Commission Junction – Quick Stats

October 25, 2008 on 12:32 pm | In Questions and Comments | 2 Comments

Hi Tony!

I recently purchased your book and have enjoyed reading it. I found a CJ program that allows direct linking and have been running ads for the past 3 days. This is a “4 Bar” advertiser with an average EPC (3-month and 7-day) of about $30.00.  I have written my ads carefully and know I’m sending qualified traffic to the site.

When I look at my “Quick Stats” on CJ, it does indeed show I have produced about 250 clicks thus far. However, my commission earned is still a big fat $0.00. I certainly would’ve expect to see *something* by now!  So my question is, how long does it take for CJ to post commissions? Is there a 2-3 day lag before commissions are reported to CJ? Does it depend on the program?

I’m just curious if I should be continuing this program or if I’m doing something seriously wrong – or is it still too early to know.

Any feedback is appreciated!

2 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. Heartsbane,

    In most cases, CJ programs post conversion results within a few hours to a couple days, but there are two notable exceptions.

    1. Occasional reporting delays due to system problems – This is not the likely problem, though, because you would almost certainly have been notified of any delay resulting from a problem with their reporting system.

    2. Batch Processing – This could very well be your issue. Some CJ affiliate programs do not report each conversion to CJ as quickly as possible, but instead collect transaction information in batch files and send them to CJ at iregular intervals. These intervals can be weeks or even months. If you look at the program detail page, there is a batch processing field thta will say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If it says ‘yes’ then they use batch processing, and they should have a Last Batch Processed date just below that. If the date is before your clicks, then they have not yet provided CJ with conversion information on your traffic. If the date is at least a day or two after the clicks you are questioning, than the conversions may in fact be 0%.

    When I started programs that I thought would do well, and realized that slow batch submissions were delaying confirmation of my campaign’s success or failure, I would typically shut down the campaign and wait as long as it took for the next batch to come in and confirm the success or failure ofthe campaign. I recommend you do the same, even if your confidence level is high.

    Even when you send good quality traffic, there is no guarantee that the site you are sending them to is going to do a good job of closing the deal, even if its a good deal. So play it safe.

    Tony

    Comment by Administrator — October 26, 2008 #

  2. Thanks for the feedback Tony! I was hoping in this case that the Advertiser was using batch processing but looking at the detail page on CJ it says “No.” I’ve paused my campaign for now to see if any commissions get posted over the next several days, but I’m not hopeful after reading your comments.

    Perhaps, as you indicate, the site isn’t doing a good job of closing the deal.

    Thanks again for the comment – this has been a learning experience.

    Comment by Heartsbane — October 27, 2008 #

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^