At one time, if you won't mind my saying so, I probably would have been considered a seasoned and successful affiliate marketer. I took a hiatus from web stuff for a while, but am now plunging back in full throttle. However, there seems to be an impediment thrown up by CJ for which I have no explanation. I've had an account at CJ for a number of years, and, at one time, enjoyed a nice revenue stream from CJ conversions over a wide range of products and services. I would see conversions on average every 20 to 40 clicks, depending on the merchant. I've been receiving hardly any commissions through CJ for several months, and just went over the numbers. While my traffic slacked during the aforementioned hiatus, I see that, nevertheless, over the last couple of months, I've had over 2,000 click throughs with no sales. These include a lot of click throughs to a merchant that used to convert about one out of 20-30. And, then, for this year, in over 10,000 click throughs, there have been only eight sales. These clicks have gone to a variety of merchants covering a variety of products. And, those sales were earlier in the year. Since I'm just beginning to pay attention again to CJ (setting up a new eBAy agenda via phpBay and BANS), I'm wondering if there's been some kind of dramatic change in affiliate marketing, or if I've not been minding the store properly. After all, once there's a click through to the merchant, converting is out of your hands. I can't imagine that I'm not sending the same quality traffic that I've sent before. I was talking with another seasoned affiliate who used to generate thousands of $$ monthly through CJ and who reached the point where he was terminated for inactivity although he had changed nothing and was shoving the same amount of traffic to CJ merchants. He decided to go with the private program offered by one of his better merchants, and the commissions immediately began rolling again, better than before. I find this quite worrisome and making no sense, and would appreciate getting insights from experienced CJ affiliates. I expect that if I took this up with CJ, the answer would be tough you know what. Aside from moving on to other networks, are there possible solutions?
I would verify that all of your links are correct. You may have 'old' rover code, etc. Also you may want to check if you're setting SIDs with bad values, etc. Are you showing invalid links on the home page of CJ? If traffic is the same, etc.. you might want to verify that all links are working. hanji
Thanks for the suggestion. I'd have to check, probably over a thousand links. How 'old' is the rover code? I recall updating just about everything within the last three years, and some of the stuff is within the last six months. I've been launching a bunch of new sites with CJ stuff, and getting pretty good traffic on some of it with click throughs but no conversions out of hundreds. Is there some kind of CJ doghouse?
I too often feel that CJ is broken. I've had so much more success with direct partnerships and with CB than I have had with CJ. I have had some success with CJ (I'm at 4 bars... but if you are in CJ you know how little that means) but... I just shake my head at my lack of conversions with some of the traffic I have sent. I just don't get it. It often seems like the tracking must be ... lacking. Who knows. It's probably just something I'm doing wrong.
Interest read guys, i've just been taking a look at CJ for my diet related site and have changed over two pages of adsense for some target CJ ads... lets see how it goes...
It seems like a lot of us are experiencing this low conversion thing, but as I say to myself "What can I do?". I know for sure that if I ask CJ about this I will not get any answer. They will just say I check everything on my site. Now I want to ask you Is there anything we can do?
Here's the track I've been on: High conversions to medium conversions to low conversions to pitiful conversions to no conversions. I don't think my links are broken. I just checked a sampling of them. I got pretty savvy at this game over the years and have to wonder why affiliates with lesser skills than mine report good conversions while I'm down to zero. Again, it makes absolutely no sense. And, I agree, you'll get no meaningful answers from CJ. If anyone else has been on my track and seen a comeback, it would be great to hear about it and what it took.
Yes, many of us would say that CJ is broken. I'm wondering if it's a parasite problem that is driving down the conversions.
CJ says it has a program to fight parasites, but I've never found that to be credible. If they have one, either they don't use it, or it's ineffective.