Commission Junction To Start Reversing Paid Out Commissions On Yahoo
I got the heads up today that Commission Junction is going to start reversing commissions paid from the Yahoo! program. The reason I was told, was that some of the offers I was promoting (with their own linking structure and instructions on how to link to them) are possibly going to be reversed.
I gotta say this is one of the reasons I hate Commission Junction. Yes they have tons of sweet ass programs but how sweet are they if you never get paid?!?! I mean seriously. The CJ person who warned me about it even said she thought I did nothing wrong and it was completely Yahoo!’s mistake yet it appears that I will be losing up to 7k in commissions owed to me. The wild thing is that I was told I am one of the smaller publishers that will have commissions reversed. I wonder how some of the people feel that are pushing some serious cash.
Commission Junction, you messed with the wrong affiliate to pull this crap on. You reverse fees on me that I did fair and square and its ON. Stick up for your publishers for christ’s sake.
I have talked to a few people at Yahoo on the publisher side and they tell me that the ones running the affiliate program are complete idiots and all will be straightened out.
Here is where I have a problem with it… what if I was just a regular person and not a decent contextual publisher? Would I just have to take it in the rear like a lot of the smaller guys are going to?
- 49 Comments. What say you?
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Shoe-
I think you must be new to cj. They pull this sh*t all the time. It must be great to be a publisher there cause you never have to pay out. Its such a scamjob.
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Add that to the >$3k CJ owes me for transactions they reversed 2 months post.
Good thing there is accountability with affiliate programs.
Oh, thats right. There isn’t any.
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Just be patient the affiliate market is ripe for someone to pull the rug out from under cj. Then one day they will wonder what happen to all there money
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I have heard this many times with Commission Junction. Seems they are a company to stay away from!
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Sounds like someone running the aff program at Yahoo is trying to increase the bottom line by f’in over the affiliates.
No matter how it turns out, I’d drop Yahoo and CJ today.
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Geez how are people supposed to manage there budget when you cant count on cj paying?
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http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=77467
(for more examples of cj not paying out)
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Those idiots at CJ owe me for 2 months now over $1k in commissions and they said that they cannot paid me yet because the advertiser didn’t paid yet. WTF is that? So the company can paid whenever they want? BS!
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ummmm anyone remember the greenzap fiasco that cj went through not to long ago. Those guys were total scammers. That was when I stoped using cj and started with linkshare.
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http://www.greenzapscam.com/?p=145
who can forget
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That’s why they ask for an upfront amount first from advertisers in case they go bust/renege on agreements. There is a clause in the CJ contract you signed though (albeit electronically) that allows them to delay payment if the advertiser doesn’t cough up. It’s just one of those risks you have to take in business or refer it to the debt collectors/lawyers/heavies.
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Yahoo have such brand recognition and profits that they can get away with poor business ethics. However this is when politics enters business and shows how some well-placed greedy rogue employees can tarnish a company’s reputation by looking at short term rather than long term profit.
It’s all a case of whether you want to be seen as a “take the money and run” company or one that is looking to the long term and sticks to your agreements. As with all contractural disputes of a similar nature (three way contracts) it’s more difficult when three parties (publisher, advertiser and CJ) are involved.
Yahoo know they can screw around with the small fry and not suffer major fall out over it. The mainstream media doesn’t cover topics on this area very well as they’re only:-
a) just figuring out the internet actually exists
b) tend to concentrate on news coming from the big multinationals - eg Google, IBM etc rather than about the big multinationals
In this case it’s down to going over the CJ agreement with a fine tooth comb. In a similar vein to the Google Adsense and Yahoo Adwords contracts it’s probably going to have a clause buried somewhere that says they can withold payment for whatever reason they like (and probably specify a few circumstances they will - eg item is returned, advertiser goes bankrupt etc). It’s all just business - learn, go the way of the dinosaurs and have good legal counsel.
After all when you’re talking about $4-figure amounts it’s at the stage where lawyers can help you recoup the money.
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More examples:
Flycell not paying?
CJ advertiser Flycell own me 2K - are they going to pay?
CJ is a complete f*cking joke, I dont care how big they are or how f*cking long they have been around!
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I agree with John. The bigger the company, the more it can get away with in affiliate networks. The network is scared to lose them as a client, so they let them pay very late or not at all (like here). I don’t use CJ, but the same thing happens in other networks.
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I never hear anything good about CJ. I think I’ll be avoiding them in the future.
