This post may contain affiliate links for more info visit my disclosure page.
Here we are approaching 2017 and we are still wondering what is Commission Junction about. I can tell you what it definitely is not, Commission Junction is not a scam so you can relax and learn what it really is.
If you’re one of these curious people, it tells me I need to educate you a lot about affiliate marketing which is a good thing because I have lots to tell you! Not only will you learn what Commission Junction is about, but also how you can JOIN in and make money online yourself. Now, doesn’t that sound awesome?
To explain about what Commission Junction is, I’ll be answering all these questions:
- What is Commission Junction?
- Who is it for?
- How can I start making money online with it?
What is Commission Junction?
Commission Junction started back in 1998 as a platform for advertisers (companies with products or services) and publishers (people who use their own marketing efforts to promote the advertisers’ products and services to consumers) to meet in one place so that advertisers can offer their products or services for publishers to promote on their behalf.
Interesting to note that Commission Junction officially changed their name to CJ Affiliate by Conversant in July of 2015, because according to Wikipedia, its parent company had changed its name a little earlier in 2014:
Former Commission Junction competitor beFree, Inc. was acquired by Value-click, Inc. in 2002,[2] before Commission Junction.[3] beFree was gradually phased out in favor of Commission Junction. On February 3, 2014 Value-click, Inc. announced it has changed its name to Conversant, Inc., bringing former Value-click, Inc. companies Commission Junction, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, and Value-click Media under one name. Commission Junction[4] will be known as CJ Affiliate by Conversant.
I will use CJ Affiliate by Coversant, Commission Junction, and CJ for short, interchangeably.
Let’s continue to see how it works once you’re inside the platform:
Publishers use affiliate links, generated in Commission Junction (see image on the right), for the product or service they want to promote and adds the affiliate link to their website where they can talk about the product or service in a blog post for their audience to read about. When their audience clicks on the affiliate link, it goes to the product’s or service’s company website where they can make a purchase, this tracks where the customer comes from. Once the consumer makes a purchase, the advertiser pays the publisher a percentage of sale or a flat fee indirectly through Commission Junction. The payment to the publisher actually comes from Commission Junction.
If I copy and pasted the code, from the image in the above paragraph, in this blog post, you will see this:
If you click on that GoDaddy image, which is linked with an affiliate link to GoDaddy, you will go to the GoDaddy website. If you buy a domain or any of their services on their site, I will earn a commission! Pretty simple and easy concept to understand.
This whole process is called Affiliate Marketing, where you earn a commission as a blogger or internet marketer by promoting other people’s products or services. Advertisers in CJ are real companies from all different niches, take a quick look at their extensive category list on the left and each of those categories have sub-categories.
Advertisers use Commission Junction because they don’t want to administer their affiliate program themselves and this way gives them exposure to many publishers at once.
Publishers sign up at CJ because they can find lots of different products and services to promote at one place. It’s also nice to have your commissions collected in one spot if you’re promoting several different companies. This way you can receive one check or payment versus many small payments.
Another great thing for publishers to join is that one can see which advertisers’ products are earning the most commissions in the Network Earnings column:
With great stats and reports, publishers can pick their products easier and with more confident to see what sells well.
Are there other advertising networks like Commission Junction? Yes there are, many in fact, you can take a look at this post here to find more like CJ.
Who Is This For?
You can call yourself a blogger, internet marketer, online money maker, or whatever you like but Commission Junction is for anyone who wants to make money through affiliate marketing. Making money online this way allows you to earn over and over again once you have your blog post published because many different people will keep coming to your blog in the future, and as a result, creating passive income for you!
If you can learn and understand this concept of affiliate marketing, and you want to be creating a passive online income, then by all means, this is for you. Commission Junction is only one of many offers you can find on the internet as companies also run their affiliate programs directly themselves like Wealthy Affiliate which I’ll talk more about below.
You can be a college student, mom, dad, full time worker, part time worker, retiree, or anything in between, you just need to have the drive and commitment to want to earn money online using affiliate marketing.
How Can I Start Making Money Online With It?
