Affiliate Programs CJ.com - Commission Junction - not paying?

[MediaHound]

That's not the problem.
It's a tracking problem, not a 'funds' problem.

 

[cwsteam.com]

does cj track it as a sale for u ? If yes, does eharmony not accept it ? technically, CJ should be able to log the sale too....that's how CJ is supposed to gain the interest of merchants as well as publishers..>!!

 

[JuniperPark]

CJ does track impressions, clicks and sales, but in the case of eHarmony I am told that this is done manually, so there should be a delay of a few hours.

Still no response from CJ or eHarmony. They will be getting an angry phone call Monday morning.

MediaHound -- My web operations are operated as a corporation, a separate entity. I signed up with eHarmony as a customer on my own behalf. I don't think there is any rule about comissions for employees being excluded.

 

[MediaHound]

I'm just trying to help figure out what happened.
The cookie might have been not credited when it was read becasue they matched it up with an affiliates IP. I dunno man I give up on this.

 

[deepstar]

CJ IMO is very bad. If they are relying "solely" on cookies then that is not a campaign I would show. Most good campaigns can pass leads/sales etc through the browser in case one has cookies disabled. I have dealt with CJ for many years and I have never enjoyed working with them. There are dozens of better networks and agencies to deal with.

 

[Nova]

There are dozens of better networks and agencies to deal with.

So many? I'd be curious to hear about 4 or 5 you have in mind. I haven't found anything I would say is better than CJ, and their account software is excellent.

 

[deepstar]

So many? I'd be curious to hear about 4 or 5 you have in mind. I haven't found anything I would say is better than CJ, and their account software is excellent.

We happen to show a lot of College related campaigns so my choices maybe different from someone that shows credit card offers. Either way, I would definitely recommend.

advertising.com
Affiliate Fuel
CUNet
High Voltage Interactive
CPA Market
Venture Direct
Some of the BeFree campaigns
Direct Response (the old directleads.com)
Web Sponsors
Some of the Link Share campaigns

 

[JuniperPark]

UPDATE:

Message from CJ:

Thank you for your patience as we researched the Eharmony transaction.

What we learned is that Eharmony has a record of the transaction. But, the transaction is not tracking properly and is not being recorded as a commissionable CJ transaction. This is an active Eharmony link and used successfully every day by other publishers. And, since the code is correct, we're unable to explain why when you clicked on it, it does not track properly.

During this process of exploration, we reviewed your account and saw that alot of your traffic is coming from the same IP address. Are you buying traffic? If so, have you considered not using this source, as it is resulting in a high number of clicks without sales?

Please contact me with any further information, or your response.

-----------------

My reply:

Ok, so eHarmony knew they had sales from my referrals, the tracking system
was working correctly, but they "accidentally" kept the commissions and "accidentally"
ignored all communications on the subject? That's what we call FRAUD. Its obvious
that eHarmony knew they were caught and refused to respond to emails.

I would like to know how and when Commission Junction is going to compensate me,
and what kind of penalty eHarmony will pay now that they have been caught cheating
the system. I would like to see any and all communications from them, since I will
be letting other webmasters and site owners that eHarmony has been caught red-handed cheating publishers through the CJ affilliate program.

On the subject of traffic, we have never "purchased" traffic. I have done a great deal of analysis of traffic over the past 15 days, and found that our pages were visited by over 20,000 unique IPs, and CJ's reports show 24,000 impressions during that time period. We actually had 433,000 page requests, with 47% going to the Google site indexer, and 4% to the Inktomi web crawler. 3% were by "China Network", 7% to "Access TV", and 3% to a UK based company... I do not know why these people are accessing our pages. I assume there are some clicks from web indexers, but I have no way to control that.

------

 

[Nexus]

During this process of exploration, we reviewed your account and saw that alot of your traffic is coming from the same IP address. Are you buying traffic? If so, have you considered not using this source, as it is resulting in a high number of clicks without sales?

