Opinions on cj.com

thestrangefruit

New member
Jan 12, 2009
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I'm planning on getting started with them, but would like to get some opinions from others first. Are they a reliable network? Do they pay on time? Any bad experiences with them? Any info at all is great. Thanks.
 


Honestly if you are getting just getting into AM I wouldn't use them. Their applying for advertisers system is a total clusterfuck and you are going to have a hard time getting accepted by a decent advertiser if you are new. This of course makes it even harder to make sales. They are reliable and do pay but that's the only real upside.
 
My income is pretty much split between CJ and EPN. I love CJ a lot. It has tons of merchants and physical products to promote and I have always found that actual physical products that get shipped to your door convert very well. They pay like clockwork and the money gets direct deposited (or you can get a check).

It can be hard to get accepted by merchants when you first start, but once you start to make sales and increase your EPC, the invites will start pouring in. Then you can go back and reapply with programs that rejected you previously. I never get turned down anymore.

If you are looking for merchants that accept virtually anyone, try some lead programs. When I first started, I promoted some Survey lead programs. The pay-outs were crap, but they helped get me started. Other than that, just look for companies and products you'd like to promote and apply. Keep applying. Some will accept everyone automatically.
 
I use them on a couple sites and they are pretty much what they say they are and are reliable (they've been around for 10 years or something). It can be annoying when advertisers reject you, but there are usually some other advertisers with the same kind of product who are willing to accept you. The catch is that they have a lower payout or are a lesser-known company so they may not convert as well. But I guess you pay your dues then get in with the better advertisers.

It's just probably easier to convert lead offers or Ebay in most cases. Ebay is addictive and people love browsing it. I don't think CJ advertisers are quite the same.
 
I've always found them to convert horribly bad and their stats only update once every 24 hours at least as far as i can tell.

Honestly, I haven't used them since Ebay left, so take it with a grain of salt.
 
Their stats update a couple of times per day. That may not be frequently enough if you are testing a PPC campaign, but it's good enough if you are doing article marketing and seo.

There are thousands of merchants on CJ so you can't say that they convert horribly across the board. Some merchants convert like crap, others convert okay, some convert awesome. It requires a little trial and error to find the right companies to promote. It's easy enough to test conversions.
 
They must charge a lot becuase their payouts are awful. Lots of them are not worth even sending traffic to.

Very slow to approve or respond to emails.

Side with merchants over affiliates.

Screw them.
 
I just email the advertiser after they decline me 90% of the time the will reconsider my application and accept me. Dell was a bitch to get into though.
 
Maybe its just me, but I've sent so much traffic to CJ its incredible. No conversions at all. Even with the free ringtone offer where all you have to do is confirm a cell number. Maybe I did something wrong with the tracking?
 
I think they're great just for the sheer number of products to choose from. I would also check out PepperJam and the Google Affiliate Network.

I do pretty well with CJ but it took me a while to find a few good products and conjamuk is right about emailing after you get declined..this has worked many times just fine for me.
 
I would avoid CJ. I personally like Hydra Network. Very simple to use and the AM's will answer all of your questions.
 
I tried using CJ, but all the advertisers kept automatically rejecting me, once you click on 'apply' it immediately says 'rejected'. Any way to search for advertisers that would accept me, instead of having to find out by trial and error (its a PITA clicking every advertiser only to get rejected) particularly because there are a large number of advertisers in CJ, much larger than I have seen anywhere else.