Forum Moderators: skibum
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I have no clue how they will collect this. I'm figuring it is designed to get rid of a lot of non-performing affiliate sites. But isn't it a bit harsh? What do you all make of it?
Spike
[edited by: Woz at 2:33 am (utc) on Feb. 27, 2003]
[edit reason] TOS#9 no email excerpts please. [/edit]
I wonder how the advertisers will feel about their affiliates having legitimately earned commissions stolen this way and what legal bases do CJ have in taking this hard earn money from affiliates?
Its all very well saying if your not making money in 6 months then why bother, but for some, making even small amounts is not easy at all and can take longer than 6 months to build a working affiliate sales strategy.
From what I gather about CJ's way of working, it shouldn't be difficult accumulating some income over a period of 6 months. I do think though, as opposed to requiring a $10 fee as a voilation of this, they would be much better off simply removing the member based on inactivity.
That way, they're not burning any bridges. Just one man's opinion though.
I told them how tacky and un-professional this makes them
sound. I just signed up with them last month and most of that time my site (being new) was dropping in and out of the index.
Finally I am getting about 1400 uniques per day and around 2500 page views. I am not so impressed anyway with the affiliate program thing thus far. I have put up several
banners for several merchants and what not and have made only 9 dollars (not even from cj).
Does anyone know how many visitors a day I have to be receiving to see better results from these affiliate programs? Also, are banners or just simple "text" links
better?
I don't see the idea of discontinuing accounts if no results are achieved as being a problem. However it seems that the mechanism of charging $10 is just making life much more complex than it needs to be.
I've parked CJ for the last 6 or 8 months, so I'm one of the publishers that will have to decide whether I want to stay or go. That said, I agree with Drastic, if you're in the game at all you can make this a non-problem with a flick of the keyboard. Sure, there are all kinds of what-if scenarios that we can dredge up, but the fact is this is a standard business practice. Even here at WebmasterWorld, the membership files are purged due to inactivity. And it's very, very common in the bricks world.
Is it a nuisance that I don't want to have to bother with right now? Yes, definitely. Is it a big deal to me? No.
>...purged due to inactivity.
That would be fine, if that is what was happening - I don't think it is.
You have to go ask them to delete your account RC. There is no voluntary purging - looks like it is all on you to Opt Out or get billed.
What is happening here is the normal (albeit money grubbing), growth process of a dot com.
First they start off hungry, they'll take anyone.
Then they start getting selective.
Then nothings free and the little guys who helped them build their business in the first place get the door slammed in their face.
They're not done yet, more surprises will come.
the quarterly member file weed. Those members who have not logged in, sometime in the last 120 days will be weeded. (those with more than 50 posts are exempt). This keeps the member files clean and duplicate free.
[webmasterworld.com...]
[edited by: rcjordan at 5:13 pm (utc) on Mar. 1, 2003]
Either way CJ gets your money. Isn't that the goal?
I just got this letter too. At first I was thought, "Oh crap, now I have to try to remember my password so I can go cancel my account". Then I read they will just delete my account if I don't have $10 in it. HOPEFULLY they stop sending me all of those spam e-mails trying to get me to advertise new companies and other crap that I do not want.
As far as the weight of this dead wood. I would say that all of my information on CJ takes up maybe 1kb (being generous here) of database space. Obviousley it is going to be small because I never made a sale and had few click-thrus. $10/mo for 1kb, they found a better hosting service than those picture hosting web sites.
It would probably be "nicest" if they just paid everyone their outstanding balance and then closed the accounts. However, I would guess they have a decent amount of money owed between all of these small stagnant accounts which they want off the books. So, what are their choices?
1. Pay all balances owed on stagnant accounts and then close them, many of which are probably worth less than the cost of the stamp.
2. Take their approach, which they figure would only hurt the stagnant users who don't produce for them anyway. By charging $10 and then mailing the rest, they avoid having to pay what is probably a huge amount of accounts that are under $10 and not really worth processing and mailing a check. Those that have not been producing, but have over $10 will be glad to get any money, as they never would have seen the check anyway. I wasn't aware that they are going to mail the balance after the $10 charge though - but I didn't read all the fine print.
3. Leave the accounts stagnant, which shows probably a nice chunk of change in their debts owed. Not good for them, and not good for the publishers that have an outstanding balance but aren't producing - they are probably figuring they will never see that money anyway. I doubt there are many (if any) people who have been sitting at $90+ for the past 6 months.
If they are in fact mailing the balance after the $10 charge, they are doing a very nice thing to those affiliates that are not producing. If they are not going to mail the balance, but keep charging $10 / month until the account is closed, they are not being very nice, but it is the best finanacial move. Not many producing affiliates are likely to leave over an unfriendly move that doesn't effect them.
"If Publisher has not earned a Payout for six consecutive calendar months, a dormant account fee of US$10 per month shall be applied to Publisher's Account each calendar month that Publisher's Account remains open or until Your Account balance reaches a zero balance, at which time the Account shall become deactivated. Payouts earned by Publisher will not be counted as having been earned by Publisher if the Payout subsequently becomes a Charge-back or until the Charge-back period has expired (if applicable). Publisher may close its Account and terminate this Agreement upon 30 days written notice in accordance with Section 6.1. The number or amount of Transactions, credits for Payouts, and debits for Charge-backs, as calculated by CJ shall be final and binding on You. "
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So, basically, you can ask them to terminate your account and get the balance. Otherwise, they'll deduct $10 per month until your balance is zero, then close it.
VERY good point I had not considered. I was thinking it would help Merchants to minimize some of the non-performing affiliates that tend to lower EPC ratings. Had not though of all the free branding Advertisers will miss out on. I guess there are tradeoffs as well as pros and cons no matter how you look at this new change.
Linda
1) Minimum check amounts for CJ are $25, $50, $75, $100 and $250. It is not a minimum of $100 that has been referred to several times already.
2) How accurate is EPC anyway? If someone is starting a new site and making constant revisions to it, the EPC will be distorted and seem to be low relative to a mature site that needs less maintenance.
Ted
Who needs them, I was looking for an affiliate program when I found them!
Time to start looking again :)
P.S. I also never liked the fact that thier links placed a tracking cookie on visitors computers with out even clicking it!
My choice is to either throw away the traffic, or send them on, in the hope the US merchant can sell them. According to CJ the lack of conversion is my problem and I should pay for clicks to get more traffic I can not sell to in order to stay in their network?
I agree that it probably wasn't a very good PR move on their part. Had they simply told me that since I wasn't making any sales, they were going to close my account, I wouldn't have been nearly as offended. As it is, I'll remember to avoid CJ from this point on.
CJ has been far too high maintenance anyhow, so I'm better off without them. Unlike so many others I hear from, I'm doing fairly well with Amazon.com - not enough to earn a living from it alone, but it more than pays the hosting expenses for several domains.
Very very stupid of CJ. Not likely to affect me, but if they do bill me even once, I am leaving and I am NOT going back. They must be really desperate for money to throw out the baby with the bathwater like this.
It's definately not just new, unestablished sites that are getting hit.
Eventhough we have sent across over $700 worth of sales in 12 months, we will just fall short of the 6 month window for no sales come March 28, 2003 (literally by days!)
What makes this even harder to accept is we had an order placed just weeks ago which was later reversed by the merchant, not due to a bogus order, but apparently "out of stock" (Though this wasn't stated on their website!)
As we can't justify the $10 charge - the only option we have is to request payment of the outstanding balance and leave CJ.
We have sent across $762.07 worth of sales in 12 months and have a healthy CTR of 1.04%
I'm left wondering if we really are the type of website CJ are looking to weed-out as "underperforming". Anyways we're migrating to Linkshare..
Stephen
Welcome to WebmasterWorld.
Why do you have such a severe drop in clickthroughs over the 12 months? $700+ in 6 months and nothing the following 6 months seems unusual.
Ted
$700+ in 6 months and nothing the following 6 months seems unusual.
Has anybody else notice a drastic increase in their linkshare emails since this hit the fan? mine have tripled....at least somebody's on the ball.
