[Joey]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone had "problems" using some of ShareASale's features? Maybe it's just me, but hear are a few of the problems I've had with them:


1) when I first signed up as a ShareASale merchant, it wouldn't let me login to my account.

2) The affiliate approval pages have a javascript which highlights affiliates, making it work INCREDIBLY slowly on my mac.

3) Around November, I was overpaid by ShareASale by about $306.00. I emailed them about it 3 times. They finally told me to throw the check away after I mentioned it when they responded to an unrelated issue.

4) Right now my affiliate account's current balance is $169.66 yet I haven't received my monthly check from them in several months.

5) Every time I add a new banner to my affiliate program, it gets set a a "private for affiliate" banner. I am unable to make it public without contacting share a sale.

6) For several months now, I've gotten an error every time I try to update my profile information. With out this I can't change my affiliate program's commission rates, image, description, keywords, etc...

7)Today when I tried to login to my merchant account, it came up with an invalid login page. The lost password feature had no record of any of my email addresses.


Overall, ShareASale has been good to me. I've made money with them, and Brian is very friendly and helpful with support.

But..
Sometimes I get so frustrated with their fricken program! I'm trying to do a simultaneous release of a new version of my site and affiliate program and ShareASale sure as heck isn't making it easy!

-Joey

Shareapickle is bothering me also ... Brian has not responded to my email (3 days ... he's getting a call in the morning!) and I am fed up with the malarkey advertisers on the other networks ... I will post a (secret) Major CYA to other "Shareapickle" merchants ...

Fudge ripple ... We know this stuff ... inside and out ... why can't we make a network? .... (Working on it tongue.gif ... I hate these corporate and/or surfer "tool" s )

Haiko

[klockow_chuck]

So what's a merchant to do? From what i've been reading lately is affiliate networks are screwing up, merchants are screwing up and affiliates are sometimes idiots. I've been working building my online business and I know that someday I will have to have some affiliates in order to make it to continue to grow. I haven't reached that point yet (I'm still growing +8% each month), but I want to be prepared.

There is no way I would join CJ to get 1000 applications so I can sift through affiliates web sites - I feel that if they are pushing my product they ought to do it in a way that makes the market look good. Then to top it off, you have to hear them whine about orders that were cancelled or returned. Like it or not, I sometimes cancel orders because I just know that the customer won't be happy and will be returning the item. And yes - there is a lot of fraud. If I get an order that is to be shipped in the US and the credit card passes the AVS system but says it's a foreign card - guess what - I delete the order. It's not fun shipping saddles, then a month later finding out it was fraudulent - your out $800 saddle and you return the money.

Yeah, I'd like to see a good network, but only one that recognizes there are 3 parties involved. I'm thinking 200,000 affiliates in CJ, sounds great but how many losers that will claim they are getting ripped off because they aren't selling in January - the worst month of the year (at least for saddles)!

I would love to work with someone that has a true interest in my market. It should be a two-way communication. I know what sells, when it sells and how to make is sell. I'd rather work with 10 affiliates that are truly interested in working for their money than 1000 that just want to throw me some hits. I can sit at my pc and visit my site all day to accumulate hits.

Sorry - the four kids were quite loud today - I'd rather do this than beat them /infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[WSE]

Hmmm, I havn't had any of those problems... but I've never had an email responded to which is worrying.

P.S. For the...

5) Every time I add a new banner to my affiliate program, it gets set a a "private for affiliate" banner. I am unable to make it public without contacting share a sale.

...you have selected public link from the drop down when adding the banner? Just checking.

[ 01-24-2002: Message edited by: WebSearchEngines.net ]

[Joey]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>...you have selected public link from the drop down when adding the banner?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks, but I select public link and it still saves the banner as private. Its been like that since I opened my account.

ShareASale was excellent when I started with them. Now they don't reply to my emails and I still can't login to my account. Could ShareASale be dieing too?

[evilbob]

CJ really does make the others look very stupid... yes, it has problems - but it really is a great company.

Is it not worth the extra $$$ to go with them?

Just got off the phone with Brian ... things are good and healthy there!

--------

Joey,

He said he'd look into it and fix it for you.

Haiko

[Joey]

Thanks Haiko,

You're still the man. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

-Joey

[ecomcity]

To the guy sell saddles: Your niche' product is ideal for selling on the Net as long as your web site is easy to navigate and your pricing is at street level with your competition. Saddles are not impulse buys and those in the market for them can wait til their normal local source or mail order house can deliver. So price is very important unless you sell really hard to find hand tooled and fancy riding or rodeo show saddles not found elsewhere.

If you meet the above requirements then even the traffic from non-related affiliate sites who might be frequented by horse owners will spurr your some sales. Go the CJ route ( non-exclusive) for mass affiliates and then also run a private program for those site owners who cater to your exact target audience.

[Joey]

Another thing...
I get all of my affiliate approval requests sent to me by email. Emails used to have the subject "Subject: Affiliate Approval Needed". Now they have no subjects.

It seems like my ShareASale account is slowly falling apart (not that the whole thing ever worked right). And this time, I have seen NOTHING done to fix it.

-Joey :mad:

[WSE]

Yep, that's strange indeed... hopefully they'll look at that and get it fixed... doing themselves no favours otherwise.

[Joey]

I've made contact with Brian. Things are moving forward. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif tongue.gif

-Joey

[WSE]

ah the elusive brian /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[webmarm]

Saddleguy,
I suspect that one of the upcoming changes in the affiliate world will be merchants and "performing" affiliates making more and more contact to work out private deals on marketing the merchant's items.
I know that after I get a little more "proof" that I can deliver, I'm going to approach some merchants who don't advertise affiliate programs. :eek: