URL

http://www.linkshare.com

Company:

LinkShare Corporation

Software Type:

ASP-Commission

Affiliate/Merchant Web Interface

Yes. 

Pricing:

$10,000 set-up fee.  $1.50 per check (optional) Three levels of service provided by LinkShare staff: (1) Client support level available for $2000/month minimum; (2) Account executive service for $3,000/month minimum; (3) Client services level, $10,000/month minimum (at which nearly whole program implementation is done by LinkShare). Many levels of customization available.

Commission:

Transaction fee is 2% to 3% of sale, depending on sales volume. $2,000 monthly minimum. 90% of LinkShare revenue is from transaction fees.

Affiliate Marketing & Recruitment:

Yes. LinkShare is justly proud of their network of 100,000s of affiliates, and the ability to help merchants ramp-up rapidly. If you leave LinkShare, you can download the e-mail addresses of your affiliates and move.

Tracks:

Impressions, Clicks, Leads, and Sales

Two-Tier:

No, but $3 bounty for new affiliates.

Customize individual payment rate:

Yes

Carts that support:

Essentially all.

Payment Systems

N/A

Writes checks to Affiliates:

Yes, optional $1.50/month

Data Export:

Reports downloadable in tab-delineated format. Drill down within reports.

Affiliate ID generation:

Yes

Banner/graphic management:

Yes

E-mail to affiliate after each order

No

Send e-mail to affiliates:

Yes, both through internal e-mail as well as externally.

Affiliate sign-up:

Auto or manual screening. Affiliate application filter screen out affiliates from applying by certain criteria, such as country of origin, etc. A content spider allows you to search affiliate base for certain words -- both to screen out affiliates or find effective affiliates.

Redirects to particular pages:

Yes, multiple-landing page enabled.

Average Survey Rating:

7.2

Number of Respondents:

6

Positives:

User friendly interface

Simplicity, great reporting

I like the reporting structures. I like the interface. I love the new affiliate payment tracking. I like the way that I can enter links into the system

Number of affiliates. Good reputation for tracking.

Negatives:

It was very hard to launch. There was a ton of backend implementation. It was hard to get their Account Executive on the same page as our tech team. Eventually, we had to bypass the Account Executive and get tech to tech team talking.

Technical difficulties, slow performance.

Minor annoyances are: 1) Cannot break down all links by affiliate name (to see who is using which specific link) 2) Can't choose an affiliate and look at all the links on their site (in a report) 3) Can't see which affiliates are in a particular group (a groups I created, like all GMAT sites)

User interface is a little buggy

Purchase Again?

Yes. I've talked to many people and hear that LinkShare is the best. I like it ... now that it's up.

Maybe. I would need to evaluate the other guys first.

Yes, based solely on software abilities. CJ doe not do everything I need it too. Be Free is way too expensive.

I may look at CJ and their growth.

Other comments:

They send out informative emails, have group meetings, etc. You have everything you need to succeed.

http://www.linkprofits.com/article05.html At this location you can read my article: My Personal Experience with LinkShare.