the other hand I've been with for darn near a year now. In the begining I went a bit nuts with the affiliates (at one point I think I had about 13 of them!) Took me a while to figure out the best way to go about it. Yeah, some of the affliates closed or in one case dropped me for not generating enough traffic (to which I muttered "well fine... screw you too!" and happily deleted the link.) but I was cautious on which ones I went with. I looked at their sites, and what they offered and asked myself whether I'd be interested or trust them enough regarding what they offered. If the answer was no then I ignored them and moved on.

I know of late CJ has been changing things, like stopping the pay-per-click program. I think that might have been a major contributor to so many programs backing out of CJ.

However on a brighter note.. the ones that stayed are stable it seems. I can live with Pay-per-lead's... as usually all thats entailing is signing up or subscribing.

You won't loose traffic or visitors if you have the links open in new windows.

Anyway... this turned into a short novel... so I'll shut up now and go do something else. :) Just my 2 cents is all.

[aceinstaller]

I don't think a lot of the merchants do try and scam you. The thing is looking at the terms for the signup of new advertisers, it says;


I understand that there is a one-time $1295 Network Access Fee, plus a minimum monthly transaction fee of $250. I agree to deposit a minimum of $500 into an escrow account with Commission Junction, which will be used to pay my publishers


That is a lot of dosh, so I don't think they would just do it to boost traffic and so on. I expect they just put their commissions higher, and then find that they are having to pay out too much, so they have to lower them. A lot of the company's that cancel membership with CJ actually do it cos they have gone bust ;)

Just my thoughts

Andy

[Paul]

Originally posted by aceinstaller
I don't think a lot of the merchants do try and scam you. The thing is looking at the terms for the signup of new advertisers, it says;



That is a lot of dosh, so I don't think they would just do it to boost traffic and so on. I expect they just put their commissions higher, and then find that they are having to pay out too much, so they have to lower them. A lot of the company's that cancel membership with CJ actually do it cos they have gone bust ;)

Just my thoughts

Andy
I agree, if I was going to pay that much just for a boost of traffic, I could take my $2000 and go to an ad network or a search engine like yahoo and advertise there. But what pisses me off the merchands start of at a really high rate and drop to almost paying nothing. Most CPC programs start with 6 cents and end up at 3 cents in a couple of weeks. Then in the next couple of weeks they drop to 1 cent.
Paul

[Judy]

We could debate all day about why merchants drop out of CJ, I'm sure there are various reasons. But my biggest gripe at the moment is that many--too many--of the ones who pay for leads don't specify what a lead is, either in their CJ description or on their site. They are primarily responsible for stating the exact requirements, but CJ is to blame, too. CJ should require that they specify clearly.

A case in point is Funnymail.com. I wrote to them asking them to clarify and they wrote back to all their affiliates saying--get this... They don't know what they count as a lead but hope to know with a few weeks! That's totally absurd! I wrote back that we are not about to wait around for "a few weeks" in the dark with their ads on our site, so we are pulling all ads until they decide, then we will decide whether or not to put them back up.

I've also written to several others asking for clarification, but as yet have not gotten a single reply. Also, way too many of them have conflicting payouts: CJ commission rates vs. what they say on their site. Sorry to be so long winded, but Grrrrrrr, makes me soooo mad!

[Paul]

Originally posted by Judy
We could debate all day about why merchants drop out of CJ, I'm sure there are various reasons. But my biggest gripe at the moment is that many--too many--of the ones who pay for leads don't specify what a lead is, either in their CJ description or on their site. They are primarily responsible for stating the exact requirements, but CJ is to blame, too. CJ should require that they specify clearly.

Very good point, I noticed that too. I never paid much attention to it since I don't use pay-per-lead. CJ used to be very good a couple years ago but now they are getting to the point where I'm not gonna put up their ads on my site.

[justjeni]

Wow - everyting everyone is saying are things I've been thinking myself! I had, at one time, over 60 affiliates with cj and they were the only site I'd use - they were awesome. But, they came out with all their changes and it seems every day I'm getting an e-mail saying "so and so has dropped their program, please remove their links immediately". this is getting to be a royal pain in the patootey. But, when it comes to payout, I do trust them. As one poster mentioned, you accumulate from all advertisers therefore you don't lose any $ if one drops, plus the minimun payout is only $25.00 for all combined. I quite linkshare with over $15.00 in my account just because it has to be from each seperate merchant. As a newbie, I didn't know what I was doing and it was like pulling teeth to get that tally for that one site I used to $25.00 so I finally just cut my losses and got out of there.
I'm slowly pulling out merchants on my own along with the ones dropping and am now down to 17, but will probably stay with a couple that have been getting leads for me. I think with their new setup it's best to go less and push what you do use. Like another poster said, look the site over well, decide if you think it's something your visitors would be interested in and give it your best shot.
Two others that aren't bad are fineclicks.com and associateleads.com - in transition from puzz.com. I've been very happy using them, although leads are coming in slow right now..:(

[fonzerelli_79]

i think its hard to find an affiliate you can trust.

Im going to sell my advertsing space. I think thats the way forward.