Does anybody have any experience with being an affiliate for restaurant.com? It makes you sign up through a website called commissionjunction.com which allows you to affiliate for many different types of businesseses as well. I submitted an application to be approved for restaurant.com a while ago and haven't heard anything back from them.

Does anybody have any experience with using commissionjunction.com to set up affiliate links on a website? I could really use some help getting started with this.

Thanks.

you'll 99% get approved for any site through CJ assuming you already have a working website which you do. The good thing about CJ is that it's a unified API so if you want to work with 10 different sites, it's not 10x the work - not even close

I haven't heard anything back from restaurant.com and put in my application over a week ago. I guess I will try and browse around some of their selections and see if there is anything else worth promoting? Have any of you had any decent experience with any particular company?

a lot of the time on CJ you can find the affiliate manager's contact info. Sending an email to the restaurant.com manager giving an overview of what you're trying to do is probably what you want to do next.

I haven't used CJ for almost 2 years though so I don't remember a lot of the details

I actually work on both sides of the equation, as a merchant and publisher.

Contact the affiliate manage and explain your situation to them. Be brief, concise, and specific. There's a possibility you'll be turned down (low Alexa/PR/traffic stats).

My guess is that they are just behind on their review process. You have no idea how many people make awful blogspot/wordpress/******** websites and apply to absolutely every program even though their domain is "websitehostingisawesome.com". It makes a merchant's life difficult.

Can some people familiar post some other options that I could look into as far as being an affiliate for other then going through CJ?

https://www.pepperjamnetwork.com/
http://www.flexoffers.com/
http://www.linkshare.com/
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com...gin/login.html

are some others i have used

Connectcommerce (Google), LinkShare, Share a sale. Opentable seems like they have their own program. They'll all be about the same though.

So i signed up for google AdSense and have been playing around with it a bit. So does Google pick the links they advertise based off of the content of my website? How much would I get paid per click? Any info would be helpful as I am a n00b.

yes. you are able to selectively block domains from showing ads on your site.

Depends, prices are set by the free market based on how much the advertisers are willing to pay - certain high value niches could bring several dollars per click, but a lot pay a few cents per click only.

Commission junction is legit though you won't make much $ through their affiliate program. I'm surprised there was much lag (more than 48hrs) being approved for any advertiser so I'm guessing you made a mistake somewhere. I don't think I've ever been turned down to be an affiliate.

As for adsense, it's easy to put up their ads but you'll make next to nothing. You need a lot of traffic to make any $ from it. Enough traffic that you'll definitely decide your wasting your time and do anything else to make $. That's my experience, ymmv.

FWIW, I might be jaded w/ regard to adsense. When I set up my 1st website I signed up for google adsense and made $0.13 over the 1st month. I then decided to use the $100 worth of free google adwords I was given by gdaddy to drive traffic to my website. I set up a campaign to spend the $100 over 2 days to buy traffic. It worked. I spent $100 over 2 days and earned $30 in adsense advertising ( yes $70 net loss) and the next day google sent me an email saying they were banning me from using adsense because " my profits had increased at an unrealistic level...we have to protect the integrity of our advertising" LOL

I am apparently getting denied on every application from CJ. Could someone tell me what I am doing wrong? Is my site too new? Do i not have enough traffic?

who does your website cater too? I have an iphone/android app business that caters to people who go to restaurants, but our revenue comes from the venue owner themselves, and I was thinking about exploring some type of affiliate model, its an easy sell, if you can get in front of the owners,...Im just not sure how to get in front of them w/o phyiscally cold calling

my website caters to giving residents of Baltimore local deals in a lottery format. A lot of my deals will be centered around various local bars and restaurants so I thought restaurant.com would be a perfect fit but they denied my application.

e-mail both CJ and the affiliate manager for restaurant.com's program, let them know your business plan, and ask what you need to do to be approved.

I've had websites denied for CJ's affiliate programs in the past. Sometimes they are really random with what they accept and deny. I would do what CTS says above and send an e-mail to the affiliate manager of restaurant.com. Last time I was denied for an affiliate program; one e-mail to the AM solved it and they accepted my website immediately.

I'm pretty sure just the act of e-mailing them shows you are interested enough for them to accept you. As above posters said, they get so many spam applications they probably deny more than they should and just wait to see if you follow up.

Once upon a time I managed an affiliate program. Trikkur is dead on with his analysis/advice. Example: There is a lot of affiliate fraud in Russia. I would insta-reject any applicant from Russia (and most E European countries). Every now and again one of the rejected marketers would contact us about why he/she was denied access to our network. As CTS mentioned, I would ask for a business plan. If they sent me a 5 line bullet point plan I would accept them. All I wanted to see was effort.

FWIW, I have been told in the past that my site was not old enough. Don't know how old it is, but based on your posts it's fairly new.