Banned from CJ
June 5, 2007 Posted by Tyler CruzI’ve been banned by Commission Junction.
Back in mid-May I had tried to log into Commission Junction to grab some links, when I was presented with a “Our records indicate that your account has been deactivated.” message. I had assumed there must have been a mistake since I’m probably the most “whitehat” guy you’ll ever find. Plus, I never received any notification that my account was disabled via phone or e-mail.
I did a Google search and it appeared that I wasn’t alone. A lot of people seem to get random bannings from CJ without any notification at all. Apparantly from what I gathered from my short research, the most common reason for deactivation is 6 months of inactivity (no sales)… which is strange, since my account was idle for around 5-years until a couple months ago when I started trying this affiliate marketing thing. Maybe their system doesn’t start detecting the no-sales ban if you show no impressions at all or something.
I’m sure this is in the rules somewhere, and while I think it’s a silly rule, how about a courtesy phone call or e-mail notification? Especially in the world of affiliate marketing where many marketers use pay-per-search; banned members who are not notified by CJ could be spending a lot of money driving traffic to their site, only to find out later that CJ banned them. I mean what’s so hard about sending an e-mail out? It’s all automatic…
Anyhow… now I’m kinda glad they dropped me. Who wants to work with a company that does stuff like that? I’ve also been hearing a lot of bad things about CJ. It’s difficult to be banned by them though since so many large merchants are signed up exclusively through them. That’s the only thing they really have going for them. Their support stinks; they never answered my numerous support e-mails.
I phoned them and get this: they actually have it on the automated phone support that says publishers automatically get deactivated if they earn no income for 6-months, and CJ advises those members to “sign-up with a new name”. What? That makes absolutely no sense to me. Why can’t they just reactivate your account? For one thing, it means you have to re-apply to all of the many networks, which can take months to be accepted to, and the worst part: as a result all of your links will change and you’ll have to hand-update all your sites and pages with the new ad code and tracking media…
So yeah. Not a fan of CJ. Ironically, I’ll probably resign up with them again sometime… I kind of have to. To reiterate, many large merchants are signed exclusively with CJ so I don’t have much choice. But I’ll only use them for merchants that are signed exclusively with them. For everything else, I’ll continue to use AzoogleAds and Copeac. They’ve been treating me well. I’d encourage others to do so as well.
It’s been a while since I talked about my affiliate marketing plunge.
Those series of posts garnered a lot of attention… and mockery. Many of my critics seemed to have enjoyed watching me lose $1000. Apparantly my failure brings others joy. Talk about schadenfreude…
Do I care? No. I’m not #1 on Google for “lazy ass internet marketer” for nothing. I’m also obviously not an affiliate marketer. It was something I tried, and will revisit when I’m bored again. I’ve also never claimed to be rich or anything, nor claim that my blog will teach you how to make money. Am I rich? No. Do I make a decent living working a couple hours a day? That’s up for debate.. Don’t forget that my blog is more a work journal, and once in a while I write some helpful and useful articles.
I think one reason I’ve had an influx of “comment trolls” lately is because people are expecting step-by-step tutorials on how to make money. They then visit a few of my websites and base me entirely on them, as if all I’ve done in the past few years was put up a few simple forums…
But that’s fine. I’m in the public spotlight so that comes with the territory I guess, and I’m used to it.
24 Responses to “Banned from CJ”
It is annoying CJ doesn’t email a deactivation, but you don’t have to create a new account these days. Login as normal and ask to be reactivated. Your existing programs will still be there.
wow.. wait.. idle for around 5 years? that’s long lol
btw, i’m not banned from CJ, but i quit, because i never make money from it. i brought a lot of visitors to them, but i got nothing. so i quit 😀
oh, looks, you forget to close the font face arial thing, so it continue to the next paragraph on the first one 🙂
oh mm one more thing.. i’m sorry dude 🙂
Any publicity is good, whether its bad or good. I wish I ranked number 1 for lazy ass internet marketer. Thats awesome.
Tyler,
I got deactivated due to the 6 months thing, I just called them and they explained the 6-month rule to me and reactivated my account immediately.
I’m not an affiliate marketer either, but just trying to get enough raw content to start getting clicks.
I seem to average about 1 amazon click per day on my blog, but it doesn’t convert worth shit since I don’t do any sort of pre-sell on the stuff yet.
I think you timed this post perfectly Tyler 😉
I was in the same boat, deactivated due to inactivity. To be told that it was impossible to be reactivated really annoyed me. I tried signing up with different details but for some reason it never worked.
When I tried after reading this post they showed the terms and conditions again with a “reactivate now” button.
Seems to have worked without a hitch.
I imagine so many marketers complained and pointed out how stupid this policy was that they finally saw sense.
Get back in there and make some money!
You’re right.
I just reactivated my account too. They _had_ to implement such a thing.. it just made no sense what they were doing.
However, they stated that I’d have to reapply to all the advertisers again, but I didn’t.. did you?
I haven’t checked yet, but since I haven’t used cj in a long time I’m happy enough to reapply to the few merchants I was using.
