I quit.. havent had decent sales in 3 months while I had em before while i do have hundreds of clicks. Its bs.
I also added 2 other companys @ cj.. but even they didnt work like they should. And yea my links were correct and my website is good since my own products sell decent.
The whole transition is imo just one big bad idea which backfired. I had like 5 sites to get affiliate sales.. but thats history now.
Ill focus on my own website and getting my own stuff sold more since that DOES make me money instead of 'affialiate'
I've personally sold more affiliate stuff through CJ than I did through CP. That said - professional affiliation isn't for everyone. Sometimes we just need to focus on what we do best.
While I am not about top quit my experience is the same as evilman's.
With the old program I was making $100/month now I make about $20. My affiliate stores are run by CP Shop so all I had to do was to add the CJ PID. They are getting the same amount of traffic they were before but sales are way down.
I sure don't spend much time on them anymore. My time is better spent creating new designs for my store than for hunting for new designs to affiliate.
As I've said in other posts, if you have a premium shop, you can't really compare your commissions with the old program to commissions with this program. Premium shops gave a free cookie to anyone who visited them without a cookie in the old program. That is going to greatly slide the scale when comparing to the new system where you actually have to drive all the traffic into CP and not get credit for traffic that just happened to wander into your shop from non-affiliate shops/marketplace. Unfortunately, that free traffic is what gave a lot of us extra affiliate income in the old program.
Comparing your commissions from the old program is like comparing an apple to an orange, they are totally different things.
That being said, Diane touched on a topic that is very worth talking about. Affiliate marketing isn't for everyone. It takes a ton of work and if you are a better designer than affiliate marketer, by all means focus on designs. Keep this in mind, if you can't get the grip on affiliate marketing and decide to throw out more designs instead, that gives your shop more designs for your shoppers and gives affiliates more designs they can market for you.
digitaldemigod, what have you done to make money with the new affiliate program?
I am starting to really appreciate having an outsourced affiliate program that provides so many more tracking and reporting tools than the in-house program did. And I'm just starting to learn how to use them to my advantage.
I'm not even bothering with CJ anymore. I went from making up to $300 on affiliate sales to a big "0", nothing, nada. I actually lost money because I bought my own domain and now I'm paying for a website every month. So, I decided not to let my domain go to waste and I started a graphic and myspace layout site, which happens to link to my cafepress shop too. At least I'm having fun now.
Originally posted by Teesed: digitaldemigod, what have you done to make money with the new affiliate program?
I am starting to really appreciate having an outsourced affiliate program that provides so many more tracking and reporting tools than the in-house program did. And I'm just starting to learn how to use them to my advantage.
What I've done is the same that I did before. I have a website that has category links pointed to cafepress as well as select cafepress shops. I am getting more traffic and clicks on the links on my site but not a single affiliate sale is showing. Seems kind of strange since before half of my monthly cafepress check was affiliate sales through my site.
Not to mention that this whole thing is confusing as hell. PID AID CJ ID HUH?! I've been coding websites for 12 years so it's not like I don't know what I am doing, but this whole change is confusing. Who knows, maybe my links on my site are wrong... but I have been accepted into the program on CJ and I have it set to redirect in my CP account.
Sorry to hear the experience hasn't been what you hoped for... I'll admit I was bewildered with the CJ affiliate changeover, and was quite vocal about it. But in all honesty I have to say that the affiliate sales I am making have gone way up since the change. I am making much more $ with my affiliate sites than I did before. Same hard work, but more rewards. I do not see very many affiliate sales of my own products by others though. That has become almost non-existent. I'm still waiting to see how all of it compares for the Christmas season. Hopefully it will be positive and my CJ acct will bulge.
i am not a fan of CJ, my sales have also plummeted. (i understand the former free cookie) but still you have to use it as a baseline to start somewhere. from 100 a month to 15. i also have more traffic then i did 2 months ago.
i also think it's quite a hassle to actually see what product sold in CJ, you have to scroll right, click details, take the item SKU put into the CP search box, it's time consuming and in general the entire CJ.com interface is atrocious IMO.
just trying to get people to sign up as my affiliate, even with my very specific step by step instructions has not gone well, even when the other person is internet skilled (web designer). they are just confused and lost.
Well it's good to see that I'm not the only one feeling this way (misery loves company ) I've made only 1 sale in 3 months.
I have been doing webdesign for almost 10 years and I too, find the CJ interface extremely difficult to understand. What really had me confused was AID and PID. To me, AID = affiliate ID and PID = product ID, but with CJ, your PID is actually your affiliate ID.. and AID is the product ID?? ugh!
I've never done affiliate linking before, so I have absolutely nothing to compare it to. I find the system rather confusing tho.
I've seen people set up their linking different ways and honestly, I'm not sure which way is correct at this point! Soo many numbers to keep track of..it's frustrating and doesn't seem to be working exceptionally well for anyone.
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