Rakuten Marketing - Reviews and experiences

Halfway through signing up I hesitated — their terms felt vague, I remember thinking that clause was odd, but I pushed on because the commission looked worth it. A few weeks later they shut my account with a brief email and no clear reason. Support replied with basically the same notice and the live chat rep said flat out they don't have to explain and won't reopen it. I've done affiliate work for years and sure, problems happen, but the lack of transparency is what stings. If you sign up, keep copies of everything and be ready to walk away. I wanted this to work, there's still a tiny hope, but they could be a lot clearer.

it's okay, not great, but I stuck with it and it paid off sometimes. I’ll be honest — there are real annoyances. Payments got delayed and I had to chase them. They blamed my bank once and promised payment “next year” which is a weird conversation to have. Still, a chunk of my commissions did arrive eventually, so it wasn’t all loss. The dashboard feels ancient. Like, 90s web vibes — slow and clunky. It does show the numbers though, even if it’s not elegant. Customer service? Slow and inconsistent. I sent a government ID twice and was told they never got it. One supervisor seemed to read my case but then didn’t actually know what payment method I’d chosen. That was frustrating. Also the close-account button didn’t work, so I had to ask support to do it manually. On the plus side, compared to some other affiliate programs I’ve tried, this one is more transparent about reporting and the fees aren’t bad. I’ve had far worse experiences elsewhere, so in that perspective this is acceptable. If you can tolerate some back-and-forth and occasional paperwork headaches, it will function for you. If you need flawless, instant payments and a modern UI, look elsewhere. For me it’s a useful tool with quirks. Not perfect, but it does the job and I still recommend it with some caveats.

I was sipping coffee and checking the site when I noticed the offers were gone. One minute there were over 300 live deals on our account, the next the account was "terminated." We run a cashback site and depend on these networks — literally had customers and promos scheduled, so it hit the workflow hard. Their first reply blamed us for not answering the Network Quality Team. Fine, I tracked down the missed mail, answered the pretty simple questions about our traffic and promo methods, sent back details right away. Then they came back saying a single IP was generating multiple clicks and that kind of traffic isn't allowed. It turned out to be our server IP. We told them that, asked what they wanted us to do, asked for logs, more specifics. Silence since. No follow-up. The platform itself is convenient and has loads of advertisers — we've worked with Awin, CJ, Admitad, ShareASale for years and manage thousands of partnerships — so the tools feel familiar and useful. But the way support stopped responding felt abrupt and left us stuck. Not everything is broken — the UI and tracking seem fine — but customer communication needs real improvement. I wish they'd give clear steps or at least explain fully, instead of just closing accounts and vanishing.

I hesitated when I first joined years ago because I’d heard stories about hold-ups and weird compliance stuff. For eight years it mostly worked fine, so I let those doubts slide. Turns out they were not totally unfounded.
Long story short: compliance told me my account was terminated because of a trademark conflict with my business name. Okay, fine — I changed the URL, migrated the site, updated everything the way they asked. After a few emails, though, they said I needed to open a brand new account instead. That made zero sense to me. If the site was the problem, why wait years? Why not say something earlier? And nobody in compliance ever signs their name, so you’re talking to this faceless team and it just gets passed back and forth with support. Support tells you to contact compliance. Compliance tells you to do things. The wheel keeps turning.
I earned that money the honest way — no hacks, no shady stuff — and watching links stop working and commissions disappear was rough. I don’t want to re-register and lose whatever credit and history I had. I get that rules exist, but a heads-up, a real person signing an email, or clearer steps would’ve helped a lot.
If you’re thinking of using them as a publisher, keep a backup plan: screenshots, invoices, and maybe don’t rely only on one network. I’m still a bit angry, but also tired; wish they handled it better. Anyway, hope this helps someone decide — and maybe they’ll fix their processes.

tracking wouldn't show our test sales, reports timed out, and support initially replied with the same cut-and-paste message for days. I kept nagging and asked for escalation; after about ten days a tech actually looked into the reporting and fixed a couple of backend hooks. Payouts that were missing showed up on the next cycle. So no, it wasn’t smooth, and I did lose time, but the problems were resolved and payments arrived. I’m still cautious, yet at this point reasonably satisfied. Might not be for everyone, but it worked for us in the end.