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ShareASale Affiliate Reports: Dig a Little Deeper!

August 16, 2016 by Erica Grabijas

Affiliates, it’s your turn!

We shared some great tips for Merchant reports last week, and now it is your turn to learn about reporting. Woohoo!

ShareASale reports have lots of great statistics that can be seen upon first look, but there is even more fantastic, helpful information available if you just go beyond face value. Even those reports that you might look at on a daily basis have some hidden value!

In this blog, we will look at how digging a little deeper into these reports can benefit your website and your account!

Merchant Summary Report

This one might seem obvious, but it isn’t always!  The answers to many frequently asked questions can be found on the Merchant Summary Report.

Here are some key pieces of information that this report can unveil on a Merchant-by-Merchant basis:

  1. Quit a Merchant Program
  2. Status of your application
  3. Commission Total or per Month
  4. Hits Total or per Month
  5. Sales Total or per Month
  6. Conversion Rate Total or per Month
  7. EPC Total or per Month
    **EPC = Earnings Per 100 Clicks 
  8. Merchant Name, ID & Status of the Merchant – online, low funds, offline, closed
  9. Contacting a Merchant
  10. You can even get Links from this page!

*Pro Tip:  Click any of the yellow headers to get a pie chart graph of the data – how fun is that!

Invalid Links Report

You want it, we’ll build it!  Like many of the ShareASale tools, this report was built and even revamped from your requests.  Although this report is a little hidden, it can really help an Affiliate maintain their account and save valuable time!

The Invalid Links Report allows Affiliates to quickly see any links that aren’t working or that might need to be replaced. Broken links are a nightmare and can affect your site – no one wants that! Use the report to see the Merchant ID, the Banner ID number, the Reason that the link was invalid and the referer.  Not only that, but you can also see the exact date and time that the link was clicked.

“Afftrack” Parameter Report

The extent of reporting and customization in your reports can be unleashed by learning to use Affiliate Defined Tracking, or Afftracking.

If you take a look at any of your affiliate links, you will see an empty “afftrack=” value at the end, allowing you to add anything that you want!  This value is tracked through not only the “Afftrack Parameter Report,” but also can be seen through several ShareASale Affiliate reports.

With Q4 just around the corner, you are hopefully starting to plan out your posts. Perhaps you are planning a series of Gift Guides and want to see how they do.  Use afftracking!  Add in a parameter of “2016GiftGuides” so that you can see, at-a-glance, how that series performed and which of your commissions came from that series.

*Pro Tip: The “afftrack=” parameter that you choose cannot contain any spaces or special characters.

Using Afftracking will seriously help you in the long run with determining which series or blog posts were worth it and which weren’t!

Both the Activity Details Report and the Traffic Report display your Afftrack Parameters.

What are your favorite hidden reports?

Additional Resources:

How to Prepare for Fourth Quarter
How to Prepare for Fourth Quarter
Fourth quarter is undoubtedly not only the busiest time of year, but also the most profitable for most Affiliate Marketers. Therefore, you need start planning NOW! Here is a list of things that you can do immediately.
 
6 Tools Bloggers Should Be Using!
6 Tools Bloggers Should Be Using!
If you have been following our blog closely over the past couple years, you may remember our previous post called ‘5 Tools Every Affiliate Should Use on ShareASale.’ Well, I have good news for you Affiliates out there! ShareASale recently added and made improvements to our Affiliate and blogger-friendly …
 
THE AFFILIATE MARKETERS TOOLKIT
THE AFFILIATE MARKETERS TOOLKIT
The foundation of a successful affiliate website encompasses a variety of different marketing components. Each of these components helps an affiliate gain trust and grow readership which leads to more traffic and higher conversions. Generally, this would include… Website & Mobility Original + Beautiful Content Email Marketing Search Engine Optimization Testing & Analytics Affiliate Links …

Filed Under: Affiliates

Erica Grabijas

Erica Grabijas

Erica is known in the office as the organizer extraordinaire! She wears a lot of hats at ShareASale – from Event Management to Marketing – she does it all! Connect with Erica online @ericarosaland. Erica is a lover of all things Chicago sports, DIY & crafts, gift giving, fashion, cooking and baby giraffes.

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