If you are an affiliate marketer or a vendor, it is recommended to become a member of one or more affiliate networks. This is for the basic reason to have access to many businesses and/or affiliates in one place without having to create so many accounts, remember passwords, and also have all your earnings gathered into one location. Sounds Cool! Then you must check out my ShareASale Network Review below.
In the following ShareASale Network Review, I will share information on how accessible the platform is and why you should join.
A leader in the marketing network for the past 20 years (founded in the year 2000), ShareASale is one of the most reliable and favorite network companies.
The company is based in Chicago USA and serves as a platform for both merchants (primarily retail-based) and affiliates, bringing the two together through the affiliate network platform.
In 2017 ShareASale was bought over by Awin Group (another network) however ShareASale & Awin operate on a separate platform.
The Simple Process in the Affiliate Marketing Chain
For those of you who are new to affiliate marketing, here is a simple introduction to how it works.
Affiliate Marketing Chain = Merchant to Network (intermediary) to Affiliate Marketer (YOU) to Customer
How does the affiliate marketing chain work?
The Merchant/ Advertiser that manufactures or sells the product provides links and images/banners to hyperlink to your content related to the product/niche in your blog or your social media.
The Network platform – in this case, ShareASale – connects the Merchant to the affiliate marketer (which is YOU if you are a blogger) and handles all the payment process between the merchant and affiliate marketer.
You, as an Affiliate Marketer/Publisher, will select the companies and merchants from the list available in ShareASale and grab the links to promote your content.
You do not need to purchase the products. You are only linking to the product on the merchant’s website. At times, there is also the possibility that you make money simply by sending a customer to their website without making a sale.
The customer will find your blog, and purchase the product, and that is when you make the commission. The product does not cost anything extra to the customer.
Signing up with ShareASale is free of charge for an affiliate marketer. If you are a merchant, then there is a membership fee.
It is a simple method to enroll and set up an affiliate account, as simple as filling in an online form in 5 steps; choosing a username and password, adding your personal details and your business, giving your website and contact information, and selecting the payment method.
Tip: If you own the domain it is better to join with your email domain name instead of Gmail or Yahoo. It gives more credibility and you will be automatically approved as opposed to manual approval.
Once you receive the confirmation email and you have login access you can proceed to the ShareASale platform and start searching for merchants who have products related to your niche.
You can preview merchants before signing up.
There are various categories to choose from;
You can browse the categories and the merchants available to select the one more appropriate for you.
Tip: Check the company’s power ranking for the top 100 power ranks as classified by the ShareASale valuation system.
Two other important factors to look for are the commission % you can earn per sale and the Day Cookie, which determines the duration of days during which you can still get a commission if the customer makes a purchase.
Once you have selected your company/affiliate program you proceed to join that chosen program.
Some companies/merchants will give you automatic access as soon as you ask to join their program within the ShareASale platform, whilst others take a few days to a week to come back to you with a confirmation email after you have requested to join via the ShareASale platform.
Once you get their confirmation (usually by email), then you can access all the links and banners to their products and/or services offered directly on ShareASale.
Once you are approved by the merchant, with the method described earlier, you will have access to the links and banners that you can start promoting on your web.
The Process is Simple;
Text Links
- Select the merchant
- Select the product
- Get HTML Code (if you only want the URL select the wording within the brackets)
- Select the word or phrase within your content and hyperlink with the code obtained from the link.
Banners
- Select the merchant
- Select the product
- Click on banners
- Select the size and format of the banner
- Click on the banner to get the HTML or URL code to insert in the hyperlink.
If you wish to experiment there is also the possibility to create a Custom link with any page from the merchant´s website. Just grab the URL and paste it into the custom link generator provided within the ShareASale Platform.
Alternatively, you can create a Make-A-Page with various products from the same merchant or from different merchants. This will display a nice showcase of several selected products on your website.
1. Good platform, fast, efficient, accurate and user-friendly.
2. A wide variety of Merchants available in 40 different niche categories.
3. More than 3900+ merchants/affiliate programs to choose from.
4. ShareASale is known to partner with legitimate merchants.
5. As an Affiliate You are alerted on the ShareASale front page if one of your Merchants is running low on funds.
6. ShareASale has nil legal complaints.
7. On-time payments (minimum threshold of your commission payment is USD50).
8. A responsive support.
9. Payment methods by cheque or direct deposit.
10. Add more than one website.
11. You can easily access traffic, activity, progress, and sales reports within the platform. Other reports with invalid links etc. are also made available.
12. You can submit a ticket to get assistance if the need arises. A record of all communication is kept on your account. You can also drop ShareASale an email.
13. ShareASale provides training tutorials and they have an updated blog with helpful articles.
I encourage you to view ShareASale Publisher Introductory Tutorial
1. There is no PayPal payment option since many prefer this method of payment.
2. You may not be informed if a merchant is not active anymore or has been suspended for some time and unless you log into the ShareASale platform you will not find out. This may cause some of your links to break without you knowing.
Note: This has never happened to me so far. On the contrary, the affiliate programs I work with within the ShareASale Platform, communicate their one-time special offers directly to me by email, besides listing them in the ShareASale platform.
However on the front page when you log in to your ShareASale account you have an Alerts Section on the right-hand column that specifies any of the following and you will be able to take action accordingly;
- Offline merchants
- Closed merchants
- Invalid links
On the other hand, You do receive any updates on commissions and marketing newsletters.
3. Some claim they have been kicked out of their platform. If you follow their rules, since they are a serious company and have set their own standards, this will not happen to YOU.
Conclusion
In this article, I have reviewed ShareAsale Network for affiliates.
ShareAsale is regarded as one of the well-established networks in the market. The ShareASale network acts as a connecting agent between the merchant and the affiliate marketer, making it easy to search for, join, grab links and banners, and receive payments all in one platform.
It may take a short while to get used to all the options available within the platform but once you are confident it will surely save you time. The platform is easy to figure out, even for beginners.
I personally use ShareASale and I’m happy with their platform and the service provided.
Should you have any queries please do not hesitate to ask in the comments below.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. For more information please see my disclosure here
$0
Pros
- User-friendly Platform
- Variety of Products for every Niche
- A Responsive Support
Cons
- Nil
ShareASale is one of my favorite affiliate networks I use. Currently, have five business websites focused on different niches. The product feed feature is mostly used as I can find products related to my reviews and recommend it to my readers to buy. The banners are used for long blog articles in recommending a company to readers when buying products related to one of my niches without me selecting the products directly. Do you recommend using both product feeds and banners in one blog article? Or is that two many affiliate links?
Hi Jannette, many thanks for sharing your experience with ShareASale. With regards to which promotional material and quantity to include in your article, it all depends on the length of it and the layout of your post. If it´s the longer type you can include more than one product feed and say a couple of banners in the side columns, always when it´s related to your content.
Good post here. Giving anyone who are in the market for an affiliate network a good overview of what they have to offer.
I think I may join them as I haven’t so far.
Hi, I think you should join ShareASale as they partner with legit companies and have a whole range for most niches. Thanks for writing.