Linkshare Pay out for 2013

So, you have stumbled into Linkshare aka Rakuten as an alternative advertisement affiliate to Google Adsense.
You see that Linkshare has a large selection of well known companies to advertise with. and it now makes your website look official, and it shows that you have high quality advertisers. Such as walmart, HP, Microsoft, Starbucks. Big name companies. Great feeling right?
Now you want to know what the income looks like. You want to know .. Does Linkshare pay ?
I have to say from my experience.
No.
I have rand their advertisements for two years. and not a single penny.
The issue is, you only make money when people click the link on your site and buy something from the site they clicked to. You basically send good traffic to these sites, for nothing.

Linkshare-payout2013
Linkshare-payout2012

Of course I dropped a few advertisers and took on a few new ones who left Google’s whatever service that was similar to linkshare and they all migrated to linkshare. and dropped a few advertisers that just would not work very well with my content.

Fact is, you will not make money with linkshare unless you go against the code of ethics and start making fake posts and hyping the content you link.

Affiliate program gets lawsuite

I was signed with an affiliate program for years, and never made more than $7. Two weeks ago I got a notice in my email saying they sold the company. They went on saying that all current bills will be paid by the end of what ever month, not sure I just started to ignore the junk I would get from them.

now this is what I suspected all along.

RE: Important Legal Notice Regarding Commission Junction’s Affiliate Network

If you joined or were a member of the affiliate marketing networks operated by ValueClick, Inc., Commission Junction, Inc. and/or Be Free (collectively, “Defendants”), between April 20, 2003 and the present, you may be a class member in Settlement Recovery Center et al. v. ValueClick, Inc. et al., No. 2:07-cv-02638-FMC-CTx, a lawsuit which is pending in the Central District of California. The Settlement Notice informs you of the Court’s certification of a class for settlement purposes; the nature of the claims alleged; your right to participate in, or exclude yourself from, the class; a proposed settlement; and how you can claim an award of advertising credits under the settlement or object to the settlement.

The proposed settlement will resolve claims that Defendants failed to adequately monitor Commission Junction’s Network for the use by third parties of software that does not comply with Commission Junction’s (“CJ”) Publisher Code of Conduct and that is intended to steal or divert commissions from publishers on CJ’s network (“Non-compliant Software”), failed to adequately monitor or prevent third parties from engaging in the theft or “hijacking” of commissions from Advertisers and Publishers on CJ’s Network, and failed to make sufficient disclosures regarding the existence of Non-compliant Software and commission theft, resulting in losses to both advertisers and publishers on the CJ Network.

The proposed settlement will provide a monetary recovery to eligible class members. For class members that currently maintain an account on the CJ Network will receive payment through payments or credits deposited or applied to their CJ accounts; eligible class members that no longer have accounts on the Commission Junction Network will receive a check for an equal amount.

If you are a member of the class, your legal rights are affected by whether you act or do not act. You should review the Settlement Notice as soon as possible as there are several important deadlines that you must meet to take certain actions in connection with this proposed settlement. In particular, the deadline for filing an objection or excluding yourself from the proposed settlement is September 30, 2008. For further information, please refer to the Settlement Notice.

They used to tell me that I just had a crappy second rate website.

The email notice ended with

For a copy of the Settlement Notice, click on the link, or visit the case website at www.CJSettlement.com

If you would prefer not to receive further messages from this sender, please Click Here and confirm your request.