Ok, so last week I delved into the daunting world of Affiliate Marketing, via Share A Sale. While I admit that I may have been a little overly harsh in my criticism of their interface, I think the general sentiment still rings true: user friendly, Share A Sale is not.
If you check out the comments on my last post, you’ll see a message from Brian Littleton. Who is Brian Littleton, you may ask? He is the President and CEO of Share A Sale, and he was nice enough to post a few tips on how to navigate through the search options on his network. While I feel honored that Mr. Littleton took the time to shoot over a message, the original problem still remains. I mean, not everyone can be lucky enough to have the President and CEO of the network take time out of their day to help them out when they don’t understand how to use search options in Share A Sale.
I think my main problem with Share A Sale is more of a design issue than anything. The categories are just kinda out there on the top of the page, the subcategories are a little on the small side, and the overall logo doesn’t stand out. Bottom line? It’s just not pretty. Sure, that seems like a trivial criticism, but it’s really not. How many sites have you gone to where it looks like the designer just didn’t put in the effort? Did you want to stay on the site very long? Nope. I bet you high-tail it out of there the first chance you get. Because if the web design is poor, then what is the quality of service going to be like? Chances are, they are one and the same.
Now, I don’t want any of you to get the wrong idea. Yes, it’s true, there are a few things I am not too stoked about when it comes to Share A Sale. But I have to say, they are one of the networks I really enjoy using. One of the major reasons I like Share A Sale is because they make it super easy to direct link to a product. Believe it or not, this is like a foreign concept to most networks. Commission Junction will sometimes maybe if they feel like it let you stick a product link in their affiliate links, but I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one. Linkshare just recently created a LinkBuilder that lets you create your own links, but before that the only way to get a specific product link was to hope you could find it in their “Individual Product” section. And good luck with that.
Here’s where Share A Sale comes in. Share A Sale and me go way back because they’ve been hooking me up with product links from the very start. All you have to do is head over to their “Get Links” section and skim down the list until you see “Create a Custom Link to a Page.” Once you click on that baby, it’s pretty straighforward; pick your merchant, enter your link, and hit the “Create Custom Link” button. Viola! You have an instantly live, custom link. It really doesn’t get much better than that for a blogger such as myself.
So Share A Sale, I’m sorry. I said some things in the heat of the moment that may have been a little unkind, but you have to admit that there is some room for improvement. I’m sure there are some things that you feel bad about too. Look, the point I’m trying to make is that we’re good together and I don’t want to mess with what we’ve got. I’m glad we had this talk.
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