CJ Affiliate vs. Pepperjam Ascend (discontinued)

CJ would be a great place for any publisher looking to monetize their blog or social media accounts. Products that have broad targeting or rely on bargain hunters would perform really well as there are tons of coupon sites and fashion blogs. Niche products would have a harder time growing as they would probably still need to do a lot of outreach.

Incentivized

For our business, affiliate marketing is by far the lowest ROI marketing channel. If you're looking to get products, brands, and offers listed on coupon sites, Pepperjam Ascend is a great tool. If you're looking to engage with influencers or drive sales without giving away margin, Pepperjam Ascend is likely not for you.

Incentivized

• their portal is easily usable
• communication within the system is supper easy
• searching for new affiliates is really great

Incentivized

• Lots of coupon sites.
• Enables different tiers of commissions.
• Can blast out newsletters to your network.

Incentivized

• It's a great platform but have selected countries.
• Sometimes loading speed is too slow in my experience.
• Customer service needs to be improved in my opinion.

Incentivized

• The dashboard/platform is the furthest thing from user-friendly. It looks like a high school student with zero experience designed it in excel and hoped for the best with the results.
• Reports are hit and miss. They may load, they may not! It's ridiculous, in my opinion.
• No mobile options whatsoever, everything has to be desktop. It's 2022, they need to catch up!

CJ definitely has the largest pool of publishers and is well built out in terms of features. However, it does appear that they have a lot of dead weight in their pool which is something that their competitors claim they have solved. We ultimately selected CJ because we had previous experience with the platform and wanted to tap into their affiliate pool.

Incentivized

Pepperjam Ascend's user interface is way behind these other platforms. It's not intuitive nor is it easy to create custom reports and engage with your publishers. We have been stuck with Pepperjam and many other affiliate networks have a very similar layout without much upside.

Incentivized

• we have been able to make a good amount of money
• we just share the link and then the companies do the rest

Incentivized

• I was hitting anywhere from $130 - $450 per month in commission payout before Pepperjam Ascend. Now with Pepperjam Ascend, I maybe get $40! I am still waiting on payouts from January.