The Commission Junction Affiliate Program

Commission Junction offers an affiliate program with click-through commissions from more than 1,600 merchants across a wide range of industries. The affiliate program includes Autobytel.com, BabyBazaar.com, Capital One, Excite@Home, NextCard Visa, Rail Europe, and Tower Records. Roughly 350,000 sites participate in the affiliate program network.

The affiliate program service agreement gives you a good idea of what you're getting into. To participate in the Commission Junction affiliate program, you need a quality, professionally done web site that does not contain anything illegal or offensive. You are paid according to a commission percentage determined by each merchant separately, which is subject to change at any time. Affiliate payments are monthly, with a bona fide sale defined as one that occurs within 45 days of your customer's first click from your site to the merchant site, with the customer having not clicked into the merchant site from any other web site involved in the Commission Junction affiliate program. The Commission Junction home page shows a continually updated figure -- $32 million as of this writing -- for commissions earned by all everyone participating in the affiliate program since the company started in late 1998. Obviously commissions vary by how much traffic your web site generates on the affiliate program network.

Commission Junction offers a variety of tools to help you maximize the potential income from the affiliate program. The Big Catalog contains advertising and product links from Commission Junction's pool of merchants to help affiliates choose the products and services appropriate to present on their sites. Smart Zones lets you place and define rotations for advertising links. A third affiliate program service, Smart Rewards, lets sites determine which customers clicked into merchant sites and generated commissions. Using this service, you can establish a rewards system for good customers.

You can administer the Commission Junction affiliate program through the Account Manager, a multi-tabbed, web-based application. From its various tabs you can see precise account information, including payouts and their sources, obtain merchant and product links to include on your site, create Smart Zones, and get brief reports showing link performance, product performance, and so forth. You also have a page for email from the merchants you are using, and another page showing incentives, such as higher commission rates from merchants based on the click-through performance of your site.

The affiliate program membership is free, although you'll have to receive approval from Commission Junction to get started. According to the company, this usually takes only a few minutes. Commission Junction is one of the best affiliate programs available today and definitely worth the time and effort to get informed.

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Author Notes:

Craig Butler contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.freeweb-us.com. A web site featuring the best Free ISPs, Free Long Distance, Free Voice Mail, Free Articles and more!