Review of Shareasale Affiliate Program and Marketing portal 2020

Just started with affiliatemarketing? Then you should consider joining Shareasale affiliate program. A product discovery tool for affiliate marketers and a merchant platform. Today I will write a review of Shareasale affiliate marketing portal and look at how you can make money online getting started as a Shareasale affiliate and show how you can drive more traffic to your website, and generate more revenue using the Shareasale affiliate marketing portal.

Before you read the rest of my article I want to inform you according to best practices with information that may be important to you:

Affiliate disclaimer: This post contain affiliate links which means I will get a commission at no extra cost for you if you should click through and make a purchase.

Third party disclaimer: We are not legally responsible for what happens when you click on third party links because have no control over third parties websites, content, functionality or security and can not be held responsible for any technical or other damage to your device such as computer, mobile or tablet used when clicking on a link to connect to other platforms, download material, install, modify or distribute any material, software or other.

Earnings  and result disclaimer: Programs or products mentioned in this post that involve earning money will not work for everyone and there is no guarantee for success because there are to many factors that influence the results such as skills, circumstances and knowledge that we have no control over. Our Intention is to provide you with good potential opportunities and tools that can be helpful to your success.

Opinion disclaimer:

All views and opinions expressed in posts on are my own and not Shareasale views or opinions. Projections in this post are not endorsements.

Shareasale review

I will review the Shareasale affiliate program according to facts, users opinions, my own experience with Shareasale and following criteria:

1. Is Shareasale user-friendly and easy to manage?

2. How is Shareasale helping and supporting affiliate marketers and merchants?

3. What are Shareasale key features for affiliate marketers?

4. Is Shareasale giving affiliate marketers value for the money?

5. Do affiliate marketers make money with Shareasale?

6. Is Shareasale free to use for affiliate marketers?

7. Shareasale surprises

8. Is Shareasale a good affiliate program?

9. Shareasale downers

10. Is Shareasale a recommended program for affiliate marketers?

 

What is Shareasale? Some facts about Shareasale

Shareasale is one of the largest and most trending affiliate marketing networks in the world where affiliate marketers can search for products to promote and earn commissions. It is also one of the largest merchant portals for small and intermediate businesses where merchants all over the world can promote their products to affiliate marketers. A win-win situation for both parts. 86% of all affiliate marketers use Shareasale according to Wikipedia.

Owner: Shareasale (became Part of Awin 2017)

Founder: Brian Littleton

Website: www.Shareasale.com

Products:

Affiliatemarketing portal – Free – Sign up here

Merchant portal – One time starter price $650 – Sign up here.

Requirements to join: You need to have a website to join and over 18 years old.

Statistics perspectives for affiliatemarketers

Shareasale have 3900 affiliate programs in 40 different categories and their platform is continually expanding with more programs, categories and affiliates. (shareasale)

Shareasale holds 55,7% of the market share. According to digital global and Forrester the affiliate marketing industry is expected to reach the 6,8 billion mark by the end of 2020. According to Authorithy Hacker Affiliate programs generate 15% – 30% of all sales of advertisers.

More than half of all affiliatemarketers earn less than $20.000 according to job2joy and according to Ink well editorial 35% of all affiliate marketers earn more than $20.000 a year and 12% make more than $75.000 dollar a year.

How to join and get approved by Shareasale

First you need to have a website to sign up. Need a website? Get a free website here.

if you are an affiliate go to Shareasale affiliate portal

Are you a merchant? go to the merchant portal

(Photo: print screen of Shareasale Login page)

Sign up to Shareasale affiliate program

Sign up here.

Now you must fill out a form with the following information:

1. Your website email address. Do not use gmail, yahoo or other emails. This is important if you want to get approved.

2. Password – remember your password.

3. Enter the URL of your website

4. Give more information about you, your niche, how you plan to promote Shareasale, your marketing tools. Be thorough.

5. Add country of residence.

6. Choose Payment method

7. Agree to terms and conditions.

8. Wait for approval from shareasale.

How to start using Shareasale – Easy or not?

The process of applying to become a Shareasale affiliate is easy, painless and user-friendly. It takes just a couple of minutes maximum to apply. It can take some time before you get an answer on your application. Once you are approved you login with the email and password you entered when signing up.

