CJ from an Advertiser's Point of View

Does anyone have experience as CJ advertiser?

[BillingOrchard]

I'm looking into possibly using CJ.com to run our affiliate program, but wanted to get some feedback first on how well it does for advertisers. Our product is an online billing application for freelancers, web hosts, web designers and consultants.

We have a free 15-day trial and are trying to determine from an affiliate's point of view if they're more interested in a lower pay-per-lead (around $2 per free trial), or would rather see a pay-per-sale (about $25).

Also, CJ is fairly expensive for our ad budget on the setup and monthly minimums, so I'm interested in feedback from others who have used CJ to run their affiliate programs.

Thanks.

[hdpt00]

Why not offer both, pay per sale and pay per lead? A lot of programs do this.

[ChrisSanderson]

If CJ is too expensive then consider some of the smaller networks such as shareasale.com

Cheers

Chris

[anallawalla]

My former client uses CJ for promoting a service and has neither a complaint nor high praise. It just works, which is probably how many advertisers see it. The advertiser interface is quite easy to use.

[MovingOnUp]

For such a small niche, it might be hard to generate enough affiliate sales to justify the monthly minimums. For instance, if it just generates 20 sales a month, you'll pay $500 in commissions and $500 in minimum fees, making your cost $50 per sale. A network like ShareASale.com would probably do better for you.

I would recommend paying per sale, not per lead. There's too much fraud in leads, especially with such a huge payout. You might see a 1 in 12 conversion of leads into sales, but with poor quality (or fraudulent) affiliates, you'll see considerably less. I guarantee that within a month of putting up a $2 per lead offer, you'll have some affiliates generating 1000 leads per month with none of them converting into sales. Other affiliates will generate leads that do convert into sales, but why not just avoid the hassle and pay per sale?

[BillingOrchard]

Thanks for the feedback. We used Shareasale back in 2002 and we didn't get a lot from it other than a lot of incentivized leads and a lot of management to verify leads. Maybe we'll revisit that again though and pay only by sale. I'm sure their network and our product has come a long way in those years.

Thanks again.