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Thread: Commission Junction alternative?
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06-18-2007, 05:32 PM #1Aspiring Evangelist
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Commission Junction alternative?
Can anyone recommend an affiliate program similar to Commission Junction, but with maybe not as steep a fee? We're looking at various options, including idevAffiliate, the WHMCS built-in system and 3rd parties like Commission Junction. CJ is attractive because it has the potential to reach many, many more potential affiliates than we could ever dream of doing it only in house, but apparently CJ costs $2000+ to join, so we're looking for something similar but maybe not as pricey.
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06-18-2007, 08:36 PM #2Nerf Herder
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06-18-2007, 09:42 PM #3Web Hosting Master
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If you want to get PROFIT and reach good amount of affiliates - have to go with cj.com, otherwise you will develop another CHEAP, but not trustworthy programm which will not attract any serious affiliates.
So, you have a choice of wasting some money on something cheap or invest in best affiliate solution, which comes with army of productive affiliates.
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06-18-2007, 09:55 PM #4Nerf Herder
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Actually CJ isn't that great, if I were you I'd email a few hosting companies or friends in the industry and ask them. In my exp and from talking to hosts CJ isn't worth it, as an affiliate I don't think CJ is any good and their website/tracking sucks.
Linkshare is quite bit as are the others I mentioned so I'm not sure why they are a waste of money. I'd go in house anyway, that is going to give the best return.
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06-18-2007, 10:00 PM #5Aspiring Evangelist
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But in house won't let us take advantage of a massive network of affiliates like CJ has. And I can't imagine we could hire someone to go after affiliates for us for less than the CJ signup fee that would deliver a better ROI. I'll check out linkshare and some of the others mentioned.
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06-18-2007, 10:41 PM #6Nerf Herder
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Hosting is a weird type of affiliate marketing, probably more then most has to do with finding super affiliates or approaching people directly, especially if you are not branded. You can try CJ but I don't think it would do much, I think its a better investment to run it yourself and start emailing webmaster related sites with your links etc. And more so just utilizing your customers to give incentive to using your links on all their sites,
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06-18-2007, 11:30 PM #7Newbie
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Perhaps hiring an affiliate manager who runs on a type of commission basis. I think that would be a good alternative! You might even want to consider joining smaller affiliate networks and building your way up like: Link Connector and Click Bank.
You must realize, too, that in these Massive Networks you're competeting against all the other web hosting companies and you still need to offer a better product, service, and offer high commissions even for affiliates to consider promoting you! It can be just as competetive as something like AdWords.
You should checkout HostGator and figure out how they are running their affiliate program. Seems everywhere I go lately I see their ad.The Diary of a Web Hosting Startup
http://webhoststartup.blogspot.com/
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06-19-2007, 12:23 AM #8Web Hosting Master
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CJ definitely gives you an instant access to a massive amount of affiliates. I can't say that there's very few many other services out there.
I'm always been a fan of in-house, organic growth though so you wouldn't ever see me recommending it
On a somewhat unrelated note has anyone ever had problems with the CJ sales tracking?
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06-19-2007, 12:32 AM #9Web Hosting Master
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Currently linkshare seems one of the alternative, I heard google is in process to launch CJ like program, possibly that would be one of the best alternative.
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06-19-2007, 12:32 AM #10Web Hosting Master
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You can look into shareasale. I'm going to completely agree with bwb however and tell you that in house is where it is at. Even with CJ, your program is going to take hard work. Just because cj can gain you hundreds of affiliates doesn't mean they're going to do anything. This is going to take approaching affiliates, super affiliates, etc. yourself and getting them to actually list you. You may as well save yourself $5,000 and 30% of every sale and do this in house, allowing for either a higher payout to those big affiliates or lower cost per sale.
Good luckHostGator.com - A worldwide leader in Shared, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated Server Hosting.
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06-19-2007, 01:01 AM #11Aspiring Evangelist
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But then you're essentiually paying commissions on top of commissions.....Since there's an affiliate program built into WHMCS (our billing system), that might be the best way to go at least initially, but I'd definitely want to reach out beyond our customer base for affiliates....
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06-25-2007, 04:20 PM #12Nerf Herder
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