Commission Junction (CJ)

We are a brand new to affiliate marketing thought it would be great to build traffic and gain access to good publishers for content - only after we were on boarded did we get the bait and switch..."oh if you want that kind if support you must pay us 20K a month to mange your account" as a start up we cannot afford this hefty additional fee. In the meantime, we have managed on our won but the caliber of sites is horrific we search high and low and the number of new publishers wanting to work with us is meager and the type of sites are real trash... mostly foreign accounts with web pages that look like the worst websites you have ever seen... quantity not quality... most of the publishers here are clearly not vetted by them - this place is the swamp of advertising vehicles DO NOT get locked into a long contract run - do not sign up. Spoke to
Another company and hearing that this one "is going under" in the time we have been working with them their employees are leaving in droves. Forget getting anyone on the phone after you are up and running. This is a PONZI SCHEME

I was a Cj.com member. At some point I received money from cj.com nevertheless, I noticed the website was very slow. One day, my affiliate program has been stopped for no reasons. However, my affiliate links were still in place on my website and there were always functioning. In other words, I was still sending customers to their website but I didn't receive money for it. Other times, I have subscribed to affiliate programs. Since I didn't make enough money cj.com closed my account several times. However, from a marketing point of view, visitors of my website still clicked on the affiliate links and visited the target website. I subscribed to other affiliate programs and had no problems at all. Cj.com is special. This is i think one of the only website with which I had problem. Furthermore after closing my account, they sent me spam.
Cj.com looks appealing to webmasters and merchant but in fact, many affiliate programs are from websites that look like scams and aren't serious. A website owner can suffer from the bad reputation of those affiliate programs. Website owners waste their time with affiliate programs that aren't serious at all.
Furthermore, the website itself cj.com wasn't available or very slow several times.

They never answer support queries, they don't payout, and they can't give you a statement of what was paid out by who - If this isn't a true testament to a scam company - Then I dont know what is - Reporting is nonsense it shows you nothing - I have pulled every report I can and still I dont understand the data as it changes constantly - The statements they provide are so undetailed that you will never be able to see what they have paid out. If you ask them they tell you to ask the affiliate for a report - what company handles money from one to the other and then just simply has ZERO audit trail of funds. You statement will say locked in balance $1000 and they will pay you &400 IF YOU ASK WHY THEY JUST IGNORE YOU - WORST COMPANY IN THE WORLD! BELOW IS A HALF-ARSED RESPONSE AND THIS IS WHAT YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO FROM THEM! They know nothing, they steal from publishes

Issues
1. I cannot see what you owe us- Pulling reports is a waste of my time as you constantly change the amounts even when they are locked in.
2. The statuses "Posting date" Event date" and "locking date" change the reports so drastically there is no uniformity or logic.
3. What do the above statuses actually mean? Nothing online about them - I cannot pull a report per affiliate because this status constantly changes the values owing, so how do I know which one is true?
4. How can I have "new" statuses over 7 months old? Goes against what you state on your support page. I have statuses of "new" from a February report. How is this possible?
5. You dont pay us out monthly?
6. You constantly change the commission amounts? How can a report for the same month with different statuses regarding posting and locking dates ect be so drastically different?
7. Your balance sheet is a joke, there are no dates or references to the balance sheet amounts and there is no way to track this with transparency from your end.
8. You don't even give us a monthly report or allow us to pull one that is logical, So how am I supposed to track my commissions and where it actually comes from?
9. Things go from "Locked" status to refund?
10. I have tried calling several times and nobody answer and I am unable to leave a message as the option doesnt work.

My name is Jenson and I first joined CJ.com in 2004 and things used to be well in those days. (At least I thought so) During those days my method of integration was just pasting the links they provided me. I used to see a lot of clicks, but the conversion was very low. But I thought maybe it's how it works.

Then l started to log the customers' details prior to sending them to the affiliate to make the purchase. I also cross-checked with them to find out if they purchased the product and how useful it was to them. Some of them indeed purchased and shared the proof with me! That's when I started to notice the foul play by CJ.com. They have not tracked many of my sales which resulted in a real loss of income. Because each link I send to my customers was UNIQUE! With is "sid" customized specially for them. So, it's easy to track at my CJ.com end. Customers could not even manipulate the links because the links were masked at my server end using server-side redirects.

