One of the best ways to earn a passive income online is through becoming an affiliate marketer— promoting various products and earning a commission whenever you generate a sale or lead. It’s a straightforward process, something a beginner can do well as long as they have the will and commitment. However, affiliate marketing may sound easy; just inserting product links in your content or posts. But the hardest part is finding the right products to promote and affiliate marketing companies to partner with. Solution? -Affiliate marketing platforms such as the ShareASale where you can find thousands of merchants to partner with and boundless products to promote.
Becoming a ShareASale affiliate is one of the best ways to monetize your website or your content.
What is ShareASale?
ShareASale is a platform that lists companies/merchants/brands who are willing to pay a commission to affiliate marketers to promote their products. In other words, it’s an affiliate marketing portal where affiliate marketers and brands connect. Affiliate marketers use the platform to find products to promote and earn a commission for sales or referrals made on those products. Brands use the platform to find affiliate marketers who can help promote their goods.
Why choose ShareASale?
ShareASale is a sought-after affiliate marketing program with two decades of experience in sales and advertising. The company is esteemed and well-reviewed as it has helped many bloggers monetize fully on their content. ShareASale allows affiliate marketers to sign-up for FREE and get access to thousands of merchants and brands across various markets and niche industries, thus it’s easy to find the right one to fit your content. So instead of having to stroll all over the internet trying to find products and brands to promote, ShareASale offers you a kind of “one-stop shop” deal where they conveniently list thousands of products looking to be promoted in one place. This means that it comes with massive conveniency saving you a lot of time and energy.
If you’re looking to be part of the ShareASale family, we have prepared a step-by-step guide on how to get started with your ShareASale account.
How to sign-up for a ShareASale account.
1. To get started, visit the ShareASale website and click ‘Sign up’ and then ‘Affiliate Sign up’ to start the sign-up process.
2. You’ll be directed to a signup page where you’ll be required to create your username, a password and enter the name of your country. Then click ‘Step 2’ to proceed.
3. On the next step, you’ll be required to fill out details of your website including your website URL and primary language. Note that if you want to be a ShareASale affiliate marketer, preferably you need to have an active website where you post your content, however you may add your social media profile URL such as Instagram account or Facebook. Also note that not all websites can be used to sign-up for a ShareASale account. Websites with adult content are not allowed. When you’re done filling out your website information, click ‘Step 2’ to move to the next page.
4. On the next page, you’ll be required to provide your email address. On this step, it is better to enter your website domain name email address ( example: sam@yourdomain.com) is more effective rather than using an email @Gmail.com or @Yahoo.com. After doing that, click ‘Step 3’ to proceed.
5. Then you’ll be required to provide your full contact details including your name, phone number, and location. This step will also require you to provide details where you’d want ShareASale to send your payments.
6. On this page, you’ll be required to select your preferred payment method. Note that ShareASale does not offer PayPal. You can get paid via ACH, Check, and Payoneer.
7. On this final step, you’re required to accept the ShareASale terms and conditions before proceeding to agree. Once you agree, click on ‘Complete Sign Up’ to submit the final application for review.
Why ShareASale may reject your application?
Following the steps highlighted above does not guarantee your approval. There are some cases where ShareASale will decline your application due to various reasons such as:
If your website contains adult content of any kind including banners.
If your website promotes violence, bigotry, racism, or hatred.
If your website promotes any illegal activities.
If your country of residence isn’t supported by ShareASale. Make sure to check the countries supported by ShareASale before signing up. If your country is not listed, you can reach out to ShareASale with a valid reason why they should accept you— for example if you have high-quality traffic.
If your application was denied do not hesitate to email back the support team asking why. Sometimes ShareASale needs some clarification to approve your account. Give it a try!
What’s next once your application has been approved?
Once your application has been accepted, Congratulations! You’re now a ShareASale member. You can login to your account to get started as an affiliate marketer. Once you’re in your account, you’ll find a very user-friendly and functional dashboard.
The dashboard displays a few important buttons: the ‘At A Glance’ button which shows your current affiliate payment balance, any notifications, and merchants or brands that are offline or closed. The second button is the ‘Activity Feed’ button which displays the real-time overview of whatever is happening within your account.
Another important button is the ‘Trending Merchants.’ Like the name suggests, this button shows the top 10 most popular merchant programs on the whole platform so you don’t have to stroll through the dozens of programs looking for the best fit.
Finding the best affiliate programs on ShareASale.
At this point now, you need to start looking for the best affiliate programs offered on the platform. To start with, click on ‘Merchants’ button on top of the page then go to ‘Search Merchants.’
‘Search Merchant’ is a robust search feature that allows you to filter merchants by the following categories: period of Earning Per Click (EPC) (whether 7 or 30-day), sale, click, and lead commission, cookie length, power rank, joined status, and the period they’ve been on ShareASale.
To make it even more interesting, ShareASale has a ‘Modify Search’ feature that allows you to locate the exact type of affiliate programs you’re looking for.
Under the ‘Modify Search’ feature, you can search for programs that have an EPC and commission rate greater than the amount you want. How convenient!
Once you select a merchant and they approve your application to promote their products, you’ll have access to their referral links and banners through your ShareASale account. To use the link, you need to copy it, go to the content you want to post, then insert it to an appropriate text.
Ways to make money as an affiliate on ShareASale.
There are two major ways of making money on ShareASale from promoting products or brands:
Pay Per Lead- this is where you earn a commission whenever a visitor follows your affiliate link to a merchant’s lead capture form and completes it fully.
Pay Per Sale- this is where you get paid a commission every time a visitor uses your affiliate link to get to the merchant’s online store and makes a purchase.
When is ShareASale pay day?
ShareASale pays its affiliates on the 20th of each month for the promotions carried out the previous month. This means that the amount paid to a ShareASale affiliate on January 20, 2021 is for the promotions carried out in December 2020. The ShareASale pay day remains the 20th of every month unless the merchant has an extended lock date.
What does a lock date mean?
Lock date is a time determined and decided upon by the merchant when they need more time to review and approve each transaction, or make any necessary edits. Once a transaction hits the lock date, the amount will be automatically paid out and the merchant cannot make any changes or edits to it.
Additionally, if the 20th falls on a U.S. holiday or a weekend, the payments are not sent out. Instead, they’re postponed and sent out on the following business day.
ShareASale also tracks and records all transactions that earned commissions to affiliates. The reports are sent out together with the payments every month. This gives affiliates a chance to monitor their promotion efforts and verify whether they’re paid correctly. In case of any issues or complains, you can always reach out to ShareASale customer support.
What are ShareASale payment methods?
ShareASale pays its affiliate marketers in four different ways:
Physical Check sent via United States Postal Service.
Physical Check sent via FedEx (additional fees required).
Direct Deposit.
Payoneer.
Again, ShareASale does not pay affiliates through PayPal. At least not for now.
Also note that the payment threshold for ShareASale is when your commissions accumulate to $50. Your payment cannot be sent out if you haven’t earned commissions adding up to $50.
ShareASale vs Commission Junction.
ShareASale and Commission Junction (CJ) are both big players in the affiliate field. Both platforms are affiliate networks with thousands of affiliate marketers and advertisers. If you’re planning to join ShareASale as an affiliate marketer, you might be wondering what you could be missing out from Commission Junction, so we decided to include to the ShareASale review how is it different from CJ.
How ShareASale compares to Commission Junction?
First, CJ is an affiliate well known to be associated with relatively larger and more established brands. For that reason, getting approved to become an affiliate marketer on CJ is not an easy step. Brands and companies that advertise on ShareASale are relatively smaller but willing to work with smaller affiliate marketers or bloggers, thus getting approved on ShareASale as an affiliate marketer is much easier compared to CJ.
Secondly, retaining your affiliate marketing account as a beginner on CJ is never easy as well. If your promotion efforts do not result in any sales within 180 days of being an affiliate marketer on CJ, your account will get suspended. This makes it exceptionally unfriendly for amateur affiliate marketers who are just starting off and having challenges in gaining traction. In contrast, there is no such a requirement on ShareASale. ShareASale has positioned itself to offer conveniency to smaller beginner bloggers who are just starting off and having challenges in gaining traction.
Thirdly, the Commission Junction platform is relatively complex and a bit discouraging if you don’t have so much knowledge about affiliate marketing. In comparison, ShareASale website is a bit more user friendly and downright easy to navigate, especially to beginners. The website has even gone further to explain what most of the abbreviations associated with affiliate marketing stand for. So, if you’re just getting started with the affiliate stuff, ShareASale is a much better starting point.
Finally, ShareASale has an excellent customer support compared to CJ. If you have any questions or issues you won’t have any trouble getting a fast reply from the ShareASale support team.
Pros and Cons of ShareASale.
Pros.
ShareASale is an exceptionally active affiliate marketing platform with thousands of merchants and brands available for promotion under the various categories; also, without forgetting that new products are added on the platform every day. This means that the platform has inexhaustible opportunities to promote brands and products. Therefore, you can’t lack something to promote.
ShareASale’s website has an excellent user interface which is straightforward to navigate compared to other affiliate networks.
Moreover, you’re more likely to be accepted to promote the products of your choice on ShareASale than any other affiliate program.
ShareASale’s payout are also always on time. You’re less likely to encounter any payment issues on ShareASale.
We have reviewed CJ Affiliate pros and cons here.
Cons.
ShareASale’s payment threshold of $50 may not be appealing, however it is still relatively small.
ShareASale doesn’t always notify affiliate marketers when merchants’ programs are shut down due to various reasons. This means that some of your affiliate links and earnings may stop working abruptly without you ever noticing. Double check your Merchants in the dashboard to ensure their Active status.
ShareASale in nutshell
In our ShareASale review, you can see that despite a few cons on the platform, it is generally an excellent platform with excellent features and reviews from other users. This platform could be a great first step in your affiliate marketing journey. Its conveniency and functionality is something you may not find in any other affiliate market platform. If you’re planning to use ShareASale, sign up and let us know know your opinion about the platform.
If you need help with setting up your ShareASale account, you can contact us and we'll be glad to assist!