Commission Junction is One of the Biggest Affiliate Programs but is it the Best?

Commission Junction, popularly known as "CJ" is one of the biggest affiliate programs in the USA, and has members as well as advertisers in many countries around the world.

I would like to think that I am able to speak with a certain authority on Commission Junction, since I have been a member for a few years. I can't find the date when I joined, but amongst their many reports there is a payment history, and I received my first payment from them on 20^th September 2000.

For those of you reading this who are not sure what an affiliate program is, it's a company that has advertisers who pay them to place their adverts on a variety of web sites. The affiliate company also has members, who sign up with one or more of these advertisers, and place their adverts on their web pages and blogs. When a visitor to a web site clicks on one of those links and places an order with the advertiser, the member gets a pre-agreed amount or percentage or the sale.

You see affiliate links everywhere these days, and there are precious few web sites and blogs without them. If you do have a site of your own, you can indeed make money by adding affiliate links to your site.

Now back to Commission Junction (I will refer to them as CJ from hereon), and some of the features that make it very good to use.

Is Commission Junction A Scam?

There are some people who have been sent junk mail in the past that have had Commission Junction links in them, and others who have been sent to spammy sites that have had links, and as a result, like all affiliate programs, there are occasionally red flags sent out, but Commission Junction is not a scam, it's far from it, and as you can see from the length of time that it has been around and it's high profile advertisers, it's definitely a legitimate company.

Multiple Users

While this might not be relevant to most of us, CJ allow a member to define multiple users. Say for example that you operate multiple blogs and operate these together with a partner or spouse. CJ provides you with the ability to define other users of the account, with restricted privileges if you desire. This makes maintenance of your links a lot easier, since you can delegate tasks, but allows you to keep some area of the account secure.

Multiple Web Sites

On CJ you can define multiple web sites, and each is given it's own id. When you create advertising links, you create them for a specific site, and can then see in the reports which sites are getting which adverts displayed, how many times and how many clicks etc.

This is very useful if you do have multiple sites, and the reporting capabilities do indeed go well beyond this, allowing you to identify which pages on each site an advert was clicked on.

Targeted Areas / Categories

When you search for advertisers to become an affiliate with, you can restrict your search based on location (USA, UK Canada etc), as well as category (Art, Automotive, Entertainment etc).

Creating Links

When you want to create links, CJ allows you to filter by Country, Category, and also Link Type (text link, 60x120 banner, 125x125 banner etc).

If you are looking for links of a certain size, especially for an advertiser that does have many links, this really does save time.

You can also search for not only general links for an advertiser, but for product specific links as well. Some advertisers have a lot of products that you can advertise directly, which can be far better at times than generic links.

CJ allows you to in addition create the code for your links as HTML or Javascript. While HTML code is more widely acceptable, it is possible for someone to identify the code on your web page. If you choose to use Javascript however, the link details are hidden to them.

When you have selected an advertiser and a link, you just need to copy the code for that link, and paste it into the appropriate place in your web site.

If you are using Wordpress or Blogger, this could be a Text Widget in the sidebar for example.

You Can Only Display Adverts For Advertisers You Are Approved For

This is true for all affiliate companies. If you want to display adverts for an advertiser, you will need to apply to join their program, and only when accepted can you get the code for their adverts to use on your site.

The Above Are All Examples Of Static Adverts

There is really nothing revolutionary about most of the above functions, in fact a number of other affiliate programs have most of these. However, being static links, they do expire, and then if you have a site that has a lot of pages (my first web site was hand crafted and has over 5,000 pages), you will need to keep these adverts updated.

Many sites these days will have adverts in the sidebar, and this is actually static, with pages being created on the fly for the visitor to see.

The downside to using fixed adverts in this case is that you might only want to display 2 or 3 advert blocks in your sidebar, but each time you display a page to a visitor, they are going to see the same advert.

There are add-ons for Wordpress that will help get around this, but by far the simplest way is to use what CJ calls a SmartZone.

What Are SmartZones In CJ?

A Smart Zone is something that most other affiliate programs do not have, and it allows you to be provide a variety of adverts to your visitors.

When you create a SmartZone, you give it a name, select a size of advert (for example 125x125), and associate it with one of your web sites.

Then get a short piece of Javascript for your Smartzone, and paste it into the advertising block on your web site. Note that so far you haven't selected any adverts for your SmartZone.

Let us say for example that you have a travel related blog, and you want to display travel related adverts on it.

Having created your SmartZone, you now need to search for Travel related advertisers (and you need to have applied to and been accepted in their programs before you can use their links).

Select only links that are 125x125 in size, and instead of copying the code as you would for a static link, this time you take the option to add the link to your SmartZone.

You can add up to 25 adverts to each of your SmartZones, each of which must be the same size (or text) that the SmartZone was defined to use.

The nice thing is that you never have to change any code on your web site now on for this SmartZone. Should an advert expire, or you want to remove it, just go into SmartZone maintenance on the CJ site, and change the adverts.

As well as being able to add and delete adverts, which will appear on your site randomly, you can also adjust the frequency that each will be displayed.

Since CJ provides you with reports that identify which adverts are invalid, using Smartzones makes it very easy to maintain these.

How Do You Get Paid By Commission Junction?

CJ prefers to pay it's members by Direct Deposit and will pay in US Dollars as well as GB Pounds, Australian and New Zealand Dollars, Euros as well as a number of other currencies.

If you are being paid in US Dollars by Direct Deposit, the minimum amount is $50. If being paid by check the minimum is $100.

Are There Any Drawbacks In Using Commission Junction?

There really shouldn't be any negative reasons for using Commission Junction, however, because the affiliate links don't directly reference the main CJ site, it is possible that your adverts from them can get blocked by visitors to your web site.

Rather than serving adverts from their main site, CJ uses a number of other sites, that have strange names like jdoqocy.com, anrdoezrs.net and ftjcfx.com to name a few.

Some anti-spyware software, including one of the most popular, Spybot Search And Destroy, has been known to block these domains when you immunize your computer, which means that when a page from your site is served to a computer where the domain for one or more CJ adverts has been blocked, the page loading time will be delayed until the browser times out trying to retrieve the advert.

This can make it take up to a minute for a page to load, and be extremely off-putting to visitors. For that reason, I removed the CJ adverts from my blogs a year ago.

It is possible that the problems have now been resolved, but be wary in case your pages that contain CJ adverts take a long time to load.

In Conclusion

I have to admit that of all the affiliate programs I have seen and joined, I do like CJ the best, even though I had to remove the links from my blogs.

Commission Junction has one of the widest ranges of companies that you can choose to display adverts for, segregated by Country, including the USA, Canada, the UK and other European countries, and also other countries around the world.

If you are new to affiliate marketing, you could do a lot worse than start with Commission Junction.
Sources:

Personal Opinion.

Commission Junction