There are four simple steps to online success with affiliate marketing:
Each of those steps has many topics to learn and sub-steps to take in order for you to start making money with Commission Junction or any affiliate program you want to join.
If you think you can do those four steps on your own, think again. You need to educate yourself because I tried doing affiliate marketing on my own before and failed miserably. Now my website is a hundred times better and already making money in its SECOND month!
You’d want to start your online business on the right foot and even choosing your interest is an important step because you want to make sure you pick the right one so you don’t change your mind about it later and then you’ll have to start over again.
Where do I get my education from? Wealthy Affiliate!
Wealthy Affiliate is an online training platform that offers you TWO FREE Websites to start with, and hosts them for you too! They have hours and hours of lessons, courses, and training materials that takes you Step-by-Step from the very beginning (Step 1 above) all the way to earning money (Step 4).
To show you one of the lessons in this 50-lesson Online Entrepreneur Certification course, click on the image below to learn How to Choose A Niche:
Pretty cool, right? They have more than one course by the way, try 12 other Classrooms in total on various topics!! You can see the all the classroom topics in this post HERE.
And guess what’s even more cool? You can join this for FREE with the Starter Membership (no payment info necessary) right HERE. <= By the way, that link is an example of an affiliate program directly offered by a company, Wealthy Affiliate doesn’t join an advertising network like CJ, they offer their program directly to publishers.
Yes, of course that’s an affiliate link, haven’t you been learning all this time? 😉 If you sign up under me, I can really give you a hand and make sure you know where to get help if I can’t help you myself for some strange reason.
How do you know I’ll actually help? There’s a ranking system in Wealthy Affiliate that has over 800,000 members, if you see that image above about the How to Choose a Niche lesson, you can see that the owner Kyle is ranked 1 and his partner Carson is ranked 2 (not in the image), and I’m ranked 115 as of this post and I’ve only been there less than two months as of this post! You move up the ranks the more you help others and the more active you are in the community.
I’m also a Premium member as you can see here in my Wealthy Affiliate profile:
The Premium membership is $49/month or $359/year (saving you over $19/month), but if you go monthly, your first month is only $19. Premium membership opens up the rest of the lessons you’ll need to finish Step 2, and complete Steps 3 & 4 in the 4 Simple Steps to online success discussed above. Basically, if you’re serious about making money from affiliate marketing, Premium membership is a no-brainer!
To join as a Premium member and to see a comparison of the two memberships, click HERE!
I really can’t wait to help YOU on the inside of Wealthy Affiliate! I hope you have learned a lot in this post! If you have any questions or something on your mind, please enter your comment below and I’ll be sure to answer you quickly. 🙂
Let’s make money online!
Hi Grace,
I’ve just begun to dabble with Commission Junction. I was lead there specifically by searching out a certain product I’ve used and wanted to represent with my business as well. Your article pointed out a few things I wasn’t aware of, and I appreciate that.
Wealthy Affiliate, I’m more familiar with, and can’t recommend it more highly. It’s as if I’ve outsourced an entire online marketing and digital specialist department, along with having access to a wonderful group of people.
I hope your post and site helps people find the information they’re looking for. Keep up the good work!
Best wishes,
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
I’m so glad you were able to learn some new things about Commission Junction! They sure do have a lot products to choose from and it’s a great network to join.
You are so right about Wealthy Affiliate! I haven’t thought of it that way but yes, that is true it is like outsourcing an entire online marketing department. I can’t say enough about the whole platform and the community is just incredible. I really love it there!
I wish you much success Kevin! Thank you so much for stopping by!
Grace
Commission Junction is definitely one of the best affiliate marketing network sites that has a huge selection of actual products. There’s just so much money to be made online and thanks for sharing some valuable information here “Little Mama”!
Thanks John, I totally agree! Commission Junction is one of the biggest advertising networks out there so you have quite a lot to choose from. There is much to be made online but only with the right tools and education on how to do it! 😉 That’s why joining a platform like Wealthy Affiliate is the way to go!
Thanks for stopping by John!
Grace
Hi,
I’ve been using Commission Junction for years and can say that they are the
“store front” of many great companies in the back.
They pay on time and are easy to work with.
