In this 400th edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell speaks with Lisa Riolo, the Executive Vice-President of Customer Experience at CJ Affiliate by Conversant. She talks about her history with Commission Junction and how she has returned back nearly a decade later, and revenue opportunities for affiliates.

Introducing Lisa Riolo

Lisa was one of the first people James met from the industry when he attended Commission Junction University in 2002. The Affiliate Buzz wasn't even an idea yet.

Lisa says James made an impression on her by his willingness to educate people on the success he'd recently started to enjoy. She adds that in the early days of the industry, educating others was so important.

Commission Junction - The Early Days

Then Lisa takes listeners back to her early days at Commission Junction, starting in Y2K. She reminds that as an affiliate before it was considered an industry, you had to go to each advertiser or brand individually. Cloud services weren't yet available.

In these early days, some things affiliates, including Commission Junction co-founder Lex Sisney, struggled with included:

* how much had they earned as affiliates

* confusing systems for reporting things

* not knowing when payment would arrive

Commission Junction offered a marketplace-type environment that aggregated brands and merchants in one place with consistency to when and how everyone received payment. During that time the concept was a pioneering idea.

Lisa reminds that the industry does not exist unless it is easy for affiliates to be successful. That concept was the most important aspect of the Commission Junction business model. Lisa took on the role of client development which oversaw:

* servicing and managing advertisers and trying to build their programs

* trying to advocate, assist and support the publishers to be successful

* helping the marketplace thrive and be successful

Commission Junction University

Then Lisa and James discuss the communities that have built around the marketplace environment, like ShareASale as well as the early days of Community Junction University, otherwise known as CJU. They start at the beginning, with the early days of CJU.

Lisa shares that very early on the goal was to create consistency for third-party tracking with the idea that there is no turnkey solution. It takes education, collaboration, and the sharing of ideas. In the time since, the content of CJU has evolved to keep up with the evolving marketers.

Lisa goes on to describe the affiliate industry as communities built around a marketplace environment. James observes that the internet today is made up of a large number of communities. The idea of community in the early days of CJU was very new, and the primary two ways to form a community were through live events and chat forums.

The Evolution of Commission Junction

Then Lisa segues to the Commission Junction forum, created with the original purpose of helping affiliates, and how a lack of moderators to police the forum caused a blurring of the forum's original purpose.

Lisa explains how a government investigation led to the Commission Junction forum being disabled in order to become ABestWeb, a new forum community which still exists today and offers affiliates the opportunity to help each other thrive.

Next Lisa explains how she left Commission Junction in 2006 for new ventures. After her departure, the company evolved. ValueClick already owned BeFree and Commission Junction. A few years after Value Click acquired Dotomi, they went through a re-branding but kept the CJ name.

Then at CJU 2014, it was announced that Alliance Data Systems, under its Epsilon group, would buy Conversant but to date plans to keep all the brands the same.