Ok, so at first glance there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary when it comes to using Share A Sale. I mean, it’s just like any other Affiliate Network, right? Before you answer too quickly, let’s delve a little deeper.
You’ve got your basic login page, which is fairly simple and straightforward to navigate. All you need to do is select Affiliate or Merchant login and you’re golden. So now that you’ve been granted access, let’s take a look at the home screen. Wowza! There’s a lot going on up in here. It seems like Share A Sale is not a fan of tabbed browsing, instead choosing to lay it all out there. Alright then, to each his own, but there is a whole lot of information just hanging out here so it can be a little daunting to a new user.
Speaking of new users, the first thing you’re going to want to do is join some merchant programs. Sounds easy right? I mean, all you have to do is look for the column marked “Find/Join Merchants” and click on the “View and Search Merchant List” link, which should bring you to a beautiful list of possible merchants for you to conduct business with. Oh no! Something must be amiss because all I have is a couple of link options, but no master list of merchants. Oh ok, I get it, I have to once again navigate to find a list of possible merchants.
Alright, let’s go with the “All Programs” link because it seems like a pretty safe bet. Awesome! I’ve finally got a list of merchants to get me started. Hmm, these don’t seem to be in any sort of order. I mean, it’s not alphabetical because the merchant names range from Unique USA to Global Scholar and then back to Seating Zone. Maybe it’s by category? Wrong again. We’ve got Home & Garden mixed in with Education and Gifts. Sale Commission? Nope. Lead Commission? Negatory. Ok, so maybe I’m going about this the wrong way. Let’s try sorting the columns alphabetically so that I can take a gander at all the merchants starting with the letter “A” and work my way through the alphabet. Once again, that’s not possible.
I give up, Share A Sale. Anybody got any ideas as to how I can butter up an Affiliate Program? Chocolates or flowers perhaps?
July 28th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Usually a body massage works, but I agree they have been around for a long time at this point, they want to be competitive with other networks yet they just don’t do anything about it, they are a mess all the time and they have weird products like love potions (which don’t work by the way, not that I have tried or anything)
July 29th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Caren – thanks for your post, hope to shed a little light on a few things.
When I search for programs, I like to do so by two main things
1) category and 2) PowerRank
PowerRank is our proprietary method of ranking programs based on commission, volume, epc, etc….
Here is a URL to an image to show how that is done, right from the main page that you were on (View/Search Merchant List).
http://blog.shareasale.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Image122.jpg
If you prefer to search by “All Programs” you can do that as well, Below is a URL of a screen shot of how you can sort that out … usually I recommend again sorting by PowerRank as it then tells you which are the best programs, etc…
http://blog.shareasale.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Image222.jpg
If you need any help – please let me know…