Are you simply starting off with affiliate marketing? You are maybe overwhelmed by the number of things you should do. But there’s no need for you to worry. Everyone is like that.
It’s true that anyone can begin a blog, but few understand how to efficiently monetize that blog with affiliate marketing. Remember that even some of the best affiliates miss out on strategies to better optimize their content.
Let us get this misunderstanding out of the way first. It’s one of the most typical mistakes beginner bloggers and even some professionals make. As an alternative, the first step to successful affiliate marketing is getting into programs that are aligned with your niche.
One of the essential concepts of successful affiliate marketing is advertising products you either use or have no issue suggesting to your audience. Your goal must be to make a brand rooted in your niche and become an authority on related topics.
One of the best affiliate marketing software you can use today is ShareASale. While Amazon Associates is mainly focused on Amazon products, ShareASale encompases affiliate programs for more than 4,500 merchants, both small and big.
In this article, we will take a closer look at what ShareASale is, its features, pricing, and how it can help you with your affiliate marketing campaign. If you’re ready, let’s get started!
Click on “open” if you want to see exactly what we will talk about in the rest of this article.
Quick Overview
ShareASale is an affiliate marketing software offering merchants a chance to run their affiliate programs. Meanwhile, affiliates can join the program and earn commissions for every qualified sale. The software also provides the needed tools necessary for affiliates and merchants to handle their programs.
ShareASale is an affiliate platform obtained by the AWIN Group in 2017. With loads of awards as a service provider, the platform helped the AWIN Group produce one billion dollars in revenue for publishers. It is suitable for you to use, especially if you begin affiliate marketing without money. You can freely join the network and apply for programs.
It’s worth mentioning that the platform has more than 16,000 merchants for you to choose from. Thus, no matter what your niche is, you will find an affiliate product or product category for you. With that selection of merchants comes a broad spectrum of commission rates. You will find programs that provide one percent commission rates, and it’s simple to find CPA rates.
The great part? Signing up is totally free and simple to do. Also, you can sign up with either your social media account or website, which makes it an excellent option for beginner influencers and bloggers.
| Features | Affiliate system |
| Best suited for | Individuals, Freelancers, Small businesses, Mid size businesses, Large enterprises |
| Website languages | English |
| Website URL | Visit official website |
| Support link | Support page |
| Live chat | No |
| Company address | 15 W. Hubbard St. STE 500, Chicago IL 60654 |
| Year founded | 2000 |
Pricing
The ShareASale platform is where merchants can register to reach affiliate marketers. Nonetheless, participating in the network is not completely free, and you need to pay to enter. The great news is that there are no recurring charges linked with the merchant account. For publishers, signing up as one is a total breeze in ShareASale. You’ll have to pay $5 that goes towards a thorough background check, but it is refunded after the check is done. Publishers may also pay a $25 monthly fee only for accounts with a balance less than $50. If your balance is $25, your account will be removed. Since accounts are removed $25, ShareASale will never allow fees to get below a minimum balance in your account without informing you. For those merchants, signing up with the network has a somewhat expensive price tag. It costs $650 (that includes a $550 network access fee and a $100 minimum deposit.
| Pricing range | From $25 to $650 per month |
| Pricing types | One-time payment |
| Free plan | No |
| Free trial | No |
| Money back guarantee | No |
| Pricing page link | See plans |
Network sign-up fee. A new merchant should make a one-time payment of $550 to get access to the platform. After they do that, they will get access to the network, but the merchant should also make a 4100 minimum deposit on top of that. The added $100 is utilized for other account-related activities like affiliates for sales, qualified leads, and more. In other words, you should spend at least $650 when you begin with ShareASale. Network transaction fee. Together with the one-time network sign-up fee, you must pay for the network transaction fee. It’s the fee produced when a qualified transaction happens within the network. The cost is computed based on a simple formula: twenty percent of the commission amount to the affiliate. You could set that amount, meaning the network transaction fee isn’t a fixed amount. On top of that, ShareASale obliges you to make about $35 in transaction fees. If you can’t make the given amount, you’ll be charged $35. To guarantee a flawless transition for the new sellers, they offer a 30-day period to configure their programs and properly run them.
Who Should Use It
ShareASale is made for all sizes of businesses seeking an efficient and quick tool that simplifies the process of building and growing their affiliate marketing campaign.
From a merchant’s point of view, ShareASale works by offering access to the network. You should pay a one-time fee to access the system. You should also maintain a $100 balance to cover the expenses associated with transactions and another promotional spending on the platform.
If you’re an affiliate, you can sign up for the network for free. But they do have some requirements for registration. For instance, you should have a website before signing up. They may also not accept each application. Nonetheless, if you use your domain email, your possibilities of getting are a lot higher.
ShareASale is a famous software for brands that are searching for a way to launch their affiliate campaign for their services or products. The network mainly targets mid and small-sized enterprises.
It’s also worth mentioning that ShareASale is an excellent platform to use for affiliate marketers seeking ways to monetize their social media channels and website, considering it has more than 700,000 affiliates.
Thus, if you have a niche website with high-quality content, then joining ShareASale could help you begin earning money from it. Also, this affiliate network is an excellent option for more advanced and experienced affiliate marketers who have numerous websites that need monetizing.
Features
ShareASale boasts a huge number of features. You see, it is a platform for affiliates and merchants. That suggests it provides features for each of them. Here are some of the things you can enjoy when you start using the affiliate marketing software:
Variety of reporting features
What can you do to make your affiliate marketing run successfully? You need to see what is going on with all your affiliate links. Fortunately, ShareASale enables you to do that.
With its general reporting features, ShareASale offers you a simple-to-understand overview of how the affiliate links are working for you. What’s more, you can make customized reports, showing you the metrics that you like to see.
