There are many affiliate programs available today. In this review we look at Shareasale.com to see what (if anything) it offers differently from other programs.
Shareasale offers programs for both merchants and affiliates. That means, whether you have products to sell, or are a content creator who wishes to monetize your site, Shareasale has a program for you.
From the merchants point of view, Shareasale is a good deal. The merchant decides what to sell via the program and the commission structure they prefer. Commissions are only paid when results are achieved. That means only paying for qualified traffic. You can choose to setup your program to pay on a percentage of a sale , a pay-per-lead basis, or a pay-per-click.
From the affiliate point of view, there are over 2000 merchants to choose from in a variety of fields from clothing to games to services. Merchants offer a variety of ways to monetize your site, from banners and animated GIFs too full fledged data feeds. Plus Shareasale makes it easy to find merchants through their intuitive search function.
How to become a Shareasale Affiliate
Joining is easy – simply fill out the online form and a representative will contact you. There are no minimum traffic requirements as with other affiliate programs. All that is required is a valid TLD (Top Level Domain) and email address.
One nice feature about Shareasale is that you can quickly find the merchants that offer the greatest potential payouts and then determine if they are right for your site. Within 30 seconds of logging into my account I was able to find merchants offering as high as a 20% commission on sales.
You can also see which merchants pay out the most by reviewing the “EPC” figures. EPC is an industry wide metric. It is the average affiliate earnings per 100 clicks. This metric is provided as a 7 day, 30 day and 60 day rolling average, along with the current month and lifetime values.
For example, one vendor has an average 7 day EPC of $255.60 and a 30 day EPC of $409.70. That means the average affiliate around $4 per click over a month (based on 100 clicks).
If you prefer something other than banners or animated GIF files, some merchants offer data feeds of their products which you can then display on your site. As a Premiere Shareasale member you can also receive access to a live XML feed which you can access in realtime which allows you to have the latest data available from select merchants.
So whether you simply want to display banner ads or offer a storefront solution, Shareasale has a solution for you.
How to Become a Shareasale Merchant
Once an account is created there is a setup fee of $350. Then the merchant uploads banner(s) through their management console and set the particulars such as whether to pay a commission or straight fee to the affiliates. If the merchant prefers to use data feeds they can as well.
As long as the merchant keeps funds in their account, Shareasale will take care of managing the affiliate program and paying affiliates based on the above mentioned payout particulars (i.e. pay per sale, pay per lead etc.)
In addition to the affiliate payout, Shareasale earns 20% of the affiliate payout. That means if the affilate earns $100 Shareasale earns $20.
How does Shareasale track activity?
For both affiliates and merchants, Shareasale offers a comprehensive dashboard showing activity statistics. Data for both merchants and affiliates is available via CSV download as well.
Shareasale uses cookies to track users, leads, sales, clicks, etc. and can also track events such as forms completions (for pay-per-lead programs). Shareasale only tracks activity generated by affiliates to merchants and not other online activity (such as search engine referrals).
Conclusion
As with many affiliate programs, Shareasale looks after both merchants and affiliates. They offer many different pricing options which allow for both affiliates and vendors to ensure they receive exactly what they expect.
The only drawback I have come across is that if you have an extremely niche website, as an affiliate you may not find a merchant which sells products which are targeted to your readers. For example, I did a search for merchants that offer darts and only found 1 merchant.
Overall, however, I found this to be a very competitive program. And the fact that it doesn’t have minimum requirements for affiliates means that smaller sites and publishers can participate as well.