It wouldn’t surprise me if any of the traffic sent to the merchants since reactivation was not credited. Definitely a case of “check and make sure”
Two and a half years ago I said, let’s put up a forum, how hard can that be? You know what, people talk because they expect things to be handed to them. Nobody wants to work for it anymore. They all want that silver bullet that turns them into John Chow or Shoemoney overnight and they’re jealous of those they perceive as ahead of them but won’t tell them exactly what to do.
Affiliate marketing tormented me about as much as it seemed to torment you. I never could make it work. What little bit of success I had didn’t come from CJ (waste of time if you ask me) but other things that were more practical to web surfers. Maybe that’s a route you should explore in the future.
Same thing happened to me. 6 months with no sales and I got banned. I’ll be signing up with a new name too.
6 months no sales happened to me over 3 times. I am finally makign some $ with them and logging in and checking stats a few times a month now.
You are NOT banned just deactivated… call them or use a new e-mail and signup agin no big deal but yes aPITA.
Screw the comment trolls. At least you’re out there trying.
It reminds me of a time I was laughing at this HUGE fat guy “jogging” (slowly and awkwardly as very large people do) on the side of the road sweating up a storm. My friend point out that “at least he’s trying”. That was one of those “Oh, why didn’t I think that way?” moments that stays with you your entire life.
While I’m on my soapbox telling stories, here’s another that’s relevant to “trying” – sorry, I have to resort to semi-religious for the story:
Abe prays one night before bed, “God, please let me win the lottery.” He doesn’t win the next day.
The night before the next drawing, he prays “God, how about letting me win the lottery this time?” And again, the next day, he doesn’t win.
A third time, he prays “Come-on, God — what do I have to do to win the stupid lottery?” At that time, God appeared and said “Abe, man, meet me halfway and buy a ticket…”
So, the moral of the story – if you don’t buy the ticket (try) you won’t ever win.
OK, enough soapbox. It just annoys me when people flame others for trying. Don’t be like me laughing at the fat guy jogging…
I dont get it. So if they (CJ) want to run a professional service yet dont even bother to send email about such a vital issues as….umm I dont know….deactivating an account?
One sometimes wonder who really is behind some of these services. Is it a school kid from his tree house not feeling like emailing on any given day? 🙂
Nothing against CJ, I have similar experience with another similar provider whose name I would prefer not to mention.
But on the other hand, guys, no sales for 6 months…c’mon maybe its a time to move on than?
Grumpy ol’man
Dan
Down with CJ, I been baned too and had to create a new account. What a waste of my time. I also, only use them when I have to.
Another bad CJ experience to add to the list I’ve read about over the past few months. Don’t think I’d deal with them no matter who’s advertising there.
I have never made a dime from them and have had my account deactivated a couple of times, but I probably still have links to their merchants.
One thing I like about Affiliate marketing is that you can put affiliate links in everything and keep making money without doing anything. CJ goes against working like this.
Your topic scared me, I thought you really get banned from CJ, anyways, my experience with CJ has been not-so-bad.
The “mysterious ways” of CJ have so far kept me out of affiliate marketing through them. It’s too bad there isn’t an honest and forthright service that would be interested in “small-time” start-up guys. You only get big cients by helping the small fry grow big, or so I would think. I’d be happy totrade some percentage for support … until I became big … in which case I wouldn’t need the same level of support.
With respect to those who tune in just to see failure, you should be familiar with the breed, Tyler. Ask your dad about the “crab mentality” … it’s a very common explanation for how things happen here in the Philippines.
A low-sided basket of crabs is on the table in the market. The crabs are all crawling around, trying to climb up the side of the basket and make an escape. The first time I saw this I wodered how many crabs per day the merchant “lost” due to escapes. The answr? None.
The other crabs, seeing one of their number actually making progress up the basket side will pull him down, invariably … it’s fascinating to watch … they spend their time as un-paid prison guards making sure none of their fellow crabs can scale the walls. The whole group could easily escape by climbing up on each other, going over the side and then pulling the last few out … but instead they chose to dedicate what’s left of their lives to making sure no one else attains any success.
It is readily apparent there are both humans and crabs on the ‘Net
I have an account with CJ and have made nothing with it, even though they have a good number of well known companies, it still takes a while for someone who is just starting to get people to click on these ad’s.
I didn’t know that they were banning accounts like this, I’ll have to keep an eye on mine I guess. Hopefully they don’t ban it, but if they do I’ll probably try someone else for a while.
Have you joined Share A Sale ? http://shareasale.com. They have a awesome datafeed service
and a low merchant signup fee.
try Shareasale.com instead
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my problem is diffrence..CJ deactivated my lead link..i dun know why…myb because there are a lot of money to pay me..that why they banned me..suck CJ…i dun trust this suck company anymore…gth piggy!
I wake up in the morning and found this email “CJ has removed your Publisher account from the CJ platform. Transactions may be reversed (“charged-back”), and any attempt to rejoin the CJ platform shall be null and void.”
I know, it was my fault, but CJ should send an email before deactivating someone’s account, to let us correct any issues, which can cause deactivation.
Not professional from CJ.