(Photo: print screen of Shareasale Activity Feed)

The first page you will see is this page – The activity feed. Here you get daily updates on all merchants and useful info every day. First thing you need to do is to go to the main menu account and update your account with more information.

The main menu overview:

Now you can take a closer look at the main menu just to get to know the options and features of Shareasale. Shareasale have a lot of features and I will guide you through the menu and show you the main features.

 

Photo: print screen of Shareasale reports menu

What are the Shareasale Features for affiliates?

Reports menu:

Activity details: Here you can see your leads, sales and other activity.

Ledger report: Your balance will show here in a graph. You get a good overview over leads, payments, voids, Miscellaneous fees, total debits.

Invalid links: Here you can see if there is a problem with any of your affiliate links.

Download csv: You can create a custom csv report choosing from a custom date to another.

API reporting: You can register 5 IP addresses for API reporting. You can generate 200 reports a month. transaction reports, creative Reports, merchant Reports, aggregate Reports.

Merchant Timespan: Commissions Total, and Total for each merchant

Weekly progress report: Detailed weekly report day by day and a graph

Aftrack parameter report: Number of transactions made

Monthly summary: Monthly Transaction Summary

Reversal report: Here you can see all your reversals in detail

Transaction edit trail: Here you can see status on transactions and search individual transactions.

Today at a glance: Overview over today, you can sort by hits, commissions, raw hits, clicks, sales, and leads.

Traffic report: Search traffic per merchant

Merchant summary: Detailed Summary over transactions, hits, commissions, epc

Return Days analysis: Same day purchases, how many days before return on sale

Historical trend: You can search for trends on clicks, sales, commissions etc.

Merchants menu:

 

(Photo: print screen of Shareasale Merchants menu )

Search for merchants:

This feature is a feature you start to use immediately after you updated your account. You click in search merchants and then you will come to a page where you can search for merchants you want to affiliate with.

There are products for all kinds of niches. Providing you have your niche ready you find a merchant and just click join.

Every merchant have provided details on how much you get in commissions per sale, if they pay commissions for leads and EPC. EPC means earnings per click. The formula for EPC is (commission earned/clicks) x 100.

I find this feature very easy to use. You can search for new programs, the most power ranked programs, clothing, home and garden Automobile, finance, business, digital products, training programs, food programs, health programs, software and much more.

When you find a merchant you like and click join the different merchants have different approval processes to approve you. Some approve you automatically while others will know more about you. I recommend giving information about you, your niche and how you are planning to market their products. Are you going to market their product with see, ppc, mail, content marketing, widgets on your website, banners, videos. The more info you provide the better is your chance of getting approved.

My tips for you is to create a template with the basic info about you and when you apply just cut-and-paste unless the merchant have a query where they ask you different questions you need to answer.

After you have applied to join some merchants you need to wait until you get approved. You will se the status of merchant in the merchant status. When you apply it will show as pending. When you are approved you will get your Affiliate ID and links.

As you see from the menu above it is possible to get a merchant list to download and if the merchant has an ITP status (compliant for Intelligent tracking prevention)

 

Links menu

In the links menu you find the links, banners and videos that your chosen affiliate partner have created for you to use. The banners are in different sizes from the smallest to the largest. You just click on the HTML code beside the banner you want to use and you can choose to select the URL link or the picture link to this banner. The same goes for videos. You can also create custom links.

In the data feed merchants you can download product data from all merchants, select the ones you have joined or not joined. Merchants can apply to get FTP access (file transfer protocol) to transfer and update files about products.

Affiliate marketers can then see which affiliate programs who use FTP and get data feed info like how many products they have and vital updated info of the products like commission per sale, commission per lead, 7 day and 30 Day EPC, tracking gap (cookie length) and if they have auto deposit or not.

Not all of your chosen affiliate partners will have an FTP access. Some have their own internal affiliate logins where you see your status.

In coupons and deals you can search for coupons and deals from your merchant. It can be free shipping deals, Sales deals, student deals, first purchase deals, Black Friday deals just to mention some. Just copy the link to the deal and use it in your articles, on social media or emails.

