Who Is Stealing Your Commission Junction Hard-earned Money?

This is a disturbing revelation:

...some CJ affiliate places a page with a hidden Iframe containing a valid CJ affiliate link. When a visitor lands on the stuffed page, the IFrame calls the affiliate page (ie: an eBay listing or GoDaddy page) that sets the tracking cookie to the stuffer’s affiliate ID. I know a lot of PTS (paid to surf) and PTR (paid to read email) scammers have been using this technique and I’ve even seen a few shady forums pulling this stunt to steal commissions.

A lot of watchdogs in the GPT (Get Paid To) industry are very adamant about weeding out sites that engage in click-fraud (enticing people to click PPC ads) and cookie stuffing with IFrames. > read more here...

 

Your point being what exactly? Cookie stuffing exists, just like click fraud exists in Adsense.

 

Who Is Stealing Your Commission Junction Hard-earned Money?
Me

 

CJ themselves are, 3 high priced affiliate sales and according to them "they didn't happen".

 

I know of that happening to me at least twice as well.

 

Yes, the people who purchased the items have received them and even posted photos of the them.

I wouldn't be surprised if the CJ system automatically scrubs out 1 sale for every 5 or 10 made.

 

CJ makes their money by taking a percentage of the commission (usually 30%) of whatever you're paid. If they don't track a lead, that means they don't make any money. Therefore, your theory makes no sense.

 

The poster of that comment has no clue what he's talking about. Any sort of forced page-load for offers (frame, iframe, popup, etc...) is against CJ's TOS. CJ has a Network Quality team that monitors for these violations - they employ both automatic spiders and humans to check for this.

Any affiliate that tries to pull something like this won't be in the network for long. It's not isolated to CJ - it can happen anywhere.

 

Unless they're cheating and taking 100% commission, then it makes sense.

 

If my theory makes no sense, you can join my affiliate program anytime. I just won't record half your sales and pocket the cash, that fine by you? If course it is right.

Also it's not a "theory" the leads converted through my link, i know that for a fact.

 

I work on both the publisher & advertiser end of things. I can tell you that the numbers that I see in my affiliate account always match up with what the merchant reports for me. Therefore, CJ is not skimming.

There are reasons why it might not track, usually related to cookies - but then, nobody gets paid. The other reason could be a problem with the advertiser's dynamic pixel insertion system. But no, CJ is not skimming leads & taking your money or the advertisers' money. That would be illegal based on their contract with you, and I can guarantee you that their system is audited by a third party.

If you have any issue, bring it up with the advertiser. I've seen advertisers accidentally delete all tracking code before...

 

TVMatt, your reasoning is convincing. I just hope that CJ would come out clean and guiltless from the above allegations. Let's hope for the best.

 

Just as a quick side-note, as an advertiser, I can tell you that no advertiser wants to pay for traffic from iframes, forced clicks, or anything of the sort. It takes away commissions from hard working affiliates (especially ones driving hundreds of sales/leads per month) and increases costs for advertisers, and CJ is very serious about terminating TOS violators.

If CJ didn't terminate these accounts & actively look for them, they'd lose many high-paying advertisers to competing networks.

 

Also, CJ must clean up its own backyard. Otherwise, advertisers and publishers will run to the new Google Affiliate Network. CJ must be vigilant at all times, never tolerating any form of evil practice in the online world.

 

Scarey talk. Hope they dont scam me. Bolo will have something to say about this..

 

The Google Affiliate Network isn't new - it's been around for a long time as Performics before Google acquired it. Its interface is still pretty bad, and it seems like they'll run just about any offer nowadays (because of low fees?) - but it's an overall poor user experience. I can only hope that they completely redo their interface (and integrate with Google, possibly integrating tracking for AdWords etc..) so that there's some incentive for me to use them.

 

I have no plans of joining the Google Affiliate Network as of yet. I still believe Commission Junction is the best in the industry. ShareASale may come close to the rank, but CJ provides the best usability experience. I particularly like the Smart Zone Codes.

 

More merchant might use this way to steal their affiliate information and money. Just make sure you have a good anti-hacker program.

 

I've been a member of commission junction for a while and so far it seems like a fair set up to me. I'm sure they have their problems, but at least they are one of the bigger more reputable affiliate companies in the business.

 

Hi,
It is quite disgusting. After putting in so much efforts, if somebody steals, it is very difficult to digest. Good piece of information.