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In the last part of the Make Money from Your Blog series, I covered the ins and outs of ClickBank. Today’s contribution to the series covers the long-time affiliate program Commission Junction.

What is Commission Junction?

Commission Junction, or CJ, is one of the largest affiliate marketing networks online, operating worldwide as a middleman between publishers and advertisers. CJ serves over 1,500 customers, including eBay, Buy.com, and Yahoo! Unlike ClickBank, which offers many e-products, the majority of products offered through CJ are tangible.

What are the benefits of using Commission Junction?

The most significant benefit of utilizing Commission Junction is the seemingly endless variety of products available for publishers to receive commission. CJ has over 1,500 customers, each of which has anywhere from one to thousands of products available. The products offered all seem to be of relatively good quality, meaning publishers won’t have added difficulty finding worthwhile products or making a sale.

Are there any drawbacks from using Commission Junction?

One drawback of using Commission Junction is that the CJ Account Center is a bit difficult for a new user. It can take some time to get a handle on where to find products, links, and the appropriate reports.

Another drawback relates to the time required before being eligible to market a product on CJ. After being accepted to the program, each company must also accept a publisher into their individual program before he or she can market their products.

So how do I get started?

After completing the Commission Junction publisher application form and being accepted into the program, you’re one step closer to offering products as an affiliate. Logging into the CJ Account Manager and clicking on the “Get Links” tab lists the many categories and popular sub-categories of companies available to CJ publishers, such as Business > Marketing, Games & Toys > Electronic Games, and Books/Media > Audio Books. Clicking on one of these links will display the list of companies offering programs through CJ, as per the below screen shot.

After locating businesses with products for which you are interested in becoming an affiliate, the next step is to apply to each individual program. Applications may take several days to complete prior to being accepted. Once accepted, you will be eligible to receive credit for affiliate sales.

In order to offer products, providing product and service links and images is necessary for making a sale. The CJ Account Manager offers an easy-to-use tool for retrieving these links. Once again, it’s necessary to locate the store for which you wish to offer products. This can be done using the steps mentioned above, or — once accepted into a program — by scrolling down the the “My Advertisers” section of the Publisher Home screen after logging in. Links are available in a variety of forms, such as text links, banner ads, and contextual ads, but specific offerings are dependent upon each program.

How do I track my earnings?

Commission Junction’s reporting interface is very refined. Included are performance reports and transaction reports.

The performance reports provide a means by which to track commissions earned, sale amounts generated, total clicks, and click-through rates. The data can be filtered by date as well as specific criteria such as link ID and advertiser. Reporting top advertisers by commission earned is also available.

The transaction report is available for tracking information relating to balance and pending commissions. Similar to the performance report, there is a large number of filtering options such as filtering by date, advertiser, or transaction type.

New publishers should note that there is a minimum payout of $25 US (varying by country). Payments are made on the 20th of every month only if the account’s balance was above the minimum at the end of the prior month.

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