Linkshare is fishy to me...

[georgiek50]

Ok, so after promoting (and ranking very well on Google) for a certain product through Linkshare, I am getting good traffic and an impressive CTR for this item, yet no sales in 45 days. It is on the higher end of the scale as far as pricing goes ($300) so I wasn't expecting a tremendous amount of sales...but what concerns me is my stats and those reported by Linkshare. My impressions and clicks to the merchant are 3 times as high as Linkshare is giving me credit for. The former are tracked through my raw data logs and the latter through a custom script I wrote to record IP, date, ad clicked, etc. etc...it is accurate as well.

Anyone else have any similar stories or advice. I figure if they are counting 3 times less the impressions and clicks, what's to stop them from not counting the sales?

[skibum]

Never had any problems with LinkShare tracking but do have better luck making money on CJ.

[georgiek50]

Do you think I should contact the merchant directly and inquire about this discrepancy in stats?

[graywolf]

Linkshare wants you to get the sales as thats how they get thier money. However I have one program I am doing well with in linkshare. As my positions have improved in the serps from #5 to #2 to #1 my commisions have remained the same (within $200 for the past three months). The number of clicks I am sending them keeps increasing and my conversion rate keeps dropping ( from 12% down to 6%). My page has remained unchanged over the time as has the merchants checkout process, so I suspect tampering, but have no way to prove it.

I have two other merchants with linkshare who are great and pay regularly and on-time.

[growingdigital]

I have had similar problems on Linkshare. I don't think there reporting is updated as often as CJ or other commission tracking systems.

[dataguy]

In July I decided that to keep prospective, I would switch a few sites from CJ to LinkShare. These sites were not real big, but they would each pull in over $100 a month with CJ. Two months later, I haven't had one sale with LinkShare. I sure wish there were more alternatives, but I guess it's time to put this little experiment to rest.

[wellzy]

I've never had good luck with Linkshare. I've even had problems with some of the CJ publishers. I change them until I find one that sells. I'm not sure why that happens. I recently had one page that got indexed in G and is getting 300 uniques a day, but no sales after a week. I switched merchants and started gettting plenty of sales. I had checked the tracking and it was fine. I'm not sure why that happened.

wellzy

[georgiek50]

Same here...after thousands of clicks (w/ listing of price and every detail) no sales...I sell on other networks but Linkshare is a dud for me.

[graywolf]

Same here...after thousands of clicks (w/ listing of price and every detail) no sales

Lots of traffic is not always goint to mean any sales. People who are looking for information usually don't buy anything, people who are looking for specific products will. You want them to come to your website, realize they are on the right trail and click thru to the merchant (search for information scent Jakob Nielsen).

I have an information site that gets over 1,000 uniques a day, the only way I could monetize it was with adsense. I have a "selling" website that gets half of the traffic and gets 15-20 sales a day.

[georgiek50]

I couldn't agree more with your statement about lots of traffic not equaling lots of sales but I'm sure we can agree that targetted traffic should equal some sales.

I consider the traffic I'm getting to be targetted because:

a) People using the exact name in google to find this product
b) I have a lot of links pointing to this particular product on my website from user forums where they communicate w/ each other using phrases such as, "I can't wait to buy this...", "where can I find this item...", "wish to purchase this item..."

I don't think it can get much more targetted than that!