Monday:  It means two things.  Number one is that I am writing another post to you lovely people again and Monday Night Football (that should be an ESPN commercial.)  And to be honest I am much more excited about football tonight then I am about writing this post, but who can blame me?  The games on tonight should be high scoring blowouts.  But I guess I should stop talking about football and get on with why I’m here.

Where would we be without Facebook?  Facebook has exploded over the past few years and it is everywhere.  I remember this summer being at a baseball game watching the fifty year old women chat on Facebook the entire game.  With 250 million users on Facebook, there is a lot of potential there.  The problem with all this potential traffic is that it might not be the best market for you.  Creating Facebook ads can be tricky. I have lightly dabbed into it and really didn’t look to deep into it and lost money rather quickly.  There are some steps and considerations to take before you start advertising on Facebook.

First of all, and possibly the most important is to make sure you get your target market right.  Make sure you are targeting the right age group, location, sex….. There are multiple options for you to choose from.  The narrower your target market the better your chance of you making a profit.  You want to make sure the right people are seeing your ad, even if that means creating many variations for your ad.

Creating different variations of your ad is a smart thing to do anyway.  It keeps things fresh.  Different pictures and different wording will help in the long run.  Every person is different and running different ads on Facebook will help you figure out what ad variations work better with targeted market.

Facebook can be tricky but can also be very rewarding.  I’m looking forward to going more in depth with it and turning a profit.  Maybe in the future I’ll talk about this more but it’s pretty simple and self-explanatory.  Just do some tweaking and some good ol’ trial and error, but you can have some fun on Facebook.  Enjoy. Talk to everyone later.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Social Marketing by Matt Fern
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****I know I’m posting this a few days late but as much as Las Vegas is a fantastic town, wireless internet is hard to come by.  And I refused to pay $15 a day for internet.  So I wrote this on the plane ride to Vegas****

Well it’s another glorious Monday and as much as I want to complain about having to write a post, I’m on a flight to Las Vegas so I can’t complain.  So I would just like to apologize for the post I’m about to post because honestly I have completely checked out.  But anyway I’m writing to you today about the Amazon tax.  I know it has already been touched on but there is some new info that I am completely against so I figured I would share.

So as you’re probably aware that the “Amazon Tax” finally got pushed through in North Carolina a little while ago.  (I think Tim wrote about the tax earlier)  As soon as NC legislation mentioned that they were going to try to pass this tax Amazon.com (and others) pulled its affiliate program out of NC.  Now this affected numerous people.  Ranging from small businesses that specialize in affiliate marketing (One owner told me that his profits have sunk 50% since the bill was passed) to college students trying to make some extra money for school.

So now that the law has passed and Amazon has pulled its affiliate program out of NC you’d figure everything would be fine right?  Well not so much.  NC’s department of revenue is going after companies like Amazon stating that “the state loses at least $200 million a year in uncollected sales tax from such businesses.”   So NC wants money they think they deserve and I am dying to know why they think Amazon and other companies owe them money.  Amazon dropped its affiliates in NC before the tax was pushed through but yet the NC government thinks that companies like Amazon owe them money.

So let me start my rant about why I think Amazon should be left alone and not bothered, after all the NC government is screwing Amazon out of a lot of money as it is.  So ok let us start with Senator David Hoyle.  He has been quoted as saying that he is completely for the NC government going after Amazon for money they believe is owed to them.  Now if we look at Senator Hoyle, he is 70 years old and makes over 200 thousand dollars a year (http://people.forbes.com/profile/david-w-hoyle/19915) Now this tax does not really effect people such as Senator Hoyle because he is by far not in our generation.  At 70 years old I can’t see the Senator doing a lot of online shopping; now I could be completely wrong.  All I am saying is that the younger generation does quite a bit of shopping online and that the older generations do not.  So naturally the older generation is not going to see eye to eye with us on the whole internet thing.  Another reason is that the senator makes over 200 grand a year, so even if David Hoyle was involved in affiliate marketing losing a couple of thousand of dollars would not affect him.  See my name argument with this tax is that it does not the generation that is in politics right now.  All the Senators and people in the House of Representatives are in an older generation then us.  They don’t see the internet as a tool for young small businesses to get a head start and expand their businesses.  They just see that there is a way for the government to make more money so  they say “hey let’s take advantage of this.”