Those who stayed with CJ.com from the 2004 days, really know very well what I am speaking about.
CJ.com has not updated the interface or usability really much. They still stick to old methods and what makes me angry is I spend quite a lot of time perfecting my series of websites and maintaining relations with my affiliate partners to give them the best results, and hoping I also benefit from it... but all my efforts went in vain.

My time, effort, health all get affected without results because of this useless affiliate partner CJ.com who does not even care about their publishers!

If you notice closely you will see that they are not transparent at all. A good company will have a transparent customer service platform! Why are they scared to open up such a service? They simply swallow millions of bucks from advertisers! It will only take a fraction of it to maintain it guys.

Now what I follow is to use several other updated platforms and even though it takes some effort I work directly with the affiliate companies using their own in-house affiliate programs.

I still use this bloody platform for finding advertisers! I am attaching proof of communication with an advertiser and CJ.com official for which I still haven't got a reply from the platform nor the advertiser who managed the advertiser account with CJ

One hell of a scam company. Good for nothing! Maybe good for beginners, but when they master the trade, they will definitely move out to the better platforms.

Commission Junction CJ is totally a scam company. Mark my words it's a % scam. I worked for 3 months, literally slogged like anything. I use to get good impressions but didn't get converted into sale. So I thought of experimenting with one software related affiliate link. I forwarded the affiliate link to my 6 friends & told them to purchase the software by using this link & I paid them back. To my surprise it didn't get converted into sale. When I asked CJ about this, they told me that no sale happened from my affiliate link. From that day I stopped doing any kind of affiliate work & any home base job.
The scam work like this, they hire some paid artist & post video on YouTube and other social media platforms. This paid artist tell people how he or she didn't made any money for 3–4 months & after that sales begin to pick up. They will show you sales dashboard & $ awesome money they are making now. Then they will show you how they are sitting besides beach side & money falling from sky. This is totally enticing & people fall for the trap. I would also like to tell you here that even if you are earning money from this, it will not be full money you will be getting for your hard work. But it will be quarter of money for what you have slogged for. Even if you stop working guys, this scam is going to work for lifetime because every year lot of people are going to graduate and they will be looking for this kind of home based job. They will work for few days or month's before giving up. What I mean to say here or draw attention to, is that you are kind of doing free marketing for them, driving traffic to their clients website. Also if you are working for some small company & you didn't make any sale for that month, you are definitely going to get paid by the company. If something happens to you ex COVID while working, the company guys are definitely going to ask about you & pay for your health-care. But in affiliate thing if God forbid something happens to you, then CJ affiliate or any other affiliate program is not going to enquire about your health but instead they will pocket your money & not give your hard earned money to your loved ones. In reality You are just bot for this people driving web traffic to their clients website. So guy's instead of working for this fraud affiliate program, go get a job or start your business.

I have a cashback wabsite and i'm working up 3 years for affilite marketing i'm working with sharesale and clickbanck and other big companies they have a good services and paying to the commissions to my costumers but this scamming company commission juntion they are big scam peaple they stealling money of my costumers they deactivate my account today 16th of this month befor they paying date 20th thats mean the advertisers paying to them and CJ took the money and close the account without warnings or explanition it should from them open a case on the account and explain the ploblem and ask for reasons and try to fix the problem if that be but they are a scamming and thifs don't waste your time they close your accounts befor paying date like me and all the publishers i open a cese aginst them on BBB and FTC and by the govrmment FBI please i you have the same problem go and repport for them the stealling from me over 4200 dollar they are big scam

Looking for such reviews, I wish I had seen these bad reviews on Commission Junction when I joined them in August. Although it's easy to get accepted into the program, the member dashboard is good and I was given a 2nd chance after deactivation on March 1, I don't know where to start regarding what's wrong with this service. Here are the things I dislike about them: 1) It's too hard to reach their support team; 2) If you close your browser, you must login again even if you didn't previously log out; 3) You must accumulate $100 to cash out by check, $50 to cash out by direct deposit; 4) Page loading is slow; 5) Advertisers are allowed to go many months to approve or decline your application to join them; 6) Some advertisers will invite you to join them by email, only to turn you down upon applying through your CJ portal; 7) One advertiser dropped me within a day of approving my application; 8) I've made no money here despite my efforts, my running their advertiser banners on my blogs, my posting their brands discounts on Facebook; and 9) Advertisers are miserly in which some of them state on their banners you'll receive a certain amount of money for generating banner clicks in a 7-day or 90-day period but never pay you no matter how many visitors you continually send them - this can hurt you if your account is deactivated and you're charged a dormancy fee for not earning any commissions for 6 months.

