ShareASale ® Affiliate Network – Full Review

1. Merchants

ShareASale is a platform for retailers to come and build their affiliate programs on. When you visit the ShareASale website, you are going to notice two large buttons for login and/or signup actions. One is for merchants and the other one is for affiliates. Click on the blue “merchant login” or “I want to be one of these merchants” button if you are looking to become one of the merchants offering their products on their website.

When you sign up as a merchant, you unlock the access to the network of potential affiliates worldwide. These affiliates are ones who will form your sales force and you only pay them when it works out and sales start rolling in. This presents a good opportunity for retailers to make additional revenue. Once the affiliate program is up and running via ShareASale network, there is not much to do other than follow the statistics and track sales.

Here is the list of features available to merchants:

Real-time tracking. All of the tracking and statistics on the site are in real-time. This means that you know when each sale happens at the exact moment the customer makes a purchase. You can also follow commissions that are generated as well as traffic data in real-time so that you can immediately see clicks on banners or links and where the traffic is coming from.

Segmentation. There is an option to use tags in order to group and organize affiliates in various ways. This allows you to track trends of specific groups of affiliates more precisely and deliver higher quality targeted content. You can also setup commissions to be rule-based and to feature certain criteria and strain of actions to be taken in order for affiliate to earn a commission. Segmentation also allows you to create custom newsletters based on tags, make private coupons for each group, and send out bonuses to most successful groups of affiliates.

Clickstream attribution technology. This technology allows you in-depth tracking and setup of custom rules for earning a commission in order to inspire specific behavior. So for example, you can setup your program to award the commission exclusively to the affiliate who was the first one to bring the customer to your site even in case the same customer later on uses a different affiliate link/coupon code to visit your site and make a purchase.

Merchant API. This will be used by more advanced merchants. It allows for automated reporting data retrieval, updates, void/edit transactions actions and more. API is used for deeper integration and automating some actions such as showing a different banner themes depending on the season or auto voiding transactions on ShareASale which are not eligible for affiliate commission.

Welcome kit. Newly signed up merchants get access to step by step checklist and instructions on building their affiliate program.

Training webinars. Online training sessions in form of webinars are available to merchants who want to learn the basics, how to navigate the merchant interface as well as how to deal with advanced topics.

Programs diagnostics. This is a neat feature as it allows you to get professional help from the ShareASale client services team. They will go through your program using a 10 point check focusing on the most important parameters and performance metrics.

More Features:

• All payments towards your affiliates will go through ShareASale and they write and process all the checks free of charge. This is very convenient as keeping track of all payable commissions affiliates earn can take a lot of time.

• ShareASale pre-screens all affiliates that join their site which increases overall security of your program.

• As a merchant, you do not need to resolve different issues affiliates might be facing as there is an affiliate help desk available at any time with no cost to merchants.

• There are different integrated services available to merchants that can assist you in crafting your strategy and making sure that you are using best practices. Services include implementation and structuring of recruiting campaigns, creation of different banners used for promotion which can be seasonal, access to affiliate tools such as videos, widgets, data feeds and help with affiliate communication.

• ShareASale serves all text links, graphic banners, and buttons for you. As a merchant you are allowed to upload the products data at no additional charge. If you prefer, you can allow affiliates to download your data feed via ShareASale FTP server; this brings a nominal charge of $1 per affiliate you approve.

2. Affiliates

ShareASale is a good platform to join if you are looking to get involved in marketing different affiliate programs to earn additional income. Affiliates are usually people with great social skills, lots of followers on social media and strong online presence. Affiliates usually have their own blogs and savvy marketing skills which they use for their marketing efforts. To gain access to reputable affiliate programs, one of the easiest ways is to join affiliate networks such as ShareASale.

ShareASale features more than 3,900+ affiliate programs in 40 different categories so chances of finding suitable products which interest you or fit your blog’s theme are considerable. The fact that merchants need to pay a significant amount of money to get featured on ShareASale hints at how serious they all are about their affiliate programs.

You can register as an affiliate for free and you need to go through all the steps in the process as well as provide a valid tax-id, which may be your social security number in case of individuals.

At this point, you can start browsing available merchants to check out their products and available commissions. Your goal is to place merchant banners on your site or within non-spam emails to generate traffic and potential sales. Affiliates get paid per each sale, lead or click they generate depending on the affiliate program conditions they chose to be a part of. Payouts are made once affiliate account balance is $50 or more. Only statistics provided by ShareASale are valid for determining earnings. An interesting detail is that all pages where you promote ShareASale links or banners needs to be written in English. If you are outside of USA, you can get paid via direct deposit payment option where available. As an affiliate you need to be aware that ShareASale has a very strict policy on SPAM and it simply means that you cannot spam in any way or your account will be terminated. This prevents cheating and false marketing based on tricking people to click links or using spam to make gain in sales.

How to add affiliate adverts to your blog from ShareASale

There are two levels of affiliate memberships: Full and Limited. Upon joining, the limited level is assigned which means that you can earn commissions only from pay per lead and pay per sales programs. When a first check is sent to you (minimum of $50), you become a full member and gain access to pay-per-click programs as well. To be a full member you also need to have a top-level domain.

When you login on the site, you get access to affiliate panel where all the tools and useful links are available to you. You can search for merchants, view merchants with data feeds, view coupons and deals database, check invitations and settings. You are provided with clear stats and to do lists which help you in your marketing efforts.

To make the most out of an affiliate program, suggestion is to only promote products you personally feel good about and think would fit your audience. So if you have a fashion blog, it is great idea to promote clothing and other fashion products. This way you maximize your chances of successful sales as most of your blog visitors will be people interested in fashion.