Your Complete Guide To The Affiliate Network
If you’re an affiliate marketer looking for new products and services to promote, you may wonder whether the Shareasale affiliate network is the place to look. This Shareasale review is going to help you out, delving deep into what it offers, including:
- How it works
- How you can make money
- The steps to create an account
- How to find affiliate programs to join
- Pros and cons
- What people are saying
- The best Shareasale alternatives
Shareasale has been around since 2000 and has become one of the largest US affiliate networks, with over 25,000 merchants and 270,000 active publishers.
Affiliate marketers can use Shareasale to apply for multiple affiliate programs at a time and track their performance and earnings with detailed analytics.
In a hurry?
Go check Shareasale out right now.
Shareasale Review
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Ease of Use
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Commissions
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Customer Service
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Range of Products
Summary
Shareasale is a great affiliate network for bloggers, content creators and social media marketers to monetize their content. There are tons of affiliate products to promote in a range of niches, including stuff from big brands and small businesses. It offers a convenient way to apply for and manage your affiliate partnerships all in one place, without jumping around to different websites.
Pros
- Simple sign-up process
- Fast approval and high acceptance rate
- Large range of brands to work with
- Robust search and filtering options
- Decent reporting tools
- Easy-to-navigate user interface
- Affiliate commissions paid out reliably
Cons
- Some affiliate programs shut down without warning
- Affiliate links with special characters cause problems
- Customer service is often not up to scratch
- Cannot choose to be paid through PayPal
Shareasale is like the middleman between affiliate merchants and affiliate marketers.
Companies use Shareasale to find affiliates to promote their products to an untapped audience, while affiliates use Shareasale to find products to promote so that they can earn extra cash.
The Shareasale affiliate network is a convenient way to search for affiliate programs related to your niche (see also our comparison of ClickBank vs ShareaSale here).
Instead of having to trawl the internet and visit different websites to find out if they have an affiliate program, you can search the Shareasale platform quickly and apply to any that fit your needs.
Once you’re partnered with affiliate merchants, you can manage your earnings all in one place without having to visit different platforms.
On Shareasale, there is an extensive range of affiliate programs, so you should easily find something that will be helpful to your audience.
Shareasale affiliates earn money by sharing affiliate links on their blog and in other content such as email blasts, lead magnets, and social media posts.
Every Shareasale merchant will have their own unique affiliate terms, and it’s important to check these before you start promotional campaigns to ensure you adhere to their guidelines.
The main ways to make money with Shareasale referral links include:
PPL (Pay Per Lead)
PPL is a form of affiliate marketing where you get paid a fixed price for every reader, who clicks your unique link and performs a specific action such as filling out a form.
PPS (Pay Per Sale)
PPS is where you get paid a commission when a reader clicks your custom link and makes a purchase.
Commission payments will vary between brands, so it’s important to check the affiliate terms before you apply.
How much merchants pay you will also depend on how much traffic you have and how many readers click on your Shareasale links.
It’s pretty simple to join the Shareasale affiliate network. Just follow these steps:
- Click on ”Affiliate Sign Up”
- Create your affiliate account by adding in a username and ID
- Next, you’ll be asked for your own website URL and to answer a few questions like what is your goal, who are your target audience and what type of products you want to promote
- Enter your email address. If you have a business email address, that ends with your domain name, the approval process should be faster
- Fill out your contact and payment information. Here you can choose to be paid via check or direct deposit into your bank account
- Click on ”Complete Sign Up” and you’ll be asked to agree to Shareasale’s terms of agreement
- Instructions will be emailed to you to confirm your Shareasale account
- Wait for your affiliate account to be approved. This can take between 24 – 72 hours
Once your affiliate account has been created and approved, you can start to search the Shareasale network for a merchant program to promote.
Shareasale has thousands of affiliate programs for you to choose from, including ones from popular brands and small businesses.
This means even if you’re a creator with a smaller audience, you should be able to find merchants that are willing to work with you.
To find relevant affiliate programs, use the search feature to filter merchants by name, status, coupons, deals, and categories.
The main featured product categories include:
- Power rank (list of the most profitable merchants)
- Marketing calendar (relevant affiliate offers for the holidays)
- Clothing
- Home and Garden
- Automotive
- Accessories
- Education
- Books and Media
If you’re looking for a specific product or merchant, you can do a keyword search and click ”Modify Search”.
A new box will pop up that allows you to filter your search down even more with the following choices:
- Program Type. Per sale, per lead, or flat rate.
- Program Features. Auto-approval, exclusive to Shareasale, provides a data feed, a two-tier program, or has coupons available.
- Status.
- Category.
- Join Date.
- Ship to Country.
- Program Metric. EPC is greater than, average sale is greater than, commission rate is greater than, and reversal rate is less than.
Another way to filter your search results is by clicking on a merchant category, scrolling down to the merchant list, and clicking the down arrow on the right-hand side box.