So let’s look at the problems this tax has caused.  Before they passed the tax companies like Amazon pulled its affiliate programs out of NC, causing many small businesses to lose profits.  So now instead of promoting small businesses they are shutting them down.  Causing numerous people to downsize their small businesses or even shut down.  And on top of that NC is attempting to sue Amazon.  So let me get this straight:  In an economy that is supposed to be supportive of small businesses they have shut the door on numerous small businesses and now they are attempting to sue a large company, in which will cost them lots and lots of money.   So if they sue Amazon sure the NC government will make some money, but at what cost.  If Amazon get sued they will lose lots of money and be forced to lay employees off to save money, further weakling the economy even more.

It boggles the mind how the government thinks.  They plan on gaining money from passing this tax when in reality they are causing small businesses to lose money, cut employees,  and crippling the economy.  Now I would just like to state that this post is completely my opinion and the fact that I am on a flight to Las Vegas with a few cocktails in my system.  Now I just hope I can find some free internet so I can post this today.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, PPC Marketing by Matt Fern
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Since Google now owns Performics, they are obviously pushing to bring it more in line with their other products.  First, they made publishers set up payments through AdSense.  Other than the fact that now we only get paid once a month instead of twice, that move doesn’t really bother me that much.  But just like I knew they would, they are trying to force us to start using a Google Account to login.  And this is really pissing me off!

Like most people, I use several of the services Google offers.  I have several Gmail accounts (both personal and professional).  I even use iGoogle, despite its awful name.  Then there is AdSense, Analytics, and AdWords.  And for a very short period, I even used blogger.  All of these products use Google Accounts.  But the only problem is not all of them use the same one.  So anytime I go from one Google product to another, it tries to keep me logged into the same account.  I never really liked this, but this was never a major problem for me in the past.  But now that Google is moving towards making Google Accounts required to log into Performics, this is going to be a major inconvenience for me.  And yes, I called it Performics and always will.  Google Affiliate Network is just too long to say and GAN just sounds like something you would catch from a Tijuana hooker.  “Sorry guys, I would love to go out drinking, but my GAN is flaring up real bad.”

Every morning I run a report to get a broad overview of where my accounts are at.  This requires me to be logged into both AdWords and Performics.  So now that Google tricked me into switching my Performics logins to Google Accounts by making seem like I couldn’t log into my accounts unless I did, each morning I have to log into AdWords, start running a report, and then log out so I can check my Performics accounts.  Then once I am done with that, log back into AdWords.

Now, all those times that I switch from one Google product to another, I get annoyed that I have to hit a log out button each time because it tries to log me in under a different name.  So I thought maybe there was some setting in the Google Accounts that would keep this from happening.  Maybe a setting that made it so that just because I was logged into one Google product, I wasn’t logged into all of them.  There are people out there that I would let check my Gmail account for me that I would not want looking in my AdWords account or my AdSense account, so this just makes sense.  But no, there are no options like that that I could find.

So I thought I would just contact someone at Google and see if there was a way to do it that I just didn’t see.  Word to the wise:  never try to contact Google through anything other than AdWords, because it’s just a giant clusterfuck.  I ended up posting something in the “Affiliate Network Help Forum.”  There, a Google Employee under the name Kariyushi said, “There is a green box below the login boxes that says ‘Stay logged in.’  Uncheck it.  Other than that, you will have to log out/in each time you want to switch Google Accounts.”  So I have to hit sign out every time.  Is it sad that this bothers me so much that I am considering using different browsers to access different products so that this doesn’t affect me?  Maybe use Internet Explorer to access Performics, Firefox to access AdWords, and Safari to access AdSense?  But screw Chrome.  I think Google already has enough information about me already.  Now if you excuse me, I have to wrap my computer in more tinfoil.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Google, Google Affiliate Network by Chris Cremen
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Hi Everybody! (bonus points for anyone who read that in Dr. Nicks voice.) Is it Monday already?  Well last week I talked about composing a solid keyword list.  This week I’m going to go deeper in detail about keywords and keyword matching options.  Keyword matching options allow you to control how precise a user’s search must be to trigger your ad.  Remember, the more targeted your keywords are, the more likely you’re likely to reach potential customers.  There are four matching options for you to choose from; broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match.

Broad match keywords are your default setting.  Broad match is pretty simple. If you enter a keyword in without any punctuation, it’s a broad match keyword.  These keywords produce the most impressions and will get your ad seen by more people.  The problem is that is usually a vague word/phrase and will produce a lot of clicks, but those clicks might be untargeted traffic which will not result in conversions.

Phrase match keywords are entered by adding quotations ( “ “ ) around the word or phrase.  Meaning your ad will only trigger if someone search has the exact words in the exact order.  If your keyword was “free games,” the search for free download games would not show your ad.  Phrase match options are fantastic for question based searches.  The phrase “engagement rings” would be shown for searches like “How much are engagement rings” and “cleaning engagement rings.”

