I have 3 e-commerce sites selling automotive tools. I joined commission junction in November 2010 and chose quite a few banner (125x125) ads that would appeal to men and mechanics (Like auto parts). I am running different ads for different products on the websites. The area I have placed the ads is very visible on each of the pages (left or right side navigation bars). We get good click-through but no commissions. In the past 3 months I have made $100. It seems to be a waste of time for me with no results but I am not wanting to give up yet. Others seem to have good luck with CJ. I can't seem to figure out what I am doing wrong. Any guidance before I can the program would me greatly appreciated.
What do you know about Internet marketing? Particularly keyword research, website design, SEO etc? It doesn't matter if you have 3 or 3 million sites. You still need to know IM basics. If you are new to IM, I would recommend starting out with reading up on keyword research first. Since you have 3 e-commerce sites you probably know something about website design. Normally, you want to start with the keywords first and then build a site around your keywords.
In addition to the reply above, As far my experience tells me, banners don't convert much. Try text links in the middle of content/article. And also if you put too much banner ads your site will look spammy and visitors will leave without reading your content or clicking through ad.. Your first target should be engaging your readers more and more to what you are providing for them......If you can do that the money will roll, IMO.....
you have to read more. its a good suggestion. i think you need to study on your keywords more. look at other sites that use to have same product ads. try to know how much they earn. what type of keywords they use. think your product is not relevant to your site. it can be a good reason. people just visit that ads to know about it not to buy it. you should be more careful about your product type. try to know what is mostly needed to your visitors. then try to ad those products with a attractive ad. from my experience i can say that right side vertical banner is good for image ads.
Create a reviews section on your website and do reviews of all the products you know a little something about and place a text link at the bottom of each review (even if it's to the same merchant). Banners ads aren't what they used to be.
My experience with affiliate programs (on lots of networks) is that 90% of them aren't worth your time or likely to be profitable. A couple of years ago I sent 10,000 highly targetted clicks to a CJ affiliate offer - and made $3 for 1 sale - a complete waste of 40 hours work setting up 5 websites with hundreds of targetted images and links to their relevant web pages. Now I always test each program by sending 100 clicks to an offer - and if none result in a sale, ditch that offer and move on to another. I use Adwords PPC offering say $0.2 for $2.0 clicks to drip feed the traffic over a week or more - so it usually costs me just $20 a test, rather than $200
You need publish something that will be interested to the visitors. Otherwise it is difficult to get sales
cj sound good, but when you do it by youself, you will find it is very difficult to make money. One is the traffic, the another is which product to promote.
Good comments on this thread, yes it is best bet to do a great deal of research into your own keywords and that of your competitors and build your content around those. Also sound advice from Seafrontsteve regarding marketing and testing, in order to minimise your costs.
Since you own an actual website and the Ads are getting clicks, I would recommend possibly trying out Google AdSense Ads on your website instead of Commission Junction Ads. Only because AdSense will pay you for every click you send, not requiring sales.