ShareASale is an affiliate network that can be used to drive targeted traffic directly to your website.
If you are like most companies it can be a constant struggle to find new customers or clients. With people tightening their belts and cutting back on discretionary spending it is going to be increasing difficult to generate new sales.
Why not let other people help you with your sales?
That’s the idea behind affiliate networks. It connects influencers, online creatives and content producers with brands and companies.
It’s a win-win situation. You, as a business, get more sales and the content creator gets a commission on the sale.
“ShareASale is the fastest-growing affiliate marketing platform, empowering partnerships that drive results. Our standout solutions and diverse reach earned us Think’s Best CPS Network 2022.”
— ShareASale
Low effort
ShareASale offers a low barrier to entry affiliate program with a large number of affiliates available to sell for you.
Here are some of the features you get as a merchant:
- User-friendly and intuitive user interface
- Comprehensive reporting
- Advanced tracking for mobile, app and web
- A training program to help you build a successful affiliate program
- Fine tune your affiliate payouts with advanced attribution tools
Connect with your target audience
An affiliate program is performance based marketing.
An affiliate promotes your company by producing content, written reviews, YouTube videos, instagram or twitter posts, but you only pay them for sales, or leads. It’s an efficient use of your marketing budget, paying only for results.
An affiliate network will drive meaningful, highly targeted traffic directly to your site. The visitor has already received positive information about your product or service, that’s why they clicked on the affiliate link. Your job is simply to close the deal and make the sale.
Table of Contents
Tools for Affiliate Marketing
ShareASale tools for merchants give you full control on how your affiliate program is set up.
Using ShareASale’s tools you can track
- campaigns
- coupon sales
- affiliate tracking
- activity feed
Track and reward affiliate activity based on a number of different scenarios such as:
- new customer acquisition
- coupon code usage
- product-level
- mobile
- offline
Coupon sales
Coupons are a great way to recruit affiliates because all coupons are visible in the activity feed shown on the main page for affiliates when they log into their accounts.
Adding coupons to your ShareASale merchant account enables affiliates to generate unique tracking links associated with your coupon and their accounts.
Your website needs to support coupons, your checkout process will need to have a place to apply and validate the coupon and reduce the price automatically. Coupons are standard on most e-commerce platforms such as WooCommerce.
The purpose of adding a coupon on ShareASale is to inform your affiliates that it’s live on your website and to provide an incentive to promote your service or product.
ShareASale Affiliate Commission Rate
First, you set a Default Commission Rate, this is your “base” rate, that will be applied to all of the affiliates that join your program.
Set Custom Commission
In addition to your Default Commission Rate, you can assign a custom rate for a specific affiliate in your program at any time.
Provide a higher (or lower) commission based on various conditions you can set using commission rules. You can also create bonus campaigns and incentives for your affiliates.
Organise affiliates by tagging
This is one of the simplest, and useful, ways to organise your affiliates. Give them a tag so you can categorize them, e.g.
- Blogger
- on hold
- VIP
- YouTuber
You can also mass tag or by using “Mass Actions” or “Tag All”. Once you have tagged your affiliates it unlocks some powerful abilities, such as:
- Affiliate Segmentation and reporting
- Newsletters
- Banners
- Coupons
- Commissions
- Bonuses
Supports Attribution
Reward affiliates for driving specific consumer behaviour and optimise commission payouts. Pinpoint exactly which affiliate to attribute sales to through the available conditions.
ShareASale Sign Up
The merchant sign up process is simple enough. ShareASale asks you for three blocks of information:
- basic info: name and address
- publisher info: website (must be valid and operational) and email address
- login information
Note: The website provided must be where you sell your product or service
ShareASale Sign Up Requirements
Here is the ShareASale Merchant Terms of Agreement:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/docs.awin.com/Legal/SaS_US+terms_2020.pdf
I’m not a lawyer so I’m not going to try to summarize the agreement, it’s quite long.
ShareASale Fees
One-time network sign up fee
Merchant setup fee: $625
Correct on August 2022 when this article was published, check merchants pricing page for up-to-date price: Pricing for Merchants.
There is a one-time access fee of $625 that you pay after you have set up your account. This fee needs to paid prior to your account being activated.
A deposit of $125 minimum. This deposit goes directly into your account and is used to pay the affiliates for sales and other qualified leads that you’ve defined for your program.
Network transaction fee
This fee is equal to 20% of your commission amount (you set the commission rate). This fee is calculated for each transaction.
Here is an example to clarify the network transaction fee:
- $300 sale
- you offer 25% commission rate
- affiliate earns $75
- network fee: $15 (20% of $75)
- you earn: $210 ($300 – 90)
ShareASale Analytics
Track your affiliate program’s success with a range of reports, many of which can be customized.
Generate click stream graphs to understand performance of your affiliates over time.
Other reports available are:
- Monthly Payment Review of Transactions – summarizes all transactions
- Affiliate Summary – list sales dollars generated and commission to be paid
- Tracking Number Summary
- HTTP Referrer Summary – so you can see which pages generated affiliate sales
ShareASale Products
ShareASales products a wide range of tools to help you with your affiliate program. I list a summary of the tools they provide:
- Recruitment Tool – grow your partners
- Influencer Activation – integrate and track activity
- Attribution solutions – reward affiliates and optimise affiliate payouts
- Custom short links – send readers directly to a product page using short links
- Storefronts – good for PTAs, non-profits and community leaders
- Make-A-Page
- Compliance
- Product discovery bookmarklet
ClickBank vs ShareASale
The opinion is that both ClickBank and ShareASales are good products.
ClickBank seems to have more digital products on offer and ShareASale more physical goods.
Both have been around for over 20 years and have plenty of affiliates registered.
Disadvantages of ShareASale
Initial high set up fee for merchants of $625. For small businesses that could be a deal breaker.
There is a review process so your application may not be accepted.
Disadvantages of ClickBank
Poor reporting system as compared with ShareASale.
Both sites are good and have been around a long time. It’s just a question of preference.
Final Thoughts
Marketing is essential for any business that wants to get more customer or clients.
The options are do your own marketing, which can take a lot of time, effort and money without a guarantee of success.
Or…
Give other people a commission for selling your products or services. You only pay them for sales or leads so it’s performance based pay.
It’s worth considering using an affiliate network if you would like to increase sales.
- Simple affiliate program for your business
- One time set up fee + 20% fee per transaction
- Huge numbers of affiliates ready to sell your products
