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:
Quit a Merchant Program
Status of your application
Commission Total or per Month
Hits Total or per Month
Sales Total or per Month
Conversion Rate Total or per Month
EPC Total or per Month
**EPC = Earnings Per 100 ClicksMerchant Name, ID & Status of the Merchant – online, low funds, offline, closed
Contacting a Merchant
You can even get Links from this page!
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!