The exact match option is entered by putting square brackets around the phrase.  ( [ ] ) Exact match option means that only search queries with the exact words/phrase without any additional words or letters before, between, or after the keyword will trigger your ad.  Example: The exact match [cheap video games] means that only a search of “cheap video games” would trigger your ad.  A search for “where can I find cheap video games” or “cheap video games for sale” would not trigger your ad.  Exact match tends to not get as many clicks but the resulting traffic will increase your click-through rate.  Having you enter every possible combination of words/phrases you want to trigger your ad is more time consuming and could restrict some traffic if you have forgotten to include something.

Finally negative keywords, WOO HOO!  Negative keywords are words that prevent your ad from appearing and are entered by using a minus sign ( – ) before the word.  If you sell used video games on your website, negative keywords can help you immensely.   A good negative keyword would be –free.  That way for any search that is for “free used games” your ad will not be triggered.

It’ll take some time and effort but if you learn the advantages and disadvantages to the keyword matching options it will greatly improve your online PPC campaign.

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Filed under: Adwords, Affiliate Marketing, Google, PPC Marketing by Matt Fern
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So I’ve been very busy the past couple weeks. There’s only one of me, it’d be great if there were two. I’ve been having a terrible time concentrating, sleeping, and getting things done. I’ve been hammering caffeine in hopes that I’ll get jittery and focused enough to work my magic. Well, it worked for a while, but after three weeks straight of this, it stopped having it’s effect. So bad, that I had pounded two Red Bulls inside 15 minutes and was asleep less than an hour later. For a normal person, this might’ve made their heart jump out of their chest, but after my addiction, it didn’t really do much.

So I made a challenge with myself. On Monday, I swore off caffeine. Just for a couple days, though. I’ve been getting withdrawal headaches, I’ve been irritable, and it’s generally been a miserable experience. I finally had caffeine today, and while it wasn’t Earth-shattering, I do feel better and more alert. It also helps that I got a full nights sleep last night.

I’ve run across campaigns that work the same way. Well, they don’t run on caffeine, but I anticipate clicks coming from a certain source. In fact, I rely on it, it’s my crutch, such as promoting solely through PPC. I’ll pour money into a campaign, it’ll be getting good clicks, but it’ll start getting stale after a while. I’m only going through PPC, and usually only through Google, so all my traffic comes from the same place. So sometimes, I have to step back and re-evaluate my plans. PPC is great to drive traffic, but sometimes you need to detox from it and look down another avenue. When I’m running affiliate offers, I’ll usually start with PPC, but something like AdBrite would be a great alternative. It offers a different traffic stream, for a reasonable cost. It’s not as targeted or as quality, but sometimes shaking things up will improve things overall.

So that’s just a small example. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, as they say. Don’t rely on just one avenue; step back, detox, try something else. You might return to the original, but hopefully you’ll do it with a better viewpoint.

Oh, and stay the heck away from my coffee and Red Bull.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Uncategorized by Tim Caspersen
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Ebay is changing the way that they handle their affiliate commissions.  Instead of an affiliate getting paid a commission on a sale, they are going to something called “Quality Click Pricing”.  This basically seems to be a modified pay per click model.  It seems like the amount paid will vary according to how closely the clicks relate to direct sales.  This is to basically help them reduce commissions on items that they would have sold regardless of the affiliates work.

While I am not sure I really like this new payment structure the one thing I like that by the end of August eBay will have reporting in place to show how well affiliates would be doing under the new plan if it was currently in effect.

This new plan will go into effect on October 1^st for all current merchants but anyone who joins after September 1^st will go into the new plan.

Below is a copy of the email that eBay sent out this morning.

Today we’re announcing Quality Click Pricing, a new payout structure designed to further reward the affiliates who drive incremental transactions on eBay and who send valued buyers to our sites.

What’s Quality Click Pricing?

Until now, eBay Partner Network has paid for sales and leads. With Quality Click Pricing, we will now instead pay affiliates for each click sent to an eBay site. The price paid per click will still depend on the short-term and long-term revenue of the traffic that the publisher drives to eBay, but will now also take into account the incremental value of that traffic to eBay, i.e., whether a sale happened as a direct result of the publisher’s actions. The greater the incremental revenue and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers an affiliate sends, the higher the EPC and total earnings the affiliate will receive. Earnings Per Click (EPC) will be set daily for the previous day’s traffic.

