Does Commission Junction Really Work?

If you been searching for affiliate networks to join, you’ll no doubt run into Commission Junction at some point. They’re the home of thousands of different affiliate offers, all under one roof. It’s an eclectic mix of digital products and physical products, as well as offers that just require an e-mail address or a sign-up for a payout. But are they legit, and can you actually make any money with them?

Overview
Commission Junction doesn’t make many big claims, because they don’t have to. They’re one of the largest affiliate networks in the world and several Fortune 500 companies use them to help promote their products. The claim that is understood is that you can make money by promoting these products and offers, and Commission Junction will handle all of the tracking and payouts. They don’t dock your payments directly, and have obviously reached some sort of agreement with the advertisers to get their cut of the action.

The Hype
The hype comes from so many well-known companies using Commission Junction as their affiliate processor. This gives a lot of credibility when you see so many names and logos of companies you recognize. You might get excited that you’ll be able to represent and sell for some of these popular brands.

The bubble of this type bursts when you realize that each program has its own approval process, and many times you’ll get rejected by the large corporations, as they’re looking for super affiliates and not people just starting out.

The Cost
As a publisher it doesn’t cost anything to get started with Commission Junction. There is an approval process that you need to make it through so be sure you fill out that application as best as you can so that you stand a good chance of getting in.

The Commitment
When you use Commission Junction you need to send massive amounts of traffic to your sites in order to get enough people to click through your affiliate links to generate sales. Getting traffic is one of the hardest things to do as a Webmaster and there are countless courses that claim to be able to help you get it. You have to commit yourself not only to getting traffic, but also analyzing what that traffic is doing.

You have to familiarize yourself with things like clickthrough rates, conversion rates, and whether or not you’re getting a good return on your investment, or ROI. This is no system for the armchair entrepreneur that just wants to dabble in things that make money. This is for those that want to treat it like a true business and reaped a long-term rewards.

Evaluation
As far as Commission Junction working or not, it’s a sophisticated system that tracks your sales accurately and is trusted by some big-name brands. As far as whether or not you can make money with Commission Junction that’s an entirely different matter.

In my personal experience Commission Junction has shown a lot of promise, but not a lot of cash. I was accepted into the overall program, but was repeatedly denied approval by many of the programs that I wanted to join. Some of the programs had automatic acceptance, but these companies sold products I wasn’t very interested in.

I did have some success their pay-per-call call program in which you advertise a toll-free number and if people stay on the line long enough you get a commission. I advertised on the ad mob network and people actually called the number by clicking the banner on their phone and a few dollars showed up in my account. I never made enough to cash out or receive a check, but it was still exciting to see it work. I never had any worries that I was being shortchanged for many commissions, and the statistics seemed valid.

A walkthrough of the CJ interface:

Final Commission Junction Review

with so many companies trusting their affiliate payouts to Commission Junction it most definitely works as far as accuracy goes. If you’re going to build a business around it you’d better learn how to bring traffic to your website, because these businesses want to see that their products will be shown to lots of visitors.

There are literally thousands of offers that you can promote through their network, each with their own percentage of payout. If you find a winner, you can make a lot of money quickly, but you might have to kiss a lot of frogs to get there.

The other thing you have to consider is whether or not Commission Junction is the best network to advertise on your site if it is getting all that traffic. You should test out different monetization methods for that traffic like AdSense, Amazon affiliate links, or CPA networks. You never know what visitors to your site will respond to, so it’s best to try a few different things you can see what performs best.

Our Recommendation
There’s no reason why you can’t make money with commission Junction, it’s just that it’s long, steady, uphill climb. You have to work for a long time before you start seeing any results and most people don’t have the wherewithal to stick with something that long without seeing results. If you need to make money quickly, this might not be your best choice. But you should definitely consider adding it to your arsenal as a long-term strategy.

What do you think? Does Commission Junction work or not?