Why Thesis Theme Affiliate move to Share a Sale is a fail

A couple of days ago, people behind my favourite affiliate program, Thesis Theme, announced that they were moving from an in-house run program to an affiliate network Share a Sale.

All affiliates got an email from Brian Clark, co-owner of Thesis, and a post was published on Copyblogger.

All affiliates have to re-register for the program as they stand to lose on the sales when the old program shuts down in 60 days time.

As any active affiliate, I registered for the new affiliate program right away and have now changed all the links.

There are several things I don’t like about this move though:

1. No free withdrawals other than a check (at least not for non-US where I am from). You have to pay $7 to get your money out. This is pretty bad compared to the original Thesis affiliate that paid automatically on 1st of the month, no charges and directly into your PayPal account.




2. Difficult registration process (at least for non-US affiliates like me). My account still isn’t 100% set up and I cannot withdraw any money until I sign some document and fax(!) it back to Share A Sale. I now need to go and Google “how to send a fax” first before I can get any money out.




3. Very, very little information! Comments on the post on Copyblogger are shut down. Not sure why. I would think people were asking too many questions and people were complaining. So I emailed them to clarify something. No response. They might be busy, but still you should be there for your customers when you do such a big change.




4. What about sub-affiliates? The question I emailed was about sub-affiliates. Over the time, I have referred a nice amount of sub-affiliates. These are bloggers that I am supposed to get a revenue share from all the commission they earn selling Thesis. My question is still in the air, what will happen with my sub-affiliates?

These are the 4 main concerns I have about this change. I don’t think Thesis people did enough for their customers / their affiliates in this move and I hope they make it right.

Image by alosojos.