When will this change take place?

We plan to phase the introduction of Quality Click Pricing to ensure existing publishers have enough time to understand how this affects them.

• New publishers that join the eBay Partner Network as of September 1st will be paid out under the new system. This includes all publishers joining as they transition from TradeDoubler and affilinet.
• Publishers that joined eBay Partner Network prior to September 1st will remain on the current pricing system until October 1st, when they will begin to be paid under the new Quality Click Pricing payment structure. Before October 1st, and starting the last week in August, existing publishers will have access to a preview report to see how their new payouts compare with the existing payment structure for them.

How can I find out more about this change?

We know that you may have questions about Quality Click Pricing, so we have put together several resources to give you more information about it:

• Read more about this change and some of the reasons behind it on our blog, including a FAQs document.
• A new set of pages on the eBay Partner Network site that explain how Quality Click Pricing works in more detail will be available later today.
• Two new videos that explain the concept of Quality Click Pricing (one available today and a second that will explain new reports on September 1st).
• In addition, we will hold two live webinars to explain the change and give publishers the opportunity to ask questions. Find out more about the webinars.

We will also be on the boards more frequently over the next few days to answer publishers’ questions.

We are very excited about the launch of Quality Click Pricing, as it will allow us to reward publishers who are driving high quality, engaged and incremental traffic to eBay. We are also committed to continuing to invest in helping our publishers succeed with eBay Partner Network, and to ensuring that everyone is rewarded fairly for the value they generate for eBay.

We look forward to working with you on this new endeavor. Thanks for your continued support!

Sincerely,

Steve Hartman,

The eBay Partner Network

Update!!!

There has been another email sent out further clarifying Quality Click Pricing.  It’s below for your reading pleasure.

Following the announcement of Quality Click Pricing, I realize that there are going to be a lot of questions, so I wanted to take a moment to speak with you about why we’re making this change.

Since we launched eBay Partner Network, we’ve continued to invest in the platform and have made many improvements to the quality of our affiliate program. Quite simply, quality in eBay Partner Network means that eBay’s affiliate spend results in incremental transactions and incremental high lifetime value users. Said another way, we are working to make sure that our affiliate marketing spend delivers transactions that would not have otherwise occurred and new high value users who may not have registered on eBay.

We’ve taken a number of steps to make sure that eBay Partner Network delivers on this promise so that we can continue to invest in our affiliate program, but we’ve been missing one key piece: fully aligning affiliate payouts with the true value of the traffic, transactions, and users that they deliver. Our first step towards aligning compensation with actual value was our Value Based ACRU pricing, which we launched in the US last year. With Quality Click Pricing, we will go further; compensating each affiliate not only for the value of your ACRUs, but also the incrementality of the transactions you drive.

By fully aligning our compensation with quality, we hope that the affiliates whose earnings increase under the new payout model will find ways to drive even more of your high quality traffic to eBay. For affiliates who will initially earn less, we’d like to see you test some of our suggestions and work to improve the incrementality of your traffic, as this will increase your earnings and benefit eBay. From our experiences with our beta publishers, we know that with optimization increasing your payout is a real possibility.

We have not taken this decision to change our compensation model lightly. The eBay Partner Network team has put a lot of effort and thought into the move to Quality Click Pricing over the last year, and we’ve involved numerous publishers in a beta program and previews of the system. From the results that we have seen for eBay and for our publishers, I feel strongly that this is a very positive move for the future of our affiliate program and I am personally excited to see the continued improvements in quality that it will drive.

We know that change is not always easy, and that any change like this has a large impact for each of you on a personal level. I’m sure that there will still be additional questions moving forward, and to help address them, we’re setting aside time to engage more with you on the discussion boards, and will hold a live webinar on Friday 21st August at 9am PST. You can visit the blog for more details. I look forward to the dialogue and to continuing to build our mutual success on eBay Partner Network.

Sincerely,
Steve Hartman

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing by Chris Cremen
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Over the past two weeks I’ve been explaining about the whole Adwords certification thing, and now I’m a certified individual (not to mention we are a certified company now as well)  Now I’m going to talk about a few things that can increase your sale and profits.  Adwords has all sorts of tools and options to optimize your accounts.  Even with all these options one of the best ways to improve your profits is your landing page.  Conversion’s the word.  You can get all the clicks you want but if you can’t get any conversions you’re just throwing money away.