My name is Tyler Odin and I am the CEO of AffiliateWatch. CJ has deactivated me for no reason, literally. I have used CJ.com for over 1 year and my earnings were constantly increasing month after month. My website had an entire section dedicated to CJ and I have done dozens of YouTube video reviews. I told 100's of affiliates to sign up for CJ and now I sincerely regret it. I was a level 4/5 earner and a super affiliate on the platform. The company has gone silent now and is not responding to me. I have not been paid out. The worst thing about all of this is that I was a huge NordVPN affiliate which pays residual income. So CJ will be cashing in all my checks for the next 5-15 years on my residuals, which is most likely why they cut me out of the network for no reason. Unless you have serious Klout, CJ will steal all your money and walk away smiling. They are an evil company ran by people with zero morals. I am going to report their theft to the FTC, BBB, and law enforcement. I will not go down without a fight and they will regret stealing from me and other affiliates as their reputation sinks in the toilet.

I will be releasing a YouTube video soon with all the details!

CJ refused to give a reason and sent this super vague email:

CJ has exercised it's right to terminate the Publisher Service Agreement (PSA) it entered into with you pursuant to §6(a). Notification of our intent to exercise this right was provided on 5/22/19. For ease of reference, we are including the applicable section of the PSA below:

(a) Term. This Agreement shall commence upon Your indication that You have accepted this Agreement by providing the required information and clicking through' the acceptance button on the CJ Web site and shall continue until terminated in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. This Agreement may be terminated by either party upon 15 days' notice.

CJ Affiliate by Conversant - former Commission Junction is definetely stealing sales. I've started promoting their links through social media abbreviating their links with Bit.ly and I earned 1000 USD in just one month. When payment was near they postponed it by warning me to stop using bit.ly and "heavy clicking". I stopped that and they paid me.
After that, using their links on my site (Deep Links, Text Links, Automated Deep Links) suddenly, no sales anymore, they disappeared.

Although their webpage (members.cj.com) seems outdated, they don't have neither a mobile version, they can perfectly control the number of clicks they want you to see and of course the number of sales they want you to believe you have. For example i see more impressions of their banners in the Control Panel of my website, that that they show on their Reports. That was not possible for them when i used bit.ly, it's something that goes behind of what they can control.

Definetelely CJ Affiliate by Conversant - former Commission Junction is a scam, crook, cheat and a District Attorney/Prosecutor should take care of them.

If you live in the USA maybe you can do something for them to get paid, Just have a look at the countless complaints against CJ Affiliate by Conversant - former Commission Junction in the websites of the Federal Trade Commission and Better Business Bureau. But if you live outside the US and you're a simple blogger, they will just drink a glass of champagne laughing at you. Most people understand this, and CJ's Alexa rank dropped by 70% in the last 12 months.

Stay away from them and from affiliate marketing in general. They pay you crumbs and keep your hard earned money in their pockets.

Many, many times I have been standing behind someone who clicks on something to buy - legitimately - like a client buying a hosting package or a friend buying a vacation trip etc...

I look at my backend page for clicks and paid clicks and guess what? Nothing. After 10 years of having sites that probably generated tens and tens of thousands of dollars and who knows maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars, I have received a few checks amounting to a few hundred dollars.

I have spent hundred upon hundreds of hours doing review sites, adding links, trying to get more companies to allow me to use their links, figuring all the new ways CJ has changed their site, learn their classes and info they give and tons of my life has gone into placing their links on all my sites... and for what... over ten years... PRACTICALLY NOTHING! If I look back on my life, it was like I worked for Commission Junction and all the big companies they represent and I got paid about 2 cents an hour.

Stay away from all this. Find another way to make money. This is a rip off and a waste of time.

I almost forgot one of the biggest problems and reasons why CJ sucks, when I would have a problem with a company not giving me my money, like Hostmonster or Hostgator (which are owned by one company, Endurance International Group... look that up some time... how EIG has taken over hosting and monopolized the hosting world and ruined any decent service left... anyway) CJ would leave me high and dry and tell me I have to deal with them and they won't help EVEN IF I HAVE GIVEN THEM SPECIFIC TIME AND DAY OF SALE... CJ sucks.

Find a better revenue stream... it's out there. Not here.