The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 02:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shareasale[edit]

Seems to be advertisement.
Created 20:14, 8 January 2007 by User:Brianlittleton
Later edited, mostly by him and User:Cumbrowski. (Cumbrowski signs himself "--roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. ".)
Prodded at 20:39, 20 April 2007 by User:Jkelly with comment "No indication that this subject meets our inclusion criteria.".
Deleted at 21:33, 25 April 2007 by User:Anthony Appleyard as a routine time-expired prod with no objections in its talk page and no "((hangon))".
At 10:24, 27 April 2007 Cumbrowski asked me to undelete it, suspecting that the reason for deletion was his web site http://www.shareasale.com/ being temporarily down.
At 15:54, 27 April 2007 Anthony Appleyard restored Shareasale, and then AfD'ed it to get this sorted out properly.
--- I commented out the prod tag to avoid confusion while this AfD ran.
Anthony Appleyard 16:14, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep ShareASale is among the largest affiliate networks in the United States. Linkshare, Commission Junction and Performics are what is referred to as "the big three" affiliate networks in the US, but "big" does not necessarily mean that those networks generate the most revenue or have the most merchants. Each of the three is owned by a large and well known company and got a lot of press because of their acquistions (Linkshare -> Rakuten, Commission Junction -> ValueClick, Performics -> DoubleClick. See references for each of the three networks). Surveys and other sources indicate that the networks that are mentioned right after the "big three", namely "Clickbank", "ShareASale" and "MyAffiliateProgram (Kolimbo.com)" actually seem to have more Merchants using them, than some of the "Big Three". The AffStat Report 2007 [1] shows for example for ShareASale a market share of 18% for programs that use the revenue share compensation method, putting it right after Commission Junction (29%), but before Linkshare (8%) and Performics (2%). The AffStat Report is showing only the number of advertisers and not the amount of business that is being generated through the networks. If you look at the list of Advertisers using ShareASale [2] (2,239 advertisers/merchants) versus the statement at the Linkshare site [3] (over 600 merchants) you can see that ShareASale has almost 4 times as much advertisers than Linkshare. However, if you look at who the advertisers are, you will see, that Linkshare has a lot of "big brands" as their customers versus ShareASale that is targeted towards small and mid size companies and brands. Technorati shows over 450 posts that are tagged ShareASale. On the same page can you also find videos and pictures that reference to the ShareASale affiliate network. [4] --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 05:08, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that this is sufficient proof for WP:N. I would also like to note, that I am not involved in any business with ShareASale, except for using it as an Affiliate, like I do with pretty much all larger affiliate networks. I also edited most articles to affiliate networks and even started the ones for Linkshare and Performics. I also state this on my user page, where you can also find additional information about me and my activities at Wikipedia. User:Cumbrowski. I mention this to demonstrate that WP:COI does not apply to me, what could be seen differently based on the simple fact that Anthony mentioned me as being one of the editors who contributed the most to the article and that I requested to undelete it and to start an AfD debate, which should have happened even prior the first deletion without notice or warning --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 05:08, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Additional supporting material.

ShareAsale Booth at Affiliate Summit (Video) - Shows that we deal with a WP:CORP here.
ShareASale is the only larger affiliate network in the US that prohibits affiliates to use any kind of desktop application to demonstrates its strong stance against abuse and fraud by Adware and Parasiteware, which are still a big problem today and not only harm advertisers and other affiliates, but also normal users, which contributes to the bad reputation affiliate marketing has to some degree. See ShareASale's Affiliate Agreement, Quote: "NOT ALLOWED: Any placement of creative in a "Desktop" advertising scheme. This includes any and all 3rd party advertising platforms that use a desktop application to display ads in any form.". This is important, because it explains the following recognitions of ShareASale and specifically its founder and CEO Brian Littleton.

AFP Fair Practice Award - August 2006 by AffiliateFairPlay (this one is also referenced in the article)

Coverage at the Revenue Today Blog, the largest print magazine of the affiliate marketing industry
Coverage in Real Deal from 08/24/2006 the offical Newsletter of Affiliate Summit

Winner of the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards for "Affiliate Marketing Advocate" at Affiliate Summit West 2007 01/2007 announced during the "Pure Imagination party" at the Wynn Hotel and Resort

Coverage by Wayne Porter (W.Porter is winner of the first Affiliate Summit Legend Award which was renamed after him and is now called the "Wayne Porter Legend Award".
Video of the Awards Ceremony

Social engagement. Fundraising campaign for "Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Nevada" where over $20,000 were raised by affiliate marketers. $5,000 of that was contributed by ShareASale.

Voted "Best Affiliate Network" for two years in a row (2005 & 2006) by the members of ABestWeb.com, the largest US forum for affiliate marketing

I hope this helps too. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 13:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also would like to mention that I was always encouraging others in the industry (affiliate marketing industry as well as the search marketing industry (SEO)) to start to contribute to Wikipedia. There are numerous blog posts I did at ReveNews.com and SearchEngineJournal.com and comments I made on other blogs that attribute to that. I realized that Brian Littleton created the article about ShareASale (something that was on my to-do list) and I responded to him to stop it, because of COI and that I will go over the article to make sure that the information are accurate and that the article does not turns into a sales brochure. The Network plays an active role in the fight against Adware and other unethical business practices in the affiliate marketing industry, which gives the industry a bad name. I was inclined to add too much of that to the article, because it would unbalance the article and make the company look like a non-profit or something like that. ShareASale is certainly not that. I talked with Brian in person for the first time this Wednesday in San Francisco at Ad:Tech. We kind of met before in January, but did not really talk to each other. In the 5 years I am using the SAS network did I exchange with him only a handfull non-personal emails. That's it, there is nothing else to add, unless you want me to into greater details to any of the points made. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 13:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To demonstrate the reach of the site, here some stats that are highly inaccurate, but are enough to make a point.

ShareASale.com Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,019 [5] and compared to the other networks (over the last 5 years) [6] - Agenda: ShareASale.com, CJ.com, Linkshare.com, Performics.com, Clickbank.com. Alexa numbers are Unscientific and hopelessly skewed stats, because of the audience. However, in this case is the Alexa audience the same as for the site in question, internet marketers and tech savvy geeks.
Compete SnapShot (People) ShareASale.com (1,182,637) compared to CJ.com (430,916) and Linkshare.com (36,778) [7]
QuantCast Rank for ShareASale (1,281), Estimated unique monthly visitors: 1.2 million[8]

--roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 00:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I improved a bit on the article, content, references and structure. Just FYI. I did not add the users choice awards (ABestWeb), because that would be promotional, but I added the pinnacle award. I created a separate paragraph to the Company's active role in combating the Adware problem, which is an issue that hurts not only people, but also reflects poorly on the affiliate marketing industry. I think a company's active role in "cleaning up" its own industry is relevant, especially if it is something that affects peope that are not involved with that industry at all. What is your thought on this? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 04:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It still looks like advertisement to me. Anthony Appleyard 06:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please elaborate what exactly is not encyclopedic in your opinion. Also feel free to rephrase any sentences, where you think that the choice of words was not the best. Thanks. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 09:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Looks like an advertisement to me. Created and almost entirely edited by Conflict Of Interest editors. Notability not established. Dimitrii 17:08, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.