ClickBank vs CJ
Which is Better For You?
If you’re trying to decide between ClickBank vs CJ as your chosen affiliate marketplace, here’s a quick look at how the two stack up:
Dynamic approval with instant promotion available for most affiliate offers
Account activation required, plus valid promotional methods and manual approval for many advertisers
Standard commission: 70% (up to 90%)
Standard commission: Between 2% and 30%
Commission Type: Revenue share (RevShare) or cost per action (CPA) commissions
Commission Type: Primarily CPA, supporting pay per sale, pay per lead, pay per call, or pay per click
Transaction costs: $1 + 7.5% fee of total transaction
Transaction costs: Variable – can be a fixed % per transaction ($0.30 min.), a % of the commission, or a % of the sale
Reporting Sales: Comes straight from ClickBank as the merchant of record, for full transparency
Reporting Sales: Comes from individual merchants and advertisers
$10 payout threshold
$50 payout threshold for direct deposit or $100 for check
Primary Affiliate Type: Performance affiliate
Primary Affiliate Type: Content publisher
CJ vs ClickBank
What’s the difference between CJ and ClickBank?
Both were founded around the same time back in 1998. Both serve affiliate marketers and product owners.
However, the distinction is in the type of business model each company is geared toward. CJ is a large affiliate network that primarily supports publishers (website owners) and e-commerce brands looking to connect, while ClickBank focuses on performance affiliate marketers and direct response offer owners.
Introducing ClickBank
ClickBank runs a popular affiliate marketplace that connects affiliate marketers and product owners centered around the direct response or performance affiliate marketing model. In other words, many top ClickBank clients will run paid media campaigns at scale or manage large email lists to promote affiliate offers.
This works because ClickBank is the merchant of record, which means we actually process each transaction when a sale is made. From there, we route all the funds to each party: the affiliate, the seller, any JV partners, and our own small transaction fee. (Learn more about how ClickBank works.)
Unlike CJ’s ecommerce focus with typical commissions running 10-30%, ClickBank’s performance affiliate focus means that commissions for affiliate offers often run 50%, 70%, or even higher!
Introducing CJ
On CJ, advertisers pay to list products under one account. CJ’s affiliates are also searchable by the advertisers on CJ. If you’re an affiliate, you can share details about your promotional method(s) – whether that’s a website, social account, email list, mobile app, or paid media – and have product owners come to you.
But that means before you can start on CJ, you need to have some kind of web property with an audience or another consistent means of promoting products. In addition, many advertisers on CJ require you to be manually approved before you can start promoting their products and making commissions.
CJ is also more flexible about how affiliates get paid out through its cost-per-action (CPA) commission model. As an affiliate, you can get paid for generating not just sales, but clicks, leads, or calls.
Performance Affiliate Marketing vs Content Publishing
A performance affiliate marketer refers to a scaled media buyer or large email list manager, while a content publisher model is more tailored for bloggers and website owners. ClickBank is well-suited to a performance affiliate marketing model with direct response offers.
The bottom line is, ClickBank is where you go to scale your income. Affiliates and sellers come to ClickBank for higher commission rates, allowing them to earn more than they would on more traditional affiliate networks like CJ.
Of course, you can work with both CJ and ClickBank, if you have the range of products or the affiliate experience to fit both platforms. To learn more about where ClickBank fits into your business, read on!
Why Affiliates Come to ClickBank
Here are just a few of the reasons why affiliates come to ClickBank to grow their businesses online.
Promote products that sell
Access to high-converting offers
Far and away, the top reason why affiliates come to ClickBank is because our marketplace is home to thousands of quality offers that convert! ClickBank has a strong team in place to vet the products that get listed on our marketplace, so you can expect all available offers to meet the highest standards.
Get paid your way
Fast, reliable payments
As the merchant of record, we automatically route funds from every transaction to the seller and affiliate, including both CPA and RevShare commissions. To date, we’ve never missed a payment – all affiliates can expect reliable and fast payouts, up to twice weekly.
Powerful product suite
All-in-one solution for affiliates
We’re more than just a marketplace. ClickBank has a full suite of products in place to help affiliates succeed, including powerful tracking and reporting tools, affiliate education, and more.
Why Sellers Come to ClickBank
Discover just a few of the reasons why sellers and product owners love working with ClickBank to build their businesses and power their affiliate programs.
Tap into a massive affiliate network
Affiliate Access
ClickBank has tens of thousands of active affiliates, including hundreds of Platinum affiliates with more than $250K per year of sales on our platform. As a seller, you can work with ClickBank to get your offer promoted by the best marketers in the business.
Hand off the hard stuff
Powerful Suite of Products
Sellers and product owners get access to a wide array of back-office features on ClickBank, including in-depth tracking, integrated payment solutions, tax remittance, 1099 management, and customer service.
Get paid, no matter what
Unlimited Processing Caps
Never worry about getting paid again! ClickBank can ensure you enjoy unlimited processing caps, because we’re operating as payment processor with our own MID. We routinely support merchants and brands on ClickBank with five-figure or even six-figure days (i.e. millions of dollars in revenue per year).
More from our clients
ClickBank has helped more than 100,000 clients find greater business success online. Here’s what just a few of them had to say about working with us!
Frequently Asked Questions
First, you should sign up for a free ClickBank account here. Then, you can browse the ClickBank marketplace and find offers to promote in your chosen niche or vertical.
For more information, check out our ClickBank for Beginners guide or our free video affiliate course – these are both step-by-step resources for affiliates looking to get started.
Building an affiliate program and becoming a seller on ClickBank starts with the type of product you sell. Get a full checklist and walkthrough for onboarding your product with our Seller Launch Checklist here.
ClickBank is an e-commerce platform and affiliate marketplace that serves as an intermediary between the end customer, product owner, and affiliate marketer. As the merchant of record, ClickBank processes each order and routes the funds from each transaction to the parties involved in a purchase.
Learn more about how ClickBank works here.
We’ve introduced a handful of exciting new features in just the last few years. These include an overhauled affiliate marketplace, improved order forms, CPA commissions, twice weekly payments, and powerful integrations, including with Shopify.
Yes, ClickBank offers both a revenue share (RevShare) and cost-per-action (CPA) commission structure! You can learn more about CPA on ClickBank here.
ClickBank features robust native integrations with a wide range of popular software tools and services. These include Voluum, ClickFunnels, Everflow, Bluehost, AWeber, and ShipOffers. See the full list of integrations here.
ClickBank offers plenty of free resources on the ClickBank blog and YouTube channel. If you want to take your learning to the next level, check out Spark by ClickBank, our official affiliate marketing education program with courses on copywriting, email marketing, paid ads, organic traffic, and more!