I am not a cryptocurrency expert, but I do sympathize with op because I remember going through this process and how frustrating it was. It just did not feel intuitive to me but everyone I talked to, everything I read made it sound like it was the easiest thing in the world.
These "tips" may be worthless, like everything else I post on this board, but if they help, great. The first thing is that I wasn't able to do everything on one site. I had to make accounts on two different sites. You had to transfer a purchase from one to the other. The other thing is that I had to get verified by one of the sites by sending in my id, my bank/credit card info and I think, my ss card. It took about 4 days and I was anticipating it taking one business day. I looked around and apparently the verification process is something you have to do in america. There's not an option to bypass it, from what I remember. I'm just mentioning these things because it seems like you might not have gone through these steps yet.
However, maybe bitshares is different. I set up my accounts to make a ripple purchase, then I eventually made a bitcoin purchase with the same accounts. The steps might be diff if you aren't buying ripple. I think there was an extra step involved with buying the ripple. I don't remember that well. Hopefully none of this is helpful.
PS If any of my info is wrong, at the very least people with more knowledge will start jumping in to point that out.