On top of that, the tracking of ShareASale is all in real-time. Thus, you can make see the sales and clicks as they happen. You can also utilize the clickstream feature to know the steps that every user takes to get to your affiliate link and, eventually, to a purchase.
Dependable monthly schedules
Part of the perk of working with such a big company like ShareASale is that you can get your payments exactly when you want to expect them. Every 20th of the month, ShareASale will send your affiliate earnings straight to your bank account.
They can also send the money to banks in various countries, so that’s a benefit as well. If you like, you can get a check or be paid through Payoneer.
Customized deep linking
No one wants super-long links. Right? Oftentimes, those extra letters and numbers that are part of your affiliate ID will make your users or visitors cautious about clicking.
ShareASale gets rid of that issue by enabling you to completely customize your affiliate links. On top of that, you can make shortened URLs that are more appealing to users. The affiliate marketing software also offers you convenient social tools that enable users to share your affiliate link with other people.
Responsive customer support
Customer support is a huge complaint about nearly all other big names in affiliate marketing networks. Hence, that point is an even bigger plus for ShareASale.
Did you know that it prides itself in excellent customer support for both affiliates and merchants? If you have any concerns, you can contact them today. Their customer support team is always ready to answer all your concerns.
In addition, new affiliates will get a welcome kit, helping them dive into affiliate marketing without too much hassle. Affiliates can also have the option to watch training webinars, which will help them boost their skills. You’ll also find a detailed FAQ section on their site.
Saved reports
Did you know that any report you run on ShareASale could be saved either by itself or as a template for future reports? That’s a big time-saver for any affiliate manager who is working with the interface regularly.
Just look right whenever you are running the report, and you will find an icon to save it. From there, you can personalize the settings to as save as a template for future reports.
Practical search functions
With over 4,800 merchant programs accessible to you on ShareASale, how will you find the one that suits your business the best? This is where ShareASale’s remarkable search options come to the rescue.
With the software’s excellent search options, you can easily filter your searches based on particular keywords, sale commission, category merchant EPC, or even how long they have been part of ShareASale.
Furthermore, the software has a specific feature that helps you organize through the best of the accessible merchants known as PowerRank. That enables you to look through the top one-hundred merchants that are currently on the platform.
With such tools, you will conveniently find your perfect affiliate program. How easy is that?
A wide array of merchants
Are you an affiliate marketer who owns numerous websites? Would you want to monetize all of them with ShareASale? Today is your lucky day. That’s because the software makes it extremely easy for owners of different websites to apply to numerous programs.
You also have the opportunity to input all the owners you currently have, listing them in order of significance. That way, you don’t need to sign up numerous times for each merchant program you apply for.
That means you only need to apply once, and all your websites will be active for that software.
Flexible commissions
Would you like to pay various commissions based on new customers, different stores, categories, and SKUs, among others? You will find unlimited opportunities. Whatever you could think up could likely be achieved with ShareASale’s system of rules and settings.
Leapfrog transactions
Did you know that you can also create a rule on the software that skips past a click and looks backward in the clickstream to know if they are any other affiliates involved in a certain transaction? That can be useful in dealing with PPC affiliates and coupons, allowing them to stay in the program while guaranteeing value.
Custom approval rules
You will find two parts of the custom approval rules. Nonetheless, the most crucial thing to remember is that it saves you time in what’s one of the most time-sensitive and time-consuming tasks of handling an affiliate program: pre-approving.
Conclusion
Overall, ShareASale offers the hub for connecting affiliates, merchants, and agencies. With a good toolset, both affiliates and merchants could benefit from what the affiliate marketing software has to provide.
For merchants, it’s simple to sign-up and gets started. The same applies to affiliates. As a merchant, you can also enhance your product sales by setting up an affiliate marketing campaign, not to mention it does not need any third-party service to handle.
You can also get access to reporting that offers insights. Payments are transparent and regular for affiliates, too. In this ShareASale review, we discovered that it’s a great platform for connecting the affiliate marketing hub offering services and tools which benefit everybody without trying to do anything extra.
Here are some of the advantages you can get when you start using ShareASale:
A wide array of products and brands for you to promote
ShareASale features a remarkable number of services and products for you to choose from. No matter what your field of expertise or niche this affiliate marketing software has you covered.
It can be used by affiliates with numerous websites
After you are approved to the network, you can add numerous websites to your affiliate accounts, apart from the primary one stated throughout the application process.
It has different reporting features
ShareASale provides a wide array of reporting features, which could help you monitor and track all your affiliate conversions and links. They do not just have advanced general reporting features, but you can also make personalized reports to highlight the particular metrics you want to see.
Excellent and responsive customer support
Customer support is vital when it comes to working with an affiliate program. Fortunately, ShareASale has excellent customer assistance for both affiliates and merchants. In case of problems or issues, you can get in touch with them through phone o email from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM central time.
Ongoing education and webinars
One of the best things about ShareASale is that it provides ongoing education to more and new experienced merchants and affiliates. The best practices, along with a chance to watch training and get access to educational resources, will help you grow your affiliate marketing skills.
From monthly newsletters to affiliate marketing classes, the entire ShareASale team will keep you updated on the affiliate marketing industry and the features and tools which will help you increase your earnings.
Affiliate marketing can prove to be a profitable earning opportunity. However, it is worth spreading your options across affiliate networks of your choice and the ideal marketing programs to offer yourself better chances of success.
Alternatives
Before subscribing to ShareASale, it’s always a good idea to check out the competition and find the best affiliate network for your needs. You can find the ShareASale alternatives here.
Here are some versus to compare ShareASale with its competitors:
