[Merchant on CJ Affiliate] Is it worth the price?

Hello guys,

We are trying to scale our business through multiple affiliate marketplace websites as a merchant. I was on a call yesterday with one of the CJs' representatives. The contract is 12 months, and it will roughly cost us $8500 for the full year.
Compared to Refersion, for instance, the price is significantly higher (they charge $39 pr month). My question is, if there are any merchants scaling there, what are your experiences? What to expect?

Will this money be well spent, or might I just throw it in a garbage bin? All of these Marketplaces promise the moon, but with Referson, we don't see much movement with the 2 month period we've been with them.

Any input will be highly appreciated!

refersion is just a tracking platform, they dont actually bring you affiliates. cj has the network but if you just launch and wait for people to join, you will lose that 8.5k fast. the big publishers on cj only care about brands that already have high volume or if you reach out to them individually with custom offers. if you dont have a dedicated manager to do outbound recruitment on cj daily, its a waste. maybe look at shareasale first since its cheaper to get in, or just use that budget to hire a VA to scrape competitor affiliates and invite them to your current refersion setup.

yeah the tracking vs network distinction is huge. cj is basically a giant directory but a massive chunk of their active publishers are just coupon scrapers and trademark bidders who will hijack your organic traffic. if you pay the 8.5k, you also gotta watch out for their network transaction fees on top of that. if you dont have a solid attribution setup or a manager to decline the parasites, you will just be paying commission on sales you would have gotten anyway. shareasale or even impact might be a better middle ground if you want a network, but cj is a massive commitment if you arent ready to manage it daily.

wouldnt it be better to go to affiliate marketing events and hunt affiliates if you have one close to you or maybe even travel

cj reps are basically sales guys, they will ghost you the second that contract is signed. if you don't have a full time manager doing outbound recruitment every day you are going to burn that 8.5k fast.

if you want to scale, maybe stick with refersion for now and use that 8k budget to actually pay niche bloggers or influencers flat fees for reviews. or just hire a cheap va to scrape competitor backlinks to see who is linking to them, then reach out and offer them a better commission split. networks like cj are mostly just coupon sites stealing your organic search sales anyway unless you actively police them. save your money.

@Fluxify is right about the coupon scrapers, if you go with CJ without a strict manager you will just end up paying commissions on organic traffic you would have gotten anyway.

If you are not seeing movement on Refersion, it is simply because it is just a tracking tool, not a marketplace. You have to bring the traffic to it. Instead of giving CJ 8.5k, you could spend a fraction of that on ahrefs or semrush to find your competitors affiliate links. Just search their brand name, filter by outbound links, and you will find everyone promoting them.

We did this last year for a lifestyle brand and manually pitched about 200 of those bloggers. Got about 15 solid ones to onboard onto our Refersion setup and it did way more than any network directory ever did for us. It takes some manual work but it saves you the upfront fee and the network cut.

please suggest me i want to protect my ads , anyone can help me to choose right.