So what is a landing page?  A landing page is the page visitors arrive at after clicking your ad.  It is important that your landing page is simple, easy to understand, and matches the ad that was clicked on to get to the page.  When deciding your landing page it is important that you think of the user.  Think of what they are seeing through their eyes.  Think of all the thoughts that are going through their head.  “Does this site look trustworthy”, “is this the right place”, “how much time will this take?”  The site must me user friendly.

Make sure that your landing page works in conjunction with your ad text.  In other words if the ad text is describing a certain product, make sure that the landing page takes the user to that products page.  It may frustrate the user if they click the ad and then have to go search for the product.  Remember your goal is to get the conversion.  If the user clicks the ad and get frustrated then just backs out of your website you’re not making any money.

Your landing page is key to making profits.  Just keep in mind these two rules about landing pages and you should be fine:  1) make the content useful, relevant, and trustworthy.  2) Make the site easy to navigate.  Landing pages are not that hard but one little mistake can completely ruin your traffic/conversions.  One of the most important things to do is TEST, TEST, and TEST!!  Try different things.  One little difference can make a huge difference in sales.  After you make a few changes and test them, you will be able to see what works best for you and your customers.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines, Site Design by Matt Fern
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It’s been about 18 months since Linkshare debuted their new interface, but I have yet to stop using their old one. I think the fact that the old interface has still been functional for so long should make it clear that the new showing was far from great.  As a matter of fact, it was quite awful.  But now comes word that on August 11^th, the original interface will be “retired” and I will be forced to use the new interface.  I have used the new interface occasionally just to see if my feelings for it have changed, and I no longer despise it like the second coming of Family Guy (or the first coming of that awful show).

When they first launched the new “Publisher Dashboard,” my biggest complaint was that the commission numbers never matched up.  I would log into the old interface and my commission numbers would be anywhere from $200 to $2,000 off.  That’s a big discrepancy, especially since Linkshare numbers always seem a little lower then what they actually are.  But now I notice that the numbers are finally spot on.  Now, if they could just make their commission numbers update as quickly as they should.

One thing I will really miss from the old interface is getting a detailed report in just 1 click.  I can log into my account on the old interface, go to the bottom of the screen, and chose the dates and report type I want to see right there.  And since I usually want a sales report for the current month, all I had to do was hit “go,” and I had it.  Now I have to go into the reports section, and deal with a drop down box.  The new interface has plenty of white space at the bottom; they should really consider adding that feature there.

They also changed the display of the report when you download it.  Instead of being a nice and clean, you get bogged down in useless information and a stupid layout.  First, they reduced the text size from 11 to 8.  Not a major change, but enough to be irritating.  They also added a delightfully boring shade of grey to the top row of the report.  I don’t know about you, but when I think of ways to liven up a spreadsheet, the first thing I think of is throwing some grey in there.  Thanks, Linkshare.  Also, the report now includes the all valuable Advertised ID number as the first column instead of the Merchant Name.  Since Linkshare thinks this number is more important than the merchant name, I am going to start to refer to merchants solely as their number.  It looks like I need to do more with 2661, what do you guys think?  My final rant dealing with their new report is the use of a border around each cell in the report, with all the other cells being whited out.  How many people when making reports actually do this?  All this does is create another step I have to do when making a report, removing boarders from cells.  The whole “updated” reporting part of the new interface really sucks.

Perhaps the biggest thing I love about the new interface has nothing to do with the interface at all, but rather the login.  That’s right, Linkshare finally upgraded their login to let browsers recognize and store passwords.  I know this is not what most people will be thrilled about, but it’s comforting to know that I no longer have to type in a password to log into my account.  While some people may consider that a security feature, I always considered it annoying and it made me wish ill things to whoever set it up. Maybe that they would stub their toe or that their pen would run out of ink.  That would show them.

The only feature that I have actively logged into the new interface to use since its inception is the Last Payment info.  As a matter of fact, it’s located right on the home page.  Nothing makes me want to do more with Linkshare than to see that number every time I login.  I don’t even think it was ever actually possible to find this information in the original interface since 2005.  But now I get to login to my account every week and see exactly how much is being sent to me.  And while opening the envelope from Linkshare each week was similar to the excitement of opening a birthday card from grandma to see how much she sent me, knowing how much was coming let me plan my budget far better.

I now have less than a week left of the old interface.  I am sure that once I am forced to use the new one, my complaint list will grow and I will find new feature that I like.  But I am going to guess that if I do another post about the interface, the complaint list is what will grow the fastest.  What do you guys think of the new Linkshare Publisher Dashboard?  Am I being too hard on it?

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Linkshare by Chris Cremen
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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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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing by Caren Romanyschyn
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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?

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing by Caren Romanyschyn
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