I am with them. They are quite good. Good programs do perform very well but bad programs (low funds, offline) sucks right down to the Earth. You can find the affiliate managers of those good affiliate programs under SAS over at ABestWeb.com.
The only problem with ShareaSale is the lousy programs in there. The programs within Shareasale are required to manage themselves so this makes for a poor relationship between the merchant and the affiliate. I recommend Advantages Affiliate Marketing. They have high converting offers. If you have a lot of traffic this is the program. I use them for my high traffic sites.
I just signed up and was approved for Advantages...I am #5 on my referral link and they have no products... Where on earth are you getting your products for your "high traffic"??? LOL
Some excellent programs in Shareasale but as already stated there are a lot of poorly managed affiliate programs in there too. We use datafeeds a lot so we focus on those merchants with a regular updated datafeed. These programs are most of the time also programs with a dedicated affiliate manager.
I love SaS, it's my favorite network right now. As mentioned, it does require the program to have a very active affiliate manager, but you want that with any program you join so I don't really think it's limited to just SaS. What I really like about SaS is they feel like a very open and friendly group of people. Brian Littleton, the owner, is an amazing guy and he has been known to pop his head in this forum on occasion. The general atmosphere with SaS feels like everybody is in a family there. Caroline (Director of Affiliate Marketing) is amazing and is always around to help people. CJ on the other hand is a corporate monster. You feel extremely seperated from the merchants and don't really get a relationship with them. Chances are you never talk to the merchants, and they don't care to talk to you. It's a very standoff'ish environment. I have an active account on CJ, but I only send a few sales every month their way. I have never met a single person from CJ, which is disappointing. But when I'm sending thousands of dollars in revenue, I'd rather do it with a program that I can talk to, which is what SaS gives you. SaS also throws awesome parties at the major conferences I haven't tired pepperjam yet, but I've heard very positive things about it and their CEO is an active member here, which is a nice plus. I'll probably be joining them in the near future when I get my next set of projects rolling along.
I've used Shareasale for a number of my affiliate sites and have always found them to be responsive and prompt in paying commissions. This is a lot more than can be said of a whole heap of bigger players. The great thing about shareasale is access to feeds without having to pay. I've setup a couple of sites that run on autopilot using their feeds. Everywhere else I've looked you have to pay for access to the feeds.
Completely agree with you. Don't like the big networks like CJ and Linkshare either. Another smaller and similar network I like to use is the Netshops affiliate network. Sara Austad, Netshop's affiliate manager does an excellent job at the Netshops forum (hosted at abestweb.com) in helping out affiliates.