Statistical reporting has been off and on this week. So I paid someone to buy something from one of my affiliate links. Checked the cookies to make sure they were being set before the purchase. 4 Days later the sale is still not being tracked. This is why I don't do much CJ stuff anymore. What's the point if they can't even track a simple sale?
If you're sure that the cookie was set, that's kind of worrying. However, I think everything works fine for me . . . At least I hope so, anyway!
What advertiser was this for? Generally, tracking issues are related to the advertiser not firing the pixel (rather than CJ not tracking) - CJ's tracking is pretty accurate. View the order confirmation page & see if a CJ pixel is on the page. You probably won't be able to recognize it, but I know what to look for - if you PM the sourcecode of the confirmation page to me, I'll let you know if the pixel is there or not (it's usually a 1x20 px image, but not necessarily).
I've wondered about tracking myself. I'm also a member of Linkshare and for a test awhile back I changed the link code of an advertiser (who is on CJ and Linkshare with the same offer) to Linkshare and the number of transactions skyrocketed. Changed it back to CJ and the number of transactions were stagnant again. Not sure what's going on there. On average I make $1,200 - $1,500 a month from CJ. However, in October I had increased traffic to my sites, but my commission was only $450 for the month. Go figure. When your payouts are consistent with your traffic and traffic increases, but commissions decrease by 60% - 75% then you have to wonder if something strange is up...
Here's one more interesting note. My ad software tracks affiliate clicks. So I counted the number of clicks on a campaign I'm running and then compared it to Commission Junctions report of clicks. My ad software counted 52 clicks on the CJ Campaign banner I was running for yesterday. Commission Junction only recorded 14 of those clicks for yesterday....
Hmm. I've had pretty steady results with one CJ offer for quite a few months, that is until recently. I thought it might have finally run it's course of become stale. But maybe it's the tracking. Seems like almost everybody is having issues these days (CJ, CB, EPN).
There's a thread like this in another affiliate marketing forum regarding CJ's tracking. It does go in and out sometimes, but that's usually due to maintenance purposes. It does come back with all your needed info eventually so my advice is just to be patient with CJ's tracking. One member of the other forum noted that it is kinda irresponsible for CJ to this without advance notice. I agree with that, however, i learned just to live with it because i know by the end of the day, the tracking will be done properly.
CJ filters out any clicks from bots, spiders, etc... CJ has every incentive to track your commissions properly, since that's how they make their money (the standard rate is that CJ earns 30% of whatever commissions you make). What advertiser(s) are people talking about in this thread? I'm earning over $10k/mo in CJ - the advertisers I currently work with are reliable, but I've seen a few examples of poorly coded dynamic pixel insertion systems that drop sales from time to time. With that said, I haven't found this to be the case with the majority of advertisers.
That's amazing! Hope this doesnt count towards not conforming to the rules, but would you be interested in joining my program. i'm looking for publishers who have a strong track record of being successful and can drive traffic and increase conversions.
We don't use any bots, spiders, etc.. We have an ad management program on our sites that record every time a real person clicks on an ad. I started comparing this to CJ and noticed that they aren't recording all of the clicks - only about 30% of them, which is very curious.
Comparing my AdWords & Yahoo click stats (or my internal system, for advertisers that don't allow direct linking) with my CJ click stats, the click numbers are roughly the same - Performance Reports may take a while to update, but after 24 hours, the numbers are virtually the same.
Yes, I am also seeing a few possible drops...but then sometimes there is just a big delay between the event and the reporting.