CJ: 100,000 impressions, 134 clicks, 0 commission

Is this normal?

[MarkWolk]

After a successful beginning with AdSense, I have installed some nicely relevant CJ affiliate links on my network of travel websites. I have placed them under the Adwords, towards the bottom right of my pages. Agreed; not the most prominent location; but I don't want to grant too much importance to an experiment and, after all, my sites have their own reason of being (which is not primarily to make money out of commissions). I display 120x60 banners together with text links (ca 6 per page).

So here it is. In a month, I have totalled 100,000 impressions, 134 clicks (CTR 0.13%) and ZERO commissions.

During the same time, AdSense (optimized to the max) brought me about 500$ with CTRs of 5-15%.

Is it normal? Should I wait more? Or do I have the proof that Commission Junction is not for me, or at least not on these sites? Or should I remove the banners and leave the CJ affiliate text links only?

Examples of implementation are on the internal pages of the website referenced in my profile.

[GerBot]

There are a couple of reasons for you results:
1) The click numbers are not very high
2) You're not geotargeting like adsense is
3) Advertisers in the travel game push themselves to the limit to be on top of Google. They will not do this for your site or CJ. Just look at their bid price Vs your commission to see this.
4) With CJ.com you are starting 35% behind adsense to begin with.
5) if you put through $10,000+ plus in affiliate bookings you would probably get an commission increase.

[TripAdvisor AM]

Mark,

I would do some more testing if I were you. You should be able to look at the merchants averages within CJ to see how the program/creative is converting for others.

As a general rule of thumb, generic banners convert very poorly. So, compared to Adsense, you've got one set of links that are most likely very targeted (Adsense probably shows specific offers about New Zealand for example)...in your CJ banners though, you could be dropping the user onto the homepage of a large travel site where they have to search for New Zealand hotels, airline tickets, etc. I'm "guessing" that you're not getting super-targeted banners from a standard CJ creative list.? This will have a big impact on your conversion rate.

If the CJ merchant has the option, try creating some deep text links to "specific" pages on their site. Contextually merchandise these links within your content and see what happens. Your CTR should absolutely go up and your CR "should" increase due to your targeting. If you still get crappy results, then it's probably time to move on.

Also, keep in mind what the customer experience is like when you hit the CJ merchants site. Maybe you're dropping them into a New Zealand section, but they might not accept int'l reservations. I've seen this problem before.

Good luck.
-G

[sandor]

cj has always sucked big time for me. maybe i tried it the wrong industries or something, i dunno :-¦

[TripAdvisor AM]

I think it depends a lot on the actual product and the merchant.

I have used CJ (from a publisher perspective) and have done good and bad. I've done pretty well with some auto accessories. On the flip side, I became an affiliate for a tire merchant and got ZERO sales. My referrals were super-targeted, the pre-selling was good, but I got zero conversions over 6 months. Personally, I think people just aren't buying as many tires online since you can go to a local store and get mounting, balancing, etc. for a cheaper overall cost.

So, for me, CJ was great for one type of product, but a complete failure for the other. Sometimes you have to test to find your niche.

[laertes]

I will usually give a new CJ merchant I'm testing about 500 clicks. If I haven't made any sales by then, I re-check the links by clicking on them to make sure they are working and going to the right landing pages. If they are, then I'll pull the links off my pages and look for other alternatives.

[MarkWolk]

Many thanks for your input. I will wait to reach the 500 clicks limit before making any decision. Also, I will remove most of the banners, leaving only text affiliate ads. All my links do work and they are relevant; although geo-targeting is impossible with CJ, I think (I cannot have a specific ad for France displayed only when the site is viewed in France, i.e.). I might also reduce the number of affiliate ads, to gain more relevance.

[danny]

I'd try to keep the advertising to a minimum on a site that's trying to sell a product.

When I saw all those AdSense spots, I assumed your site was providing information about NZ tours rather than offering tours itself.

[MarkWolk]

That's a very relevant remark; however (to my great amazement) I have as many tour enquiries (if not more) after having placed Adwords on my site. Probably ads are nowadays so much part of our life, that a site that does not display any is not credible! And, after all, 99% of visitors to my site can't afford my tours (or are not interested in that type of tour); so I might as well provide them with alternative offers.

