Recruiting Publishers Inside CJ Affiliate: A Brand's Guide

Joining CJ gives you access to a large publisher network, but nobody joins your program just because it exists. Brands that grow on CJ treat recruitment as a weekly job. This guide covers how to get publishers on CJ from the advertiser side, using CJ's own recruiting tools and terms as CJ's documentation describes them.

If your account is not live yet, start with our guide on how to use CJ Affiliate as an advertiser, which covers setup and the first 90 days. For recruitment principles that apply on any network, see our affiliate recruitment playbook.

A note on menus: the CJ articles we cite were published between 2013 and 2021, and their Support Center links only work when you are logged in. Menu names in your account may have changed, so treat the paths as pointers.

Get your program ready to be found

Recruitment on CJ runs in both directions. Publishers search for advertisers, and CJ's advertiser account tidy up guide makes the point plainly: publishers recruit, too. Before you send a single offer, check four things that guide calls out:

• Keywords. CJ says keywords help publishers discover your program and gives you up to 400 characters. Use your brand's search terms and categories.
• Program description. CJ calls it the first thing publishers see when they evaluate your program. Keep it in step with your program terms.
• Branded sign up page. Keep its public introductory message in line with the description. CJ's advertiser growth checklist also recommends a dedicated affiliates page on your own site that uses the branded sign up link.
• Publisher communication settings. At least one user must show an email address to joined publishers, and you can opt in to share contact details with publishers that have not joined yet, so they can email you before applying. A shared alias works fine.

CJ's guide also notes that deep linking tools, which need a registered site, are a favorite with content publishers, and that your program terms should list the publisher models you do not allow. Vague terms slow every approval later.

Publisher search filters

CJ's main discovery tool for advertisers is Recruit Partners. CJ introduced it in December 2020 as a rebuilt partner recruitment experience in the CJ Account Manager, and its growth checklist places it under Partners, then Recruitment, then Recruit Partners. According to CJ, the tool offers:

• Keyword search that returns matches based on a publisher's promotional properties and network profile information.
• Filters that CJ lists as promotional model, property type, publisher location, global reach and network performance, among others.
• Recruitment lists, which CJ suggests you create so you can work through prospects instead of starting from scratch each time.

How we use those filters in practice:

1. Start from a partner profile, not a filter. Pick the two or three publisher types you want this quarter. Our guide to recruiting quality publishers beyond coupon sites walks through building those tiers.
2. Search buyer language. Use the problems your product solves and the categories reviewers use, not only your brand name.
3. Filter by promotional model and property type. This is where you separate content, social, mobile app and browser extension properties, the property types CJ named when it introduced Promotional Properties in October 2019.
4. Use location and global reach to match where you ship.
5. Use network performance as a sort, not a gate. Newer content publishers rank lower; more on that below.

CJ's checklist suggests a weekly Recruit Partners session to send offers. A short list worked properly every week beats a large batch sent once.

Reading publisher profiles

A filter tells you a publisher could fit. The profile tells you whether they will. When we review a CJ publisher, we read these parts in order:

Promotional properties

CJ added Promotional Properties so publishers could describe their means and methods more accurately, whether that is content, social, a mobile app or a browser extension. Check every property listed, not only the main website. A content site and a browser extension from the same publisher are two different partners for you, and CJ's Promotional Property Commissioning lets you set commission rates by property inside your program terms, so you can reward the property you want and not the one you do not.

Description and disclosure

CJ's advice to publishers (from 2015) says the profile description has a minimum of 250 characters, and urges publishers to explain where they promote and to disclose every site. Use that in reverse: a thin profile, hidden traffic sources or missing sites are reasons to ask questions before approving.

Network earnings and performance signals

CJ's growth checklist refers to CJ Performers and to high network earning publishers shown with 4 and 5 bars. They show a publisher already earns across the network, not that it reaches new customers for you.

The publisher's own site or channel

Open it. Check that the audience matches yours, that content is current, and how they present the brands they already promote.

One shortcut for content partners: CJ's Content Certification program pre-vets content publishers (its criteria include at least 10K pageviews a month and/or a substantial social following, and no software, coupon, deal or incentive models) and, per CJ, connects them automatically with over 600 brands. Ask your CJ team whether your program can take part.

Approval criteria

CJ's growth checklist lists reviewing publisher applications as a daily task. A publisher who applies is ready to promote someone this week; a slow answer hands them to a competitor.

Auto accept and decline rules

CJ lets you set rules that manage applications automatically. Its tidy up guide names four criteria: country, publisher category, network rank and US state. It also warns about two traps we see often:

• Rules that are too strict hide good opportunities. CJ notes that most content publishers have a lower network ranking because they are generally smaller or new to the network, so a high rank threshold can auto decline exactly the partners you want.
• Rules go stale. CJ says many advertisers forget to review them. Publishers can also see which advertisers auto approve, so sensible auto approval gets you in early.

Our manual checklist

Two CJ protections sit behind your decisions. CJ's advertiser page says it reviews every publisher for compliance before their first payment (Pre-Payment Validation) and offers program compliance services. And revisit your declined list: CJ's guide suggests filtering declined applications and sorting by network earnings to find publishers that have grown since you turned them down, or that outdated auto decline rules caught.

Outreach inside CJ vs outside

Inside CJ

The native route is an offer from Recruit Partners, which lands in the publisher's account. CJ's guide recommends checking your pending offers regularly: filter by status, sort by the date offered, follow up with publishers you still want, and if an offer has sat for a long time, retract it and send it again to trigger a fresh notification. CJ's older article on publisher communication (2013) also describes email campaigns to non-joined publishers targeted by category or country, and a Messages inbox where publishers ask about your program. Answer those quickly.

Outside CJ

Busy content publishers act on few network offers. A personal email or a message on the channel they actually use often gets the answer an in platform offer does not. CJ's own guidance on engaging new partners notes that some publishers rarely respond to email and that picking up the phone can be worth it.

We recommend using both, in this order: send the CJ offer so the terms are ready to accept, then contact the publisher directly within a day or two with a short, specific pitch that references their content and links to your branded sign up page. Our partner and publisher recruitment service runs exactly this loop for brands that do not have the hours for it.

Activation offers

A joined publisher who never adds a link is not a partner. CJ's checklist and its publisher diversification series describe the levers you have:

• A new publisher email. CJ's checklist recommends keeping it updated with current links, promotions and contact details.
• Activation campaigns. CJ's steps: group the publishers you want to include, set up a program term with Performance Incentives (such as a flat fee bonus or a commission increase) that pays automatically when a goal is met, email the group with dates, the incentive and suggested creative, ask each publisher to confirm they are taking part, then extend the term to those who do. CJ suggests running performance reports for the group three months after the campaign ends to find top performers.
• Quarterly reactivation. The checklist suggests a quarterly campaign for publishers with no sales.
• Placements. In the Placements Marketplace, publishers list paid placements (homepage spots, newsletter features, gift guides, social posts and more) with a price range, visible to all, joined or specified advertisers. CJ's checklist suggests using it to secure enhanced placements for a flat fee or a commission increase, especially before peak season.

We recommend keeping activation incentives time boxed, tied to a clear goal such as a first sale, with a base rate that still works when the bonus ends. Our guide to affiliate commission structures covers how to set those rates.

Whatever tools you use, publishers on CJ go where they are welcomed quickly and paid fairly. If you want a team to run recruitment and activation inside your CJ account, get in touch.

Frequently asked questions