Here, you can filter the merchants into:
- 7 day EPC
- 30 day EPC
- Sale commission
- Lead commission
- Hit/click commission
- Alphabetical
- Start date
- Cookie length
- Power rank
- Joined status
Once you’ve been approved to join a merchant’s affiliate program, hit the ”Links” tab, and from the dropdown menu, select ”Get a Link/Banner” and you’ll be taken to a page where you can access your affiliate links.
After creating a Shareasale publisher account, you’re prompted to choose a preferred payment method: a mailed cheque, direct bank deposit, or Payoneer.
If you want to change this, just click ”Payment Settings” and choose a new option in the dropdown payments menu.
Minimum Payments
The minimum payment for Shareasale affiliates is $50. On the ”Payment Settings” page, you can choose a monthly payment trigger that ranges between $50 and $1,000.
Payment Timeframes
Payments are made on the 20th of every month for the previous month’s earnings.
So, your payment on June 20th will be for money earned between April 21st and May 20th.
There are many pros to joining the Shareasale network, such as:
Simple Sign-Up Process
It’s simple and quick to join the Shareasale affiliate network.
It takes just a few minutes to fill out your details and share information about your website. Then, you just need to wait to be approved.
Large Range of Brands to Work With
Whether you are a new affiliate with a small following or an established affiliate marketer with thousands of followers, you can find brands to work with on Shareasale.
Some small businesses will even auto-approve affiliates, so you can start promoting affiliate links ASAP.
Robust Search and Filtering Options
Use the multiple search and filtering options available on Shareasale to narrow down specific merchants you want to work with.
Excellent Reporting Tools
Check out the ”Reports’‘ section to track what clicks and commissions you’re making.
Here, you can see transaction types, commission amounts, and the date each transaction was made.
Navigate your Shareasale affiliate account easily from the main menu that includes reports, merchants, links, tools, accounts, and payments.
Each has a dropdown menu offering more pages and information to help you manage your account.
Some common complaints I found regarding Shareasale include:
Some Affiliate Programs Shut Down Without Warning
The only way of knowing if a vendor terminates an affiliate program is if you stop earning commissions.
Currently, no automated message is sent out by Shareasale to let affiliates know so they can remove their affiliate inks from live content.
Affiliate Links with Special Characters Cause Problems
Another common complaint is about affiliate links containing special characters such as ”&”.
Some affiliates report that they can’t see analytics for these links, which can lead to frustration.
Customer Service is Often Not Up to Scratch
Several bad reviews comment about the poor customer service and that they either don’t get a response, wait ages for a response, or get an initial response, and then the ticket is closed without a satisfactory answer.
The Shareasale affiliate network has varying reviews from the main review sites Trustpilot and G2.com.
The main negative reviews on Trustpilot were about the customer service:
But others comment on how happy they are about the range of merchants to choose from and payments always being on time:
G2 had many more positive comments, but a few people added that there’s room for improvement:
If you’re not sold on Shareasale yet, check out these other networks:
Clickbank
Clickbank is a top affiliate network that has paid out over $6.2 billion in commissions to over 100,000 active affiliates.
You can promote products in over 276 categories, and they offer accurate tracking analytics, reliable payments, and dedicated support.
New affiliates can even take advantage of the free resources such as an affiliate marketing course, affiliate events, and multiple integrations.
Take a closer look at Clickbank here.
Learn more in this detailed Clickbank review.
CJ Affiliate (Formerly Commission Junction)
CJ Affiliate is another popular affiliate marketing network that brings advertisers, publishers, agencies, and influencers together.
They have some big brands on their books that you might not find on networks, such as CNN, Buzzfeed, HelloFresh, iBotta, and many other merchants.
They offer excellent insights and analytics on demand so you can keep an eye on your efforts and enjoy reliable payments in dozens of currencies.
Take a closer look at the CJ Affiliate network here.
Learn more in this detailed CJ Affiliate review.
Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates is another great Shareasale alternative that offers publishers a massive range of products to promote from Amazon.
This means that you should always be able to find helpful products to promote for your audience, and with Amazon being so well known, people are comfortable ordering from the platform.
So, you should be able to get a decent amount of sales from your click-throughs.
One thing to be aware of though, is that Amazon Associate commission rates do tend to be small, often only being a few percent of a sale.
Take a closer look at the Amazon Associates affiliate program here.
Learn more in this article Google Adsense Vs Amazon Associates.
At the end of this Shareasale review, let’s sum up whether it’s worth your time.
Shareasale is a legit affiliate marketing network with thousands of small and large brands to work with, it has a simple sign-up process and very good filtering options.
If you’re a beginner looking for products to promote, Shareasale is an uncomplicated place to start.
And those with more experience will enjoy the large range of affiliate products on offer and excellent analytics for tracking results.
But remember, the key to making money as an affiliate is patience.
Not everyone will buy the products you promote right away. Learn how to build an email list so you can retarget those who click your affiliate links at a later date.
