» Linkshare, Are You Stupid? AffConnect: Affiliate & Web Marketing Stuff

I went to Linkshare today in search of their affiliate agreement (was curious about how the different networks looked at forced clicks). Usually the fastest path to a network affiliate agreement is to click join. They’re almost always worked into the join form in one way or another and the join form is ALWAYS easy to find. Right?

So I visited Linkshare today and… Umm… Where the crap is the join link? Scan, scan, scan, nope, not a single join link anywhere in site. You have to actually mouse over the word ”Publishers” in the top nav. Doing so triggers a hidden menu to drop down, finally revealing the golden join link.

Feeling like Indiana Jones, I click and… Still no. Okay, now I’m getting cross. Instead of the join form I’m expecting I get yet another join link. Didn’t I just click the join link? Groundhog Day then?

Click.

Oh, for the love of Mike! Is Linkshare trying to avoid my application altogether?!?!

Instead of that elusive join form, this time I land on an error page telling me that my application could not be processed and to reconfigure my browser’s security settings if I’m having any trouble.

Linkshare, rather than ask this thread’s title question again, here’s my free consult of the day:

Keep it simple. This isn’t, and should never be, rocket science. Plain links, plain HTML forms, easy peasy, lemon squeazy. You’ll get more affiliates and make more money.

You have two goals; get your current affiliates in the door to the marketing tools and recruit new affiliates. Get in either’s way too much and you’ve lost them. I speak from experience. You lost me years ago just by making it harder for me to login (hint to Shareasale, I still don’t like the new login).

Lastly, think for a second. Is telling a potential new affiliate that they need to reset their security settings to work with you really the message you want to send? First impressions tend to last.

2 users commented in " Linkshare, Are You Stupid? "

sdickens said,

in August 10th, 2008 at 8:11 am

Your experience is familiar. Why those affiliate brokers make it so difficult is beyond me.

What’s equally irksome is going to log in one day and seeing a message that your account has been deactivated. This isn’t Linkshare, by the way, but CJ. Because I hadn’t logged on in 30 days or hadn’t made a sale in 6 months or whatever, they closed my account. Interesting. And they didn’t even bother to warn me of this beforehand. And once they do that, you can’t get it reopened. You have to reregister under new ID.

Carl said,

in September 12th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

Hi Eat,
I ‘had to’ join LinkShare a while back because a vendor I promoted had a product there (but NOT at another affiliate centre that they also use - go figure). I don’t remember any problems finding the join-up page. I guess I did not have the same browser/security as you.
Anyway, given that their goal is to get new affiliates, what’s annoying to me about some of these places is that I cannot browse the list of vendors before I join.

I just read your post about the steak brands. Now what if I started off with an interest in steak brands and THEN wanted to look for related products/vendors with an affiliate program? It would be easiest if I could go straight to a place like LinkShare and browse/search the whole list of vendors - even if I was not a member.
I seem to remember that at ShareASale I could browse through a LOT of vendors before joining: and that enticed me to join.

Found your blog after browsing (trolling) around ABW today. Noticed you’re using the same wordpress theme as me. (But I knocked it around a lot - it’s unrecognisable as Talian now.)

And thanks for all the good information you post here (and on ABW) for us learner affiliates.