[tama]

Sandor wrote: cj has always sucked big time for me. maybe i tried it the wrong industries or something, i dunno :-¦

Same here. Plus I don't know how many times they've had changes to a program or even discontinuation of a merchant without notifying me. I've also had a lot of problems with their links. I'm done with CJ. They have great reports and a lot of programs, but speaking from own experience, they're not worth the headache.

[topper99]

Sandor wrote:

cj has always sucked big time for me. maybe i tried it the wrong industries or something, i dunno :-¦

Tama Wrote:

Same here. Plus I don't know how many times they've had changes to a program or even discontinuation of a merchant without notifying me. I've also had a lot of problems with their links. I'm done with CJ. They have great reports and a lot of programs, but speaking from own experience, they're not worth the headache.

Sandor & Tama, With whom have you had better luck since dropping CJ?

[tama]

I like Performics and LinkShare

[Baraccus]

How about this one?

4300 click throughs, 0 sales.

Seems like CJ is tracking the clicks, they'd be tracking the sales too - or?

[amneziac85]

4300 click throughs... zero sales? yikes! for that many CT's you must be doing something wrong with your linking to make every page load show as a CT.

If not... can I advertise on your site? haha

[Baraccus]

This is over the course of a few months and I'm ranked at the top of MSN for my major keywords, which are quite competitive, so the click-throughs doesn't seem unreasonable - the sales do, though.

I guess I figured that if they were counting CT's, they'd be counting sales too... I'm using redirects that CJ did for me, but I notice there is a?referral=cj at the end of the destination link that I'm replacing...wonder if that has something to do with it?

Also not using the CJ images - using my own - no tracking image. Hasn't been a problem in the past, but maybe it is now - CJ has been terrible lately. Can't even pull up product links most of the time.
Hope that's not stealing my commissions!

Any ideas anyone?

[berrybus]

I had a similar experience with CJ, and then they closed my account. I guess because I didn't get any commissions. Anyways, so let em'...

[skibum]

For some CJ is the best thing since sliced bread, for others, nothing.

Incorporating links into the actual content of a site can work wonders.

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If the aff links are part of the content instead of in an ads section, the CTRs and often times the conversion are much higher.

[jeep98]

Baraccus,

Have you tried contacting the merchant(s) that you're promoting?

I had been running a reasonably successful program w/ a CJ merchant for several months, but in August my conversions hit a wall (literally dropped to zero for about 6 weeks). I finally got in touch with the merchant this week and they told me that they (the merchant) were in the middle of a software update and they were 4-5 weeks behind on reviewing their CJ transactions. The merchant claims that my potential sales are still being tracked, but they're just behind in the reviewing/reporting of commissions (I'm not holding my breath for a financial windfall).

My response..."well, thanks for notifying me in advance." Their loss, since I already signed up for a competitor's program w/ a different network. This experience has definitely reinforced the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" theory for me.

[Baraccus]

Yes - I've tried multiple times to contact the merchant, but I don't get a response. Seems to be common with CJ merchants...having similar problems getting ahold of another merchant there as well. I've also tried to contact CJ to no avail.

My site is a shopping site, and doesn't have an ad section - the site IS the ad section. Since the whole site is set up around this merchant, it's a real problem for me to switch horses in the middle of the game, or I for sure would have by now.

Luckily, I have other sites that are not CJ dependent that are working fine.

I agree with the imbedded links idea - it does seem to produce better results for me than the ad sections on the other sites.

[Drastic]

If your CTR sucks (less than 5-10%) you need to rethink your promotion. Either the program/merchant is wrong for your site or your implementation of ads is wrong. CTR is your first indicator of what you're doing on a promotion.

If you have properly represented the merchant's product/service, then conversions are on the merchant side. If you send a merchant several hundred visitors without a single conversion, wise up and try a new merchant.

If you have questions or problems, contact the merchant. If the merchant ignores you, find another merchant - there are plenty out there who care and are starving for good affiliates.