Videos: You can view joined programs to see how many videos they have. You will also find info about EPC, tracking gap, Commissions and if it is auto deposit or not. Preview the videos and select the code to the video you want to use.

Shareasale have a custom link generator that let you create a custom link to a page.

In gift cards you can check if your merchant have added a gift card you can promote.

FTP access to data page – here you can request access to available data feeds from merchants. You must pay for this reports or downloads.

Tools menu

In the tools menu you will find tools for your marketing like:

 

 

API reporting:

Here you will find information about API reporting and how to set up your API. You can request up to 200 API recordings a month.

Make a video:

Shareasale allows affiliate marketers to create their own videos with product information in their video creatives page that they can use for affiliatemarketing.

Make a page

A feature that allows you to make your own shareasale landing page with your affiliate partners products.

Pay per call center

A feature you need to be active for a certain time and have a certain performance before you become eligible.

Product show cases

Real time show cases of products you can add to your website, post or email with an HTML code.

RSS notification:

Here you can subscribe to Shareasale RSS notifications.

Account menu

 

Account settings: Here you update your account info you put when you signed in.

Manage/leave programs: Here you see the merchant summary and can choose to leave a program.

PPC violations report: Here you can see if you have violated Shareasale three strikes policy or the PPC terms and policy of the merchants you assign to. You get the chance to answer on these violations and Shareasale will review your answers and make a final decision. It is therefore important to read the terms and policy of each merchant before you join. If you have more than 3 strikes or violations will be removed from Shareasale.

View/ manage feedback: Here you can see feedback from merchants and your response, account info, payment details and1099 forms ( for US citizens).

Close account: Here you can close your account

Payments menu:

 

 

Payment settings:

Here you can change Payment settings, see your balance, set a monthly payment trigger (minimum $50).

Past revenue:

Here you can see your revenue per month in a graph and search for individual months.

Payment summary report:

Your Top 5 merchants will show up here, your sales, and projected commissions for sales and leads.

Rejected Payments:

If you have sales that are rejected, they will be visible here. You can also see re- payment pending and re- payment sent.

Non tracked order Inquiry:

Create an inquiry of transactions and why they where not tracked.

Well this is the menu and the features you have with Shareasale. The navigation is easy once you get an overview of where you can find the information you are looking for.

My favorite features are the report menu and today at a glance and weekly progress report. The link menu is also a menu I use a lot to get links to banners and get my affiliate URLs. The interface of Shareasale is user-friendly and easy to manage.

How is Shareasale helping and supporting affiliate marketers?

Shareasale have a help center where you can submit help tickets. In the knowledge base you can see if you find the answer to your question. You have a download help center for necessary manuals, software etc. that are available.

Affiliate diagnostics: A team helping you with questions about how to grow.

Merchant recommendations: Get help to choose the right merchants for you.

Monthly webinar training: Learn about tools and features that will help you grow.

Affiliate marketing classes and Newsletters helping affiliates grow their sales.

What does the users say about shareasale support?

According to G2 the Shareasale user rating is 7.

57% of users think Shareasale is excellent according to trustpilot.

( * Note that the review sites on G2 and Trustpilot is not claimed by Shareasale and that the number of reviews are very few).

My own experiences with Shareasale is very positive. I like the reports and that you can get links from your merchants. Although the dashboard looks a bit outdated it works perfectly fine for the tasks. I find many good niche products there I cannot find on other affiliate program sites. I find it transparent and easy to see the status on my earnings.

Technology

Real time tracking where you immediately can see your leads, voids, commissions, sales and payment.

Affiliate API

Is Shareasale giving value for affiliate marketers?

There is a good reason why so many affiliate marketers are using Shareasale. It is a low cost affiliate network and easy if you are a beginner or start affiliating with small and intermediate companies. They offer value in terms of having an awesome database of merchants to affiliate with. Saving time for affiliate marketers in finding the right merchant for your niche. And you can manage multiple affiliate partners under one roof.

Do you make money with Shareasale?

You can definitely make good money when joining the Shareasale affiliate program. But first of all an affiliate program is normally regarded as a supplement revenue to your business. You can not base your business on this alone.

Promoting Shareasale will give you a commission for every person or referral who sign up via your links:

Per Sale $150.00

Per Lead $30.00

Autodeposit

This is a quite good commission per sale and per lead.

The amount you earn with Shareasale depends on many factors. How many affiliate programs you join and if the products are easy to sell. You have to remember that trends are turning with seasons, years, events etc.

Other factors are the amount you earn per sale, per lead and if they offer EPC and their PPC policy, how long the tracking gap is.

And the most important factor is what you are doing to promote the product. Many affiliate marketers are doing really good with Shareasale.

My best tips for succeeding with Shareasale Affiliate program:

First of all you should make a strategy for how you are going to promote Sharesale.

1. Promote Shareasale on your website and in your articles or via email if you use this.

2. Write helpful blog posts on social media about Shareasale.

3. Document your own process and make a case study of it. You can use this later on to promote Shareasale.

4. Choose relevant merchants to your niche. Work constantly to promote Shareasale.

5. Make sure the merchants you choose to affiliate with have auto deposit. If they do not, your links will be inactive when the merchant balance is zero or inactive and, you will not make any money.

6. Ask Shareasale support for recommendations on how you can improve your sales or ask your merchants. Get feedback on your articles, promotions and social media posts.

7. Have a long term strategy. Remember it takes time to get leads and that there are different tracking gaps on the products.

 

Is Shareasale free to use?

Yes and no, for affiliate marketers it is free to sign up, but you have to remember that Shareasale will take 20% of your sales commissions once you make a sale. This is called a transaction fee.

Merchants have to pay a one time fee $685 to sign up as a merchant. You can read more about the merchant portal in my review about Shareasale merchant portal.

Shareasale surprises

The biggest surprise is that Shareasale pay every month on the 20th and have set up for auto deposit. This way I do not have to worry that my links do not work anymore and It is easy to know how much I earn every month.

What are the alternatives to Shareasale?

There are plenty of affiliate programs out there that is possible to join as well. You probably heard about Amazon Associates. Amazon was basically built up by affiliate marketers over years. It used to be a good affiliate program to promote and very popular until recently. Now ,after they slashed the commissions to a bare all time minimum for their affiliates, many affiliate marketers who have been using amazon are looking to Shareasale and other affiliate programs, to get better commissions. Shareasale is leading in Top 1 million websites while Amazon is leading in Top 100K websites.

Is Shareasale a beneficial affiliate program?

(Photo: pexels)

According to my research, the user experiences and my own experiences with Shareasale affiliate program I think this affiliate program offers affiliate marketers a user-friendly program with plenty of niche products from small and intermediate merchants to choose from.

Shareasale is trustworthy and the merchant database is constantly updated with new merchant affiliate programs to join. The merchant database is quite extraordinary.

It is easy to join Sharesale, because it is free to start and easy to apply.

Many of the merchants use autodeposit so their affiliates do not have to worry about links that does not work if their balance is zero or below.

It is a legitimate affiliate program that has been in business for more than 20 years. Shareasale is an industry leader. According to users they pay on time without delay.

They also have a fair three strikes policy regarding violating terms and conditions.

The commissions are quite good as well on most of the programs. Shareasale ranks among the Top 10 Affiliate programs.

Shareasale downers

It is hard to find anything that is not so good about Shareasale. Users mention that the dashboard have an outdated look. I can agree on that, but it works well. To me that is more important than the look. Others complained that the approval process took a long time. From my own experience It did not take longer time than they promised it would take. Signing up I got a message that it could take up to two weeks. A few days later I was approved.

Is Shareasale a recommended program for affiliate marketers?

Yes, I would absolutely recommend this program for affiliate marketers. It is a great supplement and you can earn a good extra commission every month. It is legitimate, experienced and a solid affiliate marketing company.

It easy to follow your status from day to day and week to week and easy to use.

If you do not get any results from your affiliate links I would definitely look at other factors as where do you share your links? Do you have a strategy? Is your product relevant to your niche?

As with all affiliate programs there is no instant payments when you make a sale. It is a process from leads to sales. Affiliate marketers have benefited from Shareasale for many years and will continue to do so as long as the commissions stay on a decent level. If you have not signed up to Shareasale already I will urge you to do so now.