Hi All,
I've been using Commission Junction about 6 months. I was really looking forward to joining their Recruiter Program so I could refer my visitors to CJ, but was disappointed when I received a form letter saying that I my application had not been approved. My site is a new webmaster resource site and receives under 1000 unique visitors per day. I wrote and ask them to reconsider but have heard nothing. Any advice on how to get my foot in the door?
Thanks mucho,
Emory

Does it say why you weren't approved?

It's very vague and doesn't specifically say why except for the statment that "each advertiser determines how many and what types of publishers they will accept in their program for various reasons," which, I guess, implies that they don't have any rooms available or I'm not their type

I just took a look at the page about the program, it says:

Publishers must also have at least a one-dollar sign CJ ranking, their own domain name, and a Web site that is compliant with the Commission Junction publisher service agreement.

Does your site meet all those requirements?

Yes, it does. The only possibility I can think of is that I missed something in the fine print of the agreement. I just checked it again and I don't see anything that I could have missed.

Very strange...

The only thing I could suggest would be to e-mail them and ask why you were rejected (in the past CJ merchants have been very quick to respond to messages (although that doesn't mean that CJ would be)). As you've already contacted them, I suppose there's not much left you can do apart from wait for a couple of weeks/months and try again.

Thanks David. I'll take your advice and follow up with CJ then post my findings back here.

Hi All,
FYI, I finally received word back from CJ. Looks like a cut and paste form letter instead of a personal response. They basically say my application to the CJ recruiter program was rejected for one of the reasons:

1. quality and appropriateness of their Web site
2. volume of traffic to their site
3. ranking in the network
4. not based in U.S. or U.K.
5. not at least a one-dollar sign CJ ranking
6. don't own domain name
7. Web site not compliant with the CJ publisher service agreement
8. not directly related to pay-for-performance advertising.

I have no way of knowing for sure which of the above I need to fix. I'm assuming it's traffic and ranking.

They also encourage me to reapply if my site meets these criteria in the future. Yet, a "Rejected" button appears where the apply button used to be in my account.

Congrats to all of you who have been accepted. You don't know how lucky you are

Emory

Apply again later to the same program, you may get
approved.
PS: want to trade links with http://hostwhere.com ?

Yeah, I actually was accepted last year. I couldn't get a response via e-mail so I made several phone calls to their customer service and finally persuaded them. Not sure why it would be so difficult to get in. My guess is that they are not agressively expanding their client base now. jshen, feel free to PM me to discuss linkage.