CJ Affiliate by Conversant is a little more difficult to get used to than Clickbank, but with a little bit of practice you’ll be able to whiz around it in no time!

To get started, go to the homepage at www.cj.com. To become a publisher, click on "Publisher" on the top menu.

Then, to begin the signup process, click on ‘Sign Up" button. Now you are in the signup form! Select your language, fill in your First Name, Last Name, and Email and click ‘next’. You will then need to check your inbox for the confirmation email to continue.

Once you have confirmed your account, you will be taken to another form called "Publisher Sign Up Form", where you fill in more information about your Publisher account.

Now you get to enter the useful information! Here you must put in details about your website. If you have more than one website, just enter the details of your best or most prominent website – you can add information about the other’s later. Now, fill out your own details.

Once you’ve filled out all this information, click ‘Accept Terms’. You must then read through CJ Affiliate's Publisher Service Agreement. Make sure you agree with their terms and conditions, their code of conduct, and their privacy policy.

Also be aware that you must be over 18 to sign up for CJ, and authorized to act on behalf of a company if you are signing up as a company.

You will be redirected to the log in page after accepting the terms.

Once you’ve logged into CJ Affiliate, one of the first things you’ll need to do is fill out your tax information; the specifics of this will depend on whether you’re inside or outside the US, but to fill it out go to your account settings, click on administrative settings and then ‘edit’ your tax information. Please make sure you read the forms carefully to make sure you have the right one.

Searching For An Affiliate Program

Right, let’s find some products! To look at your advertiser options, we need to go to the ‘Advertisers’ tab. This will put you in the General Categories sub tab – from here you can find advertisers in your specific niche.

For this video I’m going to take a look in the Health and Wellness niche. Once you’ve selected your niche, you’ll be presented with a list that looks a little like the following. Just a quick explanation of each of these columns:

The first column is the ‘Advertiser’ – it’s the actual company doing the advertising. The ‘3 Month EPC’ Column is the calculated average amount of income earned from this advertiser for every 100 clicks their links got, based on three months worth of data. The 7-day EPC is the same, but based on the last seven days.

The Network Earnings column is basically a general scale to show the volume of commission that the advertiser has paid out to publishers; the more green, the better.

The last column shows whether or not you are a part of this Advertiser’s program, and you can apply for any one by clicking on the green plus symbol. You can also clock on the "P" button to view their products, or the link button to look at what kinds of link resources they have to offer you. 

Applying For An Affiliate Program

Let’s apply to an advertiser! I’m going to select the first one from the ‘Health and Wellness’ niche. To apply, you can click on the company’s name to pull up their details. Here you can read more information about them, how the commission works, and if there are any restrictions around using their links.

Most publishers will restrict bidding on their trademarked names. Some publishers include other specific restrictions, so make sure you’ve read the details carefully.

Once you’re ready to Apply, just click on that small "+" button to the right.

Note that some programs will automatically reject you, for whatever reason (e.g. too new, etc), but otherwise most Advertiser applications will sit in a queue until they either authorize or decline you.

For now, you’ll just have to wait until your applications are approved.

Once your application is approved you'll be able to view the advertiser by selecting "My Advertisers" in the left-hand side-bar menu.

You can also select your pending applications or declined applications to see those too.

To actually get your affiliate links, head to the "Links" tab at the top. You can select the type of link you’d like in the menu on the left; for example, I want a text link.

Once you click on the link type, you will be provided with a list of potential links you can use. These links might be for special offers or various products. These will only become available to you after your application has been approved.

Anyway, while you’re waiting for your first application to be approved so you can actually get links, let’s take a quick look around the rest of CJ.

To check your affiliate earnings with CJ, click on the ‘Reports’ tab. The information is fairly straightforward, and shows your current balance and commissions pending; Right now, they probably look like my account, if your account is brand new.

Finally, the other main component you need to know about right now is ‘Mail’. This is where you find out if your applications have been declined or approved, where you’ll learn about important updates and changes, and where you can contact advertisers.

And there we have it! That was a basic rundown of how to use CJ Affiliate by Conversant; Feel free to go ahead and apply for some more programs!