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Commission Junction Sucks

More online marketers are getting on the “I hate CJ” bandwagon, too.

Commission Junction is the 800 pound gorilla of affiliate marketing.  Commission Junction is the Microsoft, McDonalds, and Sony of affiliate marketing – and we mean in all the bad ways, too.

Commission Junction is a Santa Barbara, CA (U.S.) based company that aggregates many hundreds of independent affiliate programs into a single interface.  By “aggregates,” we mean that you need only log into one interface — Commission Junction’s Account Manager — and apply for and manage various affiliate programs.

You Still Need Approval from the Merchants

That’s the good news.  And for the new affiliate marketer, it seems like a banquet of money-making opportunities.   But the fact is that CJ is just an aggregator.  You still have to apply for each program separately.  Some affiliate programs do have instant approval, but others make you wait for “manual approval.’  While that’s hardly the failing of Commission Junction itself, you do begin to sense the weaknesses of CJ immediately as soon as you’re sitting around and waiting for six programs to “approve.”  You begin to think:  “Why not just do this myself directly with the company?”

Many companies do not have the resources to effectively run their affiliate programs.  Yet CJ does not replace affiliate program management at all.  I look at it as nothing more than a warehouse of offers — and an often annoying warehouse, too.  So, many merchants get lazy, thinking that CJ is taking care of everything.  Quite the contrary.  CJ takes care of nothing.  Eventually, most online marketers have to bypass CJ and contact the merchant directly for some reason or other.

Commission Junction Will Drop You

Yet all of that is just part and parcel of Commission Junction.  What isn’t cool is when Commission Junction drops you after two months because of “account inactivity.”  All of your hard work at setting up ads:  gone in an instant.  We can understand dropping advertisers after some long period of time (one or two years), but two months is ridiculous.

Infuriating Interface

I am probably alone in this respect, but I find Commission Junction’s interface to be ugly and unwieldy.  Since we’re here mainly because it ties together lots of programs in one interface–we’re here for the interface, that is–then why should the interface be so awful to use?

Ebay Dropped Commission Junction

Even Ebay, one of the bigger names within the Commission Junction universe, dropped CJ in March 2008.  So if you have anything to do with Ebay marketing, by definition you will no longer be associated with Commission Junction.

And good thing for that.