This is part of your affiliate marketing guide series, if you missed my previous articles you should go through them first to understand the basics. Here are the links for your reference:
- How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Business
- PartnerStack Review: The Affiliate Marketplace for SAAS Products and Growth Companies
- Affiliate Marketing Handbook
Today, I will share a detailed tutorial about Commission Junction which is one of the very popular marketplace for affiliate marketers.
I have been a member of commission junction as a publisher for almost 9 years, in fact, they are a well-known affiliate network where you can find high-quality affiliate products to promote.
In this guide, I will cover all the important information you need to know about Commission Junction, the company that recently changed its name from Conversant to CJ Affiliate.
What is Conversant's CJ Affiliate and how do I start using it?
Formerly known as Commission Junction, CJ Affiliate by Conversant is an affiliate marketplace where you can find thousands of products to promote and earn money.
This global affiliate marketplace is a great solution for independent blog owners (publishers) like me and you to connect with affiliate programs offered by thousands of online brands.
You can start using this network by simply signing up for a free account. There is also a tutorial below to help you learn how to use it.
Register as an advertiser or publisher on CJ Affiliate
You will first need to register your CJ Affiliate account. After completing this step, you will not be able to access any content.
There are actually two different types of accounts on the platform – advertiser accounts and publisher accounts.
If you have products or services that you would like to promote through CJ Affiliate's partner network, you will need to set up an advertiser account.
Alternatively, if you want to earn commissions by promoting advertisers, you can set up a publisher account.
Verify your email address
Registration only takes seconds to complete.
All you need to do in the initial stage is to provide your email address and set a password. After that, CJ Affiliate will send you an email to confirm your account.
For the purposes of this guide, I will be signing up for a publisher account. However, the steps for an advertiser account will look very similar, with just a few differences (since you are the paying user, not the one receiving payment).
Accept the terms of the CJ Affiliate Agreement
Before you can officially complete your account, you will need to agree to CJ Affiliate's Terms of Service.
Here's a brief preview of its contents:
These terms are mostly boilerplate, and I'm not going to dive into them right now. But please be sure to read them all, and if you have any questions, consult your company's lawyer, who will review them for you. Failure to comply with these terms may result in immediate termination of your account.
Complete the Onboarding Checklist
Next, you'll need to set up your account. You'll need to provide the following information:
- Name, email, and phone number of the administrator
- A description of your network, promotional methods and business model
- Promotional assets (such as your website, social media, or anywhere else you’ll be promoting your partner)
- Your business details and tax information
- Payment details for direct deposit
NOTE: You must submit your tax information before CJ Affiliate will accept your direct deposit details.
Browse advertisers and apply for affiliate programs
Now you can start earning commissions by promoting partners in the CJ Affiliate network.
From your Admin account, click on the Partners tab at the top of the screen and select Find Advertisers . from the drop-down menu.
There are literally thousands of items to choose from, so I recommend using the filter options on the left side of the screen to narrow your search results.
Affiliate programs only work well if they are targeted to a specific niche.
Don’t just apply to every program you see. Instead, focus on the ones that truly match the needs of your audience. This will also increase your chances of being accepted into the program and increase your potential affiliate income.
For example, if I use the "Business" filter and then select "Productivity Tools ," the initial list of 3,192 programs is filtered down to just 29. This makes it much more manageable.
If you see one that interests you, you can click the "Apply to Program" button (highlighted above).
You can also review the advertisers' ads and start with the best performing ads. Once you find an ad you want to add to your site, click it and the ad and its HTML code will appear, which you can copy to your site.
CJ Affiliate also includes a range of reporting features to help you optimize your campaigns. When it comes to affiliate marketing, testing and experimentation are key to success. You'll have access to updated reports where your stats will be broken down in a variety of ways, including your best performing links and sites, and your best product performance. You'll also be able to track your earnings quickly and easily.
What I like about Commission Junction is that you can easily choose products based on different market segments.
Especially if you are one of those who runs different niche blogs, you can choose niche based products, put them in your blog and earn good commissions.
Remember last time I talked about GoDaddy affiliate program , you can quickly apply if you are a member of Commission Junction. In addition to this, if you are interested in other hosting products, you can quickly apply for the best WordPress hosting companies such as Hostgator , BlueHost , etc.
Here is a screenshot of the various categories you can use to find the best products for affiliate promotion.
One of the main advantages of using CJ is that the payout per sale is usually higher than if you were to affiliate through a direct product website.
CJ Affiliate Payment
CJ's minimum payment threshold is **$50 for direct deposit and ** $100 for check payments . As long as you meet the minimum payment threshold, you will receive your payment every month.
Pro Tip : Keep an eye on the status of delayed commissions or advertiser payments. CJ’s dashboard provides up-to-date information to help you manage expectations.
Use CJ Affiliate to automate your affiliate program:
One of the biggest challenges we face as bloggers is getting personal affiliate links for the products we mention in our blogs, and because of this, we lose out on a ton of revenue.
CJ by Conversant is a popular affiliate marketplace where you can find all the top products, and now they have added a new feature called Automation. This feature is probably the easiest way for you to monetize your commercial links without having to manually edit your old links.
The new automation feature lets you add a simple line of JavaScript to your website and it will automatically convert your outbound links into affiliate links. The image below shows how the automation works:
Alliance Automation
This feature is really a highlight of the CJ team, but I don’t think it’s as effective as Viglink or Skimlinks. The reason is that before this automation will deep link your existing links into affiliate links, some conditions need to be met. The rules are as follows:
- You need to have an active relationship with the CJ Advertiser (if you don't have an active relationship, this feature will be of no use to you)
- Advertisers must have a deep link integration and appropriate domains in CJAM to participate in deep link automation.
With the above two points in mind, I find the automation feature pretty useless.
Deep Link Generator Features:
In this feature you can create deep link affiliate links for any CJ advertiser associated with you. All you need to do is drag and drop the deep link bookmarklet from this page to your bookmark browser, then on any associated CJ advertiser site (any page), you can click on the bookmarklet to generate a direct link to the specific page.
Again, this feature seems to be useful for existing CJ affiliate marketers, but there is another downside to this feature:
- You must have access to deep links for advertisers in CJ Account Manager
If you are looking to make some money through affiliate marketing, you should sign up with CJ, and it’s free.
What other affiliate marketplaces would you recommend to others ?
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See also:
- How to Choose the Best Affiliate Marketing Products to Promote
- List of Travel Affiliate Programs for Travel Bloggers
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