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Examining the Business Ramifications of CJ’s Link Management Initiative

Jun 27, 2006
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It’s critically important that those of us on the business side of affiliate marketing understand the fundamental change Commission Junction’s Link Management Initiative causes to the basic building block of affiliate marketing and the impact it will have on our businesses.

Personally, I think CJ has earned great respect from the affiliate marketing community because of its affiliate friendly approach including the open market place — network earnings and EPC — consolidated payments, and much more; in fact, I think many wise people would argue that CJ has built its business on the good will of affiliates.

Moreover, I generally think CJ gets affiliate marketing, so despite the uproar over the LMI, I have repeatedly given CJ the benefit of the doubt and thought that surely there must be a win-win in the LMI for affiliates and advertisers. However, since the beginning of the LMI, I’ve been scratching my head at the fact they have not shared that win-win. To force something on affiliates that changes the essential tool of affiliate marketing without sharing the true reason for this change with the people that have been the linchpin to its success seems short-sighted and irrational to me, but, I think there must be some reason to make all this pain on affiliates worth it — and, to be honest, I’m still hoping for a win-win. :-)

Because of these reasons, I have withheld my judgment until the JavaScript code release by CJ.

Last Thursday CJ released the new JavaScript code. Scott Jangro who spent five years on the product side at BeFree and CJ and now plays on the affiliate side of the game wrote a series of blogs on these links and how they impact the key building block of affiliate marketing.

I think everyone on the business side of affiliate marketing who is struggling with the technical side of this issue should read them to get a better sense of the issues. Scott’s series includes:

CJ Javascript Links First Looks

CJ’s LMI JavaScript Links: Under the Hood

Javascript Redirect through HTTP POST

A Practical Look at LMI — and if you read one, make it this one because it’s worth it.

After you read these, ask yourself these questions:

  • Can Affiliate Marketing work with JavaScript and not HTML?
  • Does asking affiliates to change links from HTML to JavaScript links make sense?
  • What is the benefit to eliminating HTML links?
  • Why not gain the benefits of JavaScript without eliminating HTML links by making them both available?
  • Why would it be ok to have HTML links on websites via Pay-per-Click ads, but not on an affiliate’s own website?

    • And last and most importantly…

  • Will the Link Management Initiative help affiliates drive more or less revenue for your company?

    • It’s important for those of us on the business side understand what this move by CJ means and if it helps or hurts our business.

    Note: I have recieved pressure from the community to open comments back up, and I think it makes sense. I will ask comments stay very professional and please know comments will be moderated — which I have only done once in two years of blogging. I have great respect for CJ as an industry leader and partner, and I am moderating comments out of respect for that organization and ithe people that work there.

    I have also changed the time stamp to push this blog back up to the to of ReveNews. Thanks Beth

    Filed under: Affiliate Marketing