If you’re a publisher looking to monetize your website or blog, an affiliate program might be the perfect match for you. Affiliate programs connect you with merchants who will pay a commission for every lead you send to their website who makes a purchase. Two of the best affiliate programs available are Commission Junction (CJ) and ShareASale.
While both Commission Junction and ShareASale are effective ways to grow your affiliate business, they each have their own sets of pros and cons. At a high-level, you can count on both programs to offer reporting features that will help your business monitoring.
Choosing your affiliate network is an important decision for the success of your website or blog. It pays (literally) to do the research on the front end and learn as much as possible before making your choice. Let’s dive deeper into both platforms to help you discover the right fit for you.
Commission Junction
The formal name of Commission Junction is now “CJ Affiliate by Conversant Review.” For the purpose of this article, we will refer to it as “CJ.” Check out all the benefits that CJ has to offer below!
CJ is one of the largest affiliate marketing programs available. It boasts more than 3,000 merchants with whom you can partner. It is well-known in the industry for having some of the biggest names, including Home Depot, Apple, Turbo Tax, and more. In addition to these big names, it also has a ton of smaller retailers, who are sometimes easier to partner with when you’re just getting started.
Brand-Name Merchants
Big brand-names can be both helpful and hurtful in your quest to be an affiliate publisher. There is more competition than with smaller name-brands, and you will need to qualify to become an affiliate with some of these brands. You need to apply individually with each merchant, and not all of them will accept you.
Additionally, your website needs to be as polished as possible if you’re going to affiliate yourself with these names. They will expect it to be professional and easy to navigate, so their customers have a great experience. It will be held to a higher standard than affiliate partners of most smaller retailers, so you need to have a plan for that if you’re not great at web development.
Account Management
Applying for a CJ account is simple and free, with minimal delays. The network is user-friendly and allows the affiliate to make changes to their account as their business grows. For example, you can change your username, transfer your account to another user, and other helpful functions. Many other affiliate networks do not allow these types of changes, so this is a definite benefit to using CJ over others.
Business Building Tools
CJ has an entire suite of tools to help you build your business very quickly to a scalable level. They understand that the more successful their affiliates and merchants are, the more successful they will be. Here is a snapshot of some of the tools and benefits they offer:
Revenue Generation Tools
As a publisher of a website, or perhaps even multiple sites, you are likely focused on your content’s quality rather than an affiliate link’s design. CJ recognizes this and, in turn, offers product widgets and deep link automation. With these tools, you can create eye-catching product links without spending tons of time in the design phase.
Placement Marketplace
Inside the CJ platform, there is a section that is essentially like a job posting. Publishers can go to this section and search for inventory or services and offers that are a good match for their content. Likewise, merchants can search for content that is a good fit for their products and services.
This is a unique and helpful way for both sides of the business to grow. In this type of environment, merchants and publishers can develop relationships with one another to help build their credibility, sales book, and business at large.
ShareASale
ShareASale is also one of the largest affiliate marketing programs, with more than 4,500 merchants available with whom you can partner. Their clients are not as well-known as those on the CJ platform, but their variety allows them to fit almost any niche that can be published. If you’re not concerned with having big names to work with, this might be a good fit for you.
ShareASale has some unique features that will help you get started as an affiliate. Here a few of them and how they can help you:
Education
ShareASale does an excellent job of educating its merchants and affiliates on the various aspects of not only the platform but also the business itself. They offer educational tools to help you improve your skills and expand your network. If you have questions about getting started, choosing merchants, or creating links, they have educational tools to help you.
If you’re a beginner, these tools are invaluable. Although the information is certainly available on the internet, ShareASale has it all inside the platform if you do enough research. Having these tools at your fingertips will make your affiliate journey much more enjoyable.
Customer Support
You can also participate in a live chat with ShareASale customer service and tech support representatives. If you’re not sure where to start or how to get set up, they are available. This is a huge benefit to ShareASale vs. CJ because it is important to have access to support when you need it.
Reporting
In addition to extensive educational tools, the reporting and diagnostics functions in ShareASale are extremely helpful. You can review your data and focus on critical components of success to improve your business. With their dashboards and custom reports, it is easy to identify areas for growth and improvement.
Making Your Decision
Hopefully, you’ve learned a little bit more about affiliate marketing and the specific differences between CJ and ShareASale. Both are excellent platforms that provide different benefits to help you build your business and your reputation in the marketplace. We recommend participating in the free trials that are offered by both platforms to see how you like them before making your choice.
To help you even a bit more, here is a table of pros and cons for each :
| Commission Junction (CJ) | ShareASale | ||
| Pros | Cons | Pros | Cons |
| Free sign-up | No PayPal option for payment | Global network | $25 monthly fee |
| Large brand names | The site is not user-friendly | Live chat and phone support | Complex financial reporting |
| Ability to manage more than one site | Lower commission rates than some other affiliate programs | Plug-ins and extensions available for your website | No FAQs or general support available on the site |
| Robust reporting features | Customer service is slow | Reporting in real-time | Merchants are not big names |
A few other things to consider before making your decision are:
- Commission rates on each platform
- Method of payment
- Frequency of payment
- Cookie life
- General terms and conditions
It’s really important to take a deep dive into each of these areas and do some calculations to see what your potential earnings could be and whether or not the pay schedule will work for you. Cookie life fits into your revenue plan as well because it defines the time period for which the readers’ purchases will be credited to you after visiting an affiliate link from your site. The terms and conditions help build your business plan and content strategy, as they will help you understand what the platform can and can’t do for you.
Last but not least, consider whether or not you should be an affiliate with more than one platform. There are tons of publishers who are affiliates with multiple platforms in order to have access to a larger number of merchants. As you scale your business and begin to feel comfortable with affiliate marketing, this could be a great option for you.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a reliable way to monetize your website by using the power of both name-brand and small retailers. You can pick and choose which products or services you want to promote and focus on growing your business in a very defined way. There is a lot to learn about the process, so take it one step at a time, ask lots of questions, and try a few different combinations until you find what works for you.
