Should read the terms more carefully, and unlucky. Why didn't you withdraw all your money right away so they couldn't take away any of it? If I had $12,500 in CJ I wouldn't leave it
How could you withdraw it? Once advertiser question your commission it will remain on the pending commission until the issues have been resolved.
Good lesson for those who don't take the time to read an affiliates terms and condition. Really can't feel bad for anyone.
Sorry to hear about this. I feel with you. One question that enters my mind is, why dont you cash out the money before ?
This has already been answered (see post #23). CJ only pays out once each month, you can't take out money from your account.
As I mentioned, you cannot take money out of your CJ account. CJ pays you your commissions each month, unless the advertiser puts a hold on the commissions. There's no way to carry a balance over multiple months, otherwise.
Obviously your first mistake was not reading the TOS, as if thats not bad enough, you assumed where you should have investigated. A warning notice is a flashing red light, especially when another violation would carry a hefty financial fine or worse, losing a good source of income. If I compare your situation to my own behavior under the same circumstance... A while ago I received a violation warning from Google, though I had a vague idea of what it might be on one of my sites, I immediately took down ALL adsense ads on ALL of my sites as soon as I finished reading the email. Only than I went one by one through all my sites and checked the code and design for any possible violation before brining the ads up again. Indeed it ended up being what I suspected to begin with, but as the saying goes, better safe than sorry. And to be corny a tiny bit more.... Assumption is the mother of all mistakes!!! In the end you learned your lesson, too bad it was so expensive. But don't be discouraged it could have ended up worse.
Honestly, IMO they told you to stop bidding on their keywords, you should have done so. If you didn't ask if .co.uk was okay, why did you assume it was? They don't want you bidding on their trademarked terms bc it just drives their own bids up.
Actually Ebay was quite friendly here. They had all rights to not pay anything as the earnings were done outside of the TOS. Most other companies usually take all earnings and ban you as well when their TOS is violated.
honestly, I am done with this topic. My forum post was miss titled, and its tone was not my intention. Lets just leave it at this. Follow the TOS, be overcautious, End of Story.