I get the impression MediaHound is right, and there are inclonclusive reasons for them to disregard the webmaster from making a buck off his own click (thereby counting the purchase as "commisionable"). They seem to be heavily implying some funky stuff there though. Sounds like the best way to test, would be to go over someone ELSE's house, and use THEIR machine to make the purchase, and then *never* sign on to CJ using that machine (and check your account).

AOL once suspended my AOL account (I use it for testing... really...) and when I asked why, they said there was the possibility an account had been compromised remotely. I asked them what the evidence was... and they couldn't tell me. I'd given my friend in Cali an screen name, so that was prob. what set them off... but they wouldn't tell me. He's since moved on to his own Internet connection... but I think companies try to ferret out anyone "gaming" their system, and will be difficult about giving information out regarding their "tracking" practices. If they openly discussed what made the purchase "suspicious", there'd be nothing to stop anyone from collecting a body of information that makes it virtually impossible for CJ to determine if they're "gaming" the system.

Shortchanging "honest" customers from time to time is a acceptable risk I'd guess (when measured against being defrauded like a spigot).

I guess that's how I see it.

Regards,
~ Nexus

 

[MediaHound]

yup
makes perfect sense Nexus

Regards from my Traffic hotel

________
add a comment:
I wonder if JuniperPark told them that the one sale was himself...
they'd have replied "who's the real fraudster", though..
lol

 

[s2kinteg916]

isnt it against tos to buy through your own affiliate link

 

[David G]

isnt it against tos to buy through your own affiliate link

Perhaps and I know some firms enforce that insane rule, including Dell Computer. But why in the world would the firm care if you ordered and paid the same price as others pay using your affiliate link? What difference does it make anyway as the more orders the better of course? Why would you pay more than others to place an order, if anything you should be rewarded for sending them business and even pay less, not more? It makes zero sense why some affiliate programs say that.

 

[harleyx]

Perhaps and I know some firms enforce that insane rule, including Dell Computer. But why in the world would the firm care if you ordered and paid the same price as others pay using your affiliate link? What difference does it make anyway as the more orders the better of course? Why would you pay more than others to place an order, if anything you should be rewarded for sending them business and even pay less, not more? It makes zero sense why some affiliate programs say that.

They do it because they can get away with it, because 99 out of 100 people never even bother to brush through a TOS/EULA/PP. Ever.

 

[JuniperPark]

I just returned from the Webmasterworld.com conference in Las Vegas, where Kerri Pollard of Commission Junction was a speaker. She ENCOURAGES publishers to make purchases through their own links, and told everyone to do their holiday shopping through their own sites.

I also confronted her on the eHarmony fraud issue... she took my card and said she "would get back to me".

There is still no resolution to this, and I am still considering filing a fraud complaint against both eHarmony and Comission Junction. There were others at the conference who suspect fraud at Commission Junction, but none of them have the concrete proof that fraud was committed that I do.

I get the impression MediaHound is right, and there are inclonclusive reasons for them to disregard the webmaster from making a buck off his own click (thereby counting the purchase as "commisionable"). They seem to be heavily implying some funky stuff there though. Sounds like the best way to test, would be to go over someone ELSE's house, and use THEIR machine to make the purchase, and then *never* sign on to CJ using that machine (and check your account).

This is exactly what I did, and why I can conclusively state that they committed fraud by not paying for this purchase.

 

[ClearBlue]

I have had the same (though not with E-Harmony) experience with CJ. My link code was changed without my knowlege. CJ does not respond to my questions.

 

[options]

Anything new about the issue Juniper?

 

[JuniperPark]

Anything new about the issue Juniper?

No response from eHarmony.
No response from CJ

I will confront their VP again she gives here "CJ cares about publishers" speech at the next conference in April, and IT WILL BE UGLY. I'll print the proof of fraud and pass it out to attendees during her talk.

Commission Junction rips off publishers, and does not pay EVEN WHEN CAUGHT RED HANDED. That's the bottom line.

 

[Jeffreyw]

Any update?

 

[kodeking]

I'm curious too

 

[BLazeD]

I have had similar problems with CJ... Wasnt through the same advertiser - but over 1,000 clicks later I still have zero sales or leads