In this post I am going to investigate the Shareasale Affiliate Program and see if it is a worthwhile platform for website owners to join if they are wanting to monetize their websites, especially if they are concentrating on affiliate marketing.
I have been somewhat disappointed in Amazon recently. They have just cut their affiliate commissions to 1% (mostly), and although I have enjoyed using their platform for the last few years, I have realized that I have too many eggs in one basket in this case.
In order to make a decent amount of money on 1% commissions, you are going to have to be selling either a large volume of goods or high ticket products each month, and as other affiliate programs are offering much higher commissions, maybe it is time I change to something a bit more profitable for myself.
So I decided to look at Shareasale.
Shareasale Affiliate Program
It is great to see at first glance that the Shareasale Affiliate Program has a wide range of goods to sell, which covers a lot of Niches. All you need to do as a potential affiliate is go to Affiliate Signup and fill out the forms to join up as a promoter of these goods.
Once you have an account, you will be taken into their dashboard where you can then search for products that you would like to market. You don’t need to pay anything to become a Shareasale Affiliate. If you are a merchant however, Shareasale will take a percentage of your commission.
Similar to Amazon, Shareasale has many companies in its database, but if you find one you like you need to apply to become an affiliate with each individual company. With Amazon you only need to be approved by Amazon, and you can sell anything.
Make sure to read all the fine print before applying to join as each company has its own set of rules.
How To Join Shareasale As an Affiliate
Go to the Shareasale Affiliate Program and create your Username and Password.
Next, provide the details about your own website or websites.
To join this website as an affiliate, it is extremely essential that you have a blog or website of your own even if you do not intend to use it for advertisements.
You should provide all the necessary and accurate details about your business.
Confirmation of your e-mail id is the next step.
Your application will be approved quickly if your e-mail id is the same as that on your website. In other cases, the verification can take some more time.
After this, you need to provide your contact information and other details, such as, your name, your marketing plans, details regarding who your cheques will be payable to, etc.
Finally, you need to select your payment preference depending on your country of residence. I only had the option of a cheque being posted to me. The different payment options available are regular post, direct deposit, and cheque by FedEx.
After all these steps are completed, you just need to verify your account by clicking on the link sent to your e-mail to start using your account.
With some of the programs within Shareasale, you will be accepted straight away, but others will take some time to approve you. In most cases, it is around 48 hours.
This is the dashboard at a glance.
As you can see there are over 4,500 merchants to pick from, so there will most certainly be something here for you to promote on your website.
Promote Your Online Store using Shareasale as a platform by clicking on the link provided.
If you want to do affiliate marketing but need some training to get you going or don’t quite know where to start, I highly recommend this platform.
If you want to be successful with the affiliate marketing model, you need training and you need your own website. Without your own website you will be paying out through your nose for advertising, when you could be getting your sales for free using the power of SEO and organic traffic.
Shareasale Affiliate Program Pros
- It’s free to join.
- Commissions are fair to good. Anywhere from 5% and upwards. Mostly they settle on 10% and can increase in certain cases to up to 40%.
- Wide variety of products to promote for any niche.
- Many unique products that you don’t find elsewhere easily.
- Easy to find merchants in your niche using the search tool provided.
- Well known and established company.
- They always pay their affiliates.
- Cookies are stored for up to a year, which means if your referral goes back to make a purchase you will still get the credit.
Shareasale Affiliate Program Cons
- I found the platform a little confusing in the beginning so there is a learning curve.
- You need separate links from each merchant, so not as user friendly as the Amazon platform. You need to apply separately with each merchant and hope they approve you to promote their products.
- It takes time before you will see any profits.