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Shoemoney, Azoogle or bust man!
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Sh*t. You still using CJ ???
What can I say
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All the reason to start your own affiliate program shoe…
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eek too much work for me
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Almost like passing a law to setup a retroactive tax. We didn’t rake in enough cash this month so we’ve decided you’re not going to get paid. Sorry about that.
What’s next?
Dear Affiliate Marketer,
We show that you didn’t make enough for us to consider withholding your check so we’ve elected to bill you instead. Please chose from the choices of payment below by placing an “X” next to it. Please note that you may check more than one option.
Thanks for your time.
___ I would like to mail CJ a check for $1000.
___ Please withold future CJ earnings totaling $1000
___ I’m so pleased I with CJ that I’m donating $_________
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Thanks Jeremy for this post. I love the ease of use with CJ but it has done nothing for me. I keep thinking if I move things around enough something will happen but it hasn’t. I am trying Linkshare and Shareasale and I will work much harder with the other companies and give up on CJ.
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And I see you’re still running Yahoo banners p;
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actually I am waiting to see what Yahoo does. I am going to talk to some execs from search marketing in chicago tomorrow and we will see what comes of it.
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Yahoo and CJ both should be held accountable for this nonsense. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen - my guess is that a strongly worded letter from an attorney would do wonders in this situation. Good luck with it though.
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I think CJ has covered themselves legally on this one, and this is just par for the course for Yahoo. They have no accountability because of their size, but you’re definitely beginning to see that change. People inside the company are seeing the problems, and so they can’t just hide their head in the sand anymore. They obviously have the opportunity to be a great company, but it remains to be seen whether they seize that, or whether they continue the lack of focus and infighting that ultimately will lead to their downfall.
And as far as aff networks go, CJ may have their problems, but other ones are a nightmare to work with. I’ve always gotten paid with CJ (thousands/month), though, so I obviously might sing a different tune if I had been burned. I’m just not convinced there’s anybody better out there.
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No real surprise here I must say. Personally I have never had such an experience with CJ because I quite simply don’t use. After having seen clients loose obscene amounts of cash (just earned cash)on similar events, I stayed clear of this particular company.
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omg, that sucks shoe… and it’s really lame that cj does this…
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Absolutely Unacceptable. Period.
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I passed this post on to a couple CJ employees (I used to work for CJ). It should get some circulation within the CJ office and it should be sorted out soon.
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From what I’ve seen online it appears that CJ is one of the most unreliable affiliate programs out there. I could find 50 web pages complaining of nonpayment in under 5 minutes.
Another annoyance with CJ is if you stop using them for just a short time they can your account. I put like $500 through them and then a couple of months later the account was deactivated for inactivity and my email address was flagged as already used. WTF CJ?
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yep, CJ payout suck big time, and there were a couple of occasions i knew txns went thru my links (cos the people told me they bought from them), and the cookie or whatever didnt register.
wtf….
if the aff network isnt going to support you, bring all your biz to azoogle.
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In my mind this is not even the worst thing CJ does. I recently left my job as Director of Search Marketing at a Fortune 100 to work for myself. One of my direct reports ran our CJ program.
Our average number of leads received from the CJ program was regularly double what CJ actually billed us for. CJ knew the discrepacny and treated it like - this is all our system tracked, so dont worry about the balance. They treated it as if they were doing us a favor and had no interest in fixing the issue. None - we tried - repeatedly.
We wanted to pay these people who were working hard for us, mostly because we saw great things once our affiliates got bigger checks. Their volume increased significantly. We cared much more about the volume than the money it ’saved’ us, as it stands the leads were worth 4-5x to us more than what we were paying (and we were tops in our industry).
We regularly moved people out of CJ to be direct link affiliates (plus we liked the link love) and had to find excuses as to why the monthly checks would triple with only a 10% boost in pay per lead. (We usually said that the landing page was a new higher converting one that we had not switched CJ to yet.)
It was embarassing how inept CJ was at sticking up for their affiliates and how eager to screw them just to please our company they were. Everytime I met with them I left shaking my head wondering how they got to be in the position they are.
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Things will be interesting here at work tomorrow for sure.
Jeremy- Believe it or not many of the affiliate managers here at Commission Junction obviously hate when something like this happens. ALSO believe me we really like to see people like you speaking out. AND that is where I will stop. Please don’t disclose my email or ip address.
