Interesting affiliate question,,,,

1. 71

   Bill Manningposted 6 years ago

   I belong to both shareasale and recently linkshare. For a year or more I have been using an affiliate on shareasale for my hotel links in my tourist site.
   
   I was always surprised I got very low clicks, and only one single sale from them. Normally I would get only 1 or 2 clicks a day.
   
   Well, I just started using a great affiliate with linkshare. I have only maybe 1/5th the amount of links on my site with them.
   
   Yet as of today, for only 4 days of this month, I already have had 48 clicks!
   
   No sales yet but I don't expect any until a few hundred clicks. So that seems to indicate one of several things.
   
   1. The other affiliate is shaving, which means faking the amount of hits you get so they keep sales from you.
   
   2. Shareasale itself shaves.
   
   3. Their tracking does not work right.
   
   I do get good clicks and sales from other sponsors on shareasale, so I don't think they are doing anything wrong. Can an individual sponsor on those programs somehow shave clicks?

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2. 56

   thisisoliposted 6 years ago

   I think you are being paranoid, the difference in clicks is more likely to be because of how you advertise the click, or how your traffic relevance than anything else.
   
   Both of those companies are reputable, and I have worked on the affiliate side of things on both these sites for several clients, and can safely say that there is not really any way to shave clicks.

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   1. 71

      Bill Manningposted 6 years ago in reply to this

      Thanks for clarifying that, I'm glad they can't shave. However I should have been more detailed about the clicks.
      
      Both sponsors are hotel ones, and all I did was change out some links from one for the other. I also replaced one sidebar banner for the new one.
      
      So really the site is the same with no different ads or post. That is why it's so confusing.
      
      How can just replacing only 1/5 of those hotel links with the new one make them have much more clicks than the old one, even though I still have more links with the old one up?

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