Merchant Based Affiliate Networks Are Incredibly Behind The Times
I’ve always had a soft spot for merchant nased affiliate networks like CJ & Linkshare. Their breadth of offers is just incredible. In the past i’ve mainly used them for monetizing organic type sites. Lately i’ve had some ideas for pushing paid traffic to some of the merchants in these type of networks. I’ve set up some profitable campaigns but the affiliate networks have so many flaws that I think actually keep some of the largest potential affiliates from promoting programs on these networks.
The biggest issue is that tracking is at least 24 hours behind. It’s very difficult to push paid traffic to an offer and not know how it backed out for you for over 24 hours. To combat this, I have to set really small budgets, wait 24 hours to see if I made a profit and then increase the budget over a day later. It makes scaling very difficult as you are inherently taking a risk on not knowing how your campaign is performing for quite a while after the traffic is purchased. I have to give props to shareasale here. I recently ran a small test with them and the reporting was in real time.
Another issue is that all of the affiliate programs are run by individual companies. You need to manually apply to most programs and wait forever to get a response. If you are declined on CJ, there is no way to appeal. If for some reason, one of the merchants gets a bug up their ass about your sales, they can just reverse the sales with no repercussion.
In my opinion CJ & Linkshare need true real time reporting and need to actually manage the programs for these merchants more in the way CPA networks do.
Your thoughts & experiences?
“If you are declined on CJ, there is no way to appeal.”
Not so fast there, Brandon. 🙂 I’ve had great success w/ (after being auto-denied) just emailing said merchants affiliate department asking to to be granted permission to run the program. Try that.
Valid point. Sadly your still lucky if you can see the reporting within 24 hours. Sometimes it can take a few days.
You could always give share a sale a shot. They offer real time tracking and have some very large brands like Eastern Mountain Sports, Manhattan Portage, Mario Badescu, etc….
I’ve had pretty good luck with emailing if I’m denied and then getting approved, especially at cj.com
cj offers a pretty decent API and have for awhile so that was a bit forward thiinking
but the tracking is really lame. The part I really don’t like is I can’t figure out from merchant to merchant whether they update real time, hourly, daily or what?
I’m not an authority but I’d say with CJ the challenges you mention are very true. But they seem to be on Pacific time, so I can get results for the previous day at their midnight. So if you stay up late enough (and most of us do) then you can see how you did.
The other issue is individual merchant approval; pain. But it’s a Bobby Brown kind of situation-their prerogative. The TRUE problem is payout. Lot of merchants want to a give a 7, 8, 9% on a $100 product/service. Yeah right. So the challenge is to find something with an epc you feel good about or something you’re pretty sure you know how to market no matter what the epc says, but the payout is right for how much you’re spending. Otherwise organic is the way to go.
This week I’m dealing with Shareasale via email about how best to market their offers using paid traffic. Including revisiting a stats conversation I had with them WAAAY back in April when I spoke to them about their limited stats;
“I’m also wondering if there is some way to generate a little more click traffic stats. For instance my 3 recent sales of all come from different sources I’m trying, but I have no idea how many clicks it took from each source to get a sale. The “today” stats just seem to show the most recent ONE of the day. Is there some way to get more information that I just don’t know how to do? I’ve looked through the help section…”
“David:
There is no set report that will show PPC type stats in our system. If you go to your details report, you will see where the page banner was clicked from on each on of your sales.
Unfortunately, not all of your merchants have signed up to track their click history in the todays stats, so you would have to follow the number of clicks in the activity summary report. I would also check the SAS forum…”
CJ’s tracking is NOT 24 hours behind. Transaction reports update within 2 hours of a sale being made on pixel merchants (most merchants are pixel merchants in CJ). Performance reports might be a bit more delayed, but transactions post to CJ the hour after the hour in which a sale is made. I used to work at an agency and ran a number of CJ affiliate programs (in addition to programs in Linkshare & brokered out offers to CPA networks), and still am a publisher in CJ, and transactions are still posting within 2 hours. You might need to wait longer for clicks to post to performance reports, but you should be using your own click tracking, anyway.
couldn’t you do your own tracking?
Pretty much what you have to do.
In an ideal world affiliate networks would have a cpa network style stats; real-time, ballpark data so you can get an overview and not have to sit on pins and needles about what you’re spending. But, it is what it is.
I agree and think CJ does need to change. Affiliate marketing is changing some and I think more mainstream offers will be the norm for bigger money and more long-term websites. If CJ had the same tracking as lets say Azoogle then they would dominate many markets. Even though Clickbank is just ebooks and services I would have to say they have some of the best tracking as they allow you to see the analytics of the traffic you sent once it hits the sales page.
@SSG – From my understanding Clickbank is always delayed too
not true. LS sucks but CJ has potential. You can find great lead programs with a strong brand there. Tracking is real time too. lack of pixel tracking is a pain though
i find most networks are missing something.
the networks do not actually give u the information an affiliate needs to make money!
like keywords, real time tracking, effective ways of contacting the merchants, PROTECTION.
What i dislike is if a merchant disagrees with what u are doing or they make a mistake etc then they can get commissions withdrawn without telling u anything.
there was once instance where my affiliate link got “confused” with trade bidding when i do nothing of the sort, all my commissions where removed for the whole month.
After talking to the merchants and my AM it ended up being a bug in the networks system.
Does some1 even do good volume with paid traffic and ls/cj/sas? It seems such a pain
Great post! I am just starting out in community management/marketing media and trying to learn how to do it well – resources like this article are incredibly helpful. As our company is based in the US, it?s all a bit new to us. The example above is something that I worry about as well, how to show your own genuine enthusiasm and share the fact that your product is useful in that case.
CJ is terrible. Watch out for mechants that say “Action locks in after 30…60 days”.
CJ reversed $800 worth of HostGator sales for my brother.
Then they reversed $1000 worth of Phone.com sales for me…two months later!
It really does take 60 days to validate the lead…right ? 😀
This makes paid advertising ROI/EPC tracking almost impossible.
Whatever you promote via CJ, don’t EVER promote PHONE.com – they will f**k you out of commissions two months later without any consequences.
Imagine such reversals taking place in CPA networks…not gonna happen…but for some cryptical reason CJ allows it 😉
Last episode with CJ was this month when they mis-sent my check and wanted $40 from me to re-issue the new one!
For these reasons I only drive natural SEO traffic to CJ. Media buys would easily become a suicide…say two months later LOL
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