The only thing to consider is that if you are new getting approved by them, make sure you have some traffic that will turn into sales. They give you limited time, I believe it is 6 months, if you don’t have any sales by then they close the account.
Thank you,
Vicky
Hi Vicky,
Thanks for your input! Yes, I believe a lot of advertising networks are like that, if you don’t show any sales for 6 months they will close your account so thanks for pointing that out!
Hope you are finding online success! Appreciate your thoughts!
Grace
I haven’t tried Commission Junction but I am using Shearasale now. I haven’t done so many experiences yet since I am pretty new to the online business yet. Maybe I will try out Commission Junction in the future.
Thanks for sharing.
Tove
Thanks for your comment Tove! ShareASale is another great affiliate marketing network to find products to promote. This is great you are using them to monetize your blog. You will soon find that your sales will start coming in if you can keep up with creating valuable content on your blog for your audience.
Wishing you best of luck!
Grace
Hello, Grace, I know that Commission Junction is not a scam. As a matter of fact, I have used that platform in 2013 and 2014 but did not make anything out of it because it only offers affiliate products with less training as to how to make money from it.
I think if you don’t have experience in internet marketing it will be pretty much useless for you to go to Commission Junction even though I know registration is free.
Anyways, thank you for this very user information.
I agree Nnamdi, that’s why you beginners or even people who’s been doing this for awhile but not achieving success should partner up with a platform like Wealthy Affiliate so you can learn properly HOW to build an affiliate marketing business. It’s crucial to know how to set up your website properly from the beginning and each step after that is also crucial. Wealthy Affiliate’s courses does such a great job to show all the steps in a logical order and build your website out properly that will get your organic traffic from search engines.
It’s critical to educate yourself in any line of business and for affiliate marketing, Wealthy Affiliate is the way to go!
Thanks for stopping by and wish you much success!
Grace
I found your idea is so authentic and reasonable. I was already in search of such online business of internet market . And thats my way to start though. How much money probably can we earn in a year?
Hi Arooj,
Thank you and I’m glad you liked my post. It’s great to hear you already have an online business, I hope this post has helped you in some way. If you follow the teachings of Wealthy Affiliate, you’re the only limit to how much you can make. I’ve seen people earning as much as $100K/month, it just all depends how much work you put into your business.
I wish you much success!
Grace
Hey Wilson from W.A. you have a great post over here, keep them coming
Thanks for stopping by Wilson! Appreciate it. 🙂
Thanks grace . Keep up the good work.
Thank you Arooj, appreciate you reading this article!
Hi Grace
I was unsure about using Commission Junction – it always looked so complex. Your article has made it so much clearer in terms of how to interact with them.
Adrian
Hi Adrian,
I’m so glad I can be of help to you in this post about Commission Junction. It’s not that hard to use and you can find a lot of affiliate products and services there. I hope you can use it in the near future for your website!
Thanks for visiting!
Grace
Ok so if I got this right, Commission Junction is something like Amazon right? Except Amazon promotes products providing affiliate link and by promoting those products we as Amazon affiliate marketers get paid by Amazon.
Commission Junction is a platform that gathers companies not willing to have direct affiliate programs and pays us for promoting those companies.
I hope I got this right. I am going to sign up through your link and check it out 🙂 I am going to be your referral now 😀
Yay! To our success!
Best,
Sunny
Yes Sunny, there are many companies offering their affiliate products to affiliate marketers to promote in Commission Junction. That’s just one of many other networks. However, it’s not wise to join too many at once unless you have steady traffic to your site already.
The way you explained how it works is correct, Commission Junction will pay you instead of all these individual companies paying you. It’s just easy for companies to get affiliates without implementing their own programs and process the payments to affiliates.
I hope you will get good use out of Commission Junction!
Grace
This is great to know what Commission Junction is because I’m new to affiliate marketing and thinking about starting this. Where can I start this?
Hi Wesley, I would start it at Wealthy Affiliate as they have all the training you’ll need to be successful in this business! See their full details here which will be worth your while to check out because they have a LOT of features plus you can start for FREE!
Best of luck!
Grace