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cj and maxbounty should have a contest to see who are the biggest crooks
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Other networks are not better unless you are in the top 5% and sign an exclusive deal with them.
With Shoemoneys size, he probably will be lucky, but I doubt that you will be able to change anything for your readers.
As a merchant and affiliate I always recommend everybody to sign deals besides the networks. One email is often enough to get up to 30% more out of your merchant.
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Not the first time, of course. When we were with CJ, we were earning around $20K a month in revenue. One person complained of ’spam’ from us (I think it was a competitor), couldn’t prove it (even when we asked CJ to provide proof to us), and CJ treated us like garbage, threatening to ban our account.
They are trouble; stay away from them.
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I heard Yahoo pulled this kind of crap on one of their big timers - Jerry West. I heard this from Jerry himself .. talking to him at PubCon Vegas this year. Yahoo will just keep diving downhill if they keep pulling crap like this, and CJ will lose alot of publishers because of screwing people like you. And you are right, what about the little guys that can’t fight for their hard earned commisions even if they are small? I guess they gotta take it up the you know what… I am on board with you if there is anything I can do to get more of the word out and get some results!
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http://digg.com/tech_news/Commission_Junction_Screw_Affiliates_Out_of_Valid_Earnings
Digg version !
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ShoeMoney please set up your own affiliate network! We’ll support you!
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Start a new post when you get news!! I’m dieing to findout what Yahoo says about this!
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hallarious,
There is an azoogle in google ads right next to the story.
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Just out of curiosity what Yahoo products where you plugging using CJ?
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You saved me some effort. I was planning to invest in CJ.
I guess 7K means something.
I support the new Shoemoney Network initiative…
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I´m an old time CJ affiliate (since very long time ago, my site is from 1996), I was looking and thinking about it just today, looking to my son sleepping at his bed this morning and at his side that ancient CJ wood wind pipe that I got from them in their first christmas, that’s supposed to be used to make noise with it when me made a sale. I´ve confess I tested it few times but it never make noise for the right reason! I have quit CJ a time ago! I was right to do so as I can see!
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I hate cj. They owe me only $600, but that since two months, and why? because my routing number is wrong (as they’ve said) but i receive with the same routing number each month cash from adsense, yeah… Strange. Than i tried to change the bankaccount, wanted to send the money to my son in Germany, cj.com told me they can change the country BUT than all my advertisers would go to the status “waiting” and a lot of them would reject me as advertiser… because my country is than outside us/canada. AHHHH, ok… i just wanted my payment to be send in another country in the century of computers, spaceships and the internet, but not change the country in which i live… cj is a totally waste of time, and i promise today were the waves are small, cj will not be #1 any longer, in max. a year from now.
P.S: It took me 2 months to get that information from cj, what i wrote down in 1 min. in shoemoneys blog.
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It is really dumb for an affiliate middleman like CJ to err on the side of the publisher. In the affiliate/publisher relationship almost ALL the risk falls on the affiliate. That is why it is such a sweet deal for companies. Being able to have cost-controlled sales is a dream for any business. So any legitimate business is going to have NO problems paying for legitimate leads. CJ should be going to the wall for the affiliates as they are the ones that ultimately drive ALL the revenue.
Other companies are much better at this, I am just not sure why CJ wants to suck so hard at it.
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I had similar problems, when I was making big sales then next month they would suddenly reverse the commissions.
As I was advertising through google, I always lost money due to my advertising costs and the loss of revenue due to reversed commissions.
Few days back I got an email from CJ that they have terminated my Yahoo Account, and the reason given was that the last 25 transactions came from the same IP address.
I was flabbergasted as how am I concerned if many people from the same IP address bought domains. They wiped away about $400 of my sales .
I asked them to have a look at the IP addresses and try to see where they come from . But I was given a simple answer, that it is confidential.
I spent about $300 on the Google Ads and lost about $450 due to commission reversal.
There was only $40 left in my CJ Account. I was very angry and asked them to close my CJ account completely and I donated them my $40 a protest.( They offered to send me a check for that amount but I refused.)
How can I deal with such a company - I could not operate in this threatful environment where you spend money on the ads and raise some revenue and you never know when and how they will come up with ways to reverse it out or close the account and swallow the whole lot. I would rather play a Roulette in a casino.
It is very flimsy setup, someone clicks on your ads repeated and lol CJ would come and terminate your account !!!!!!!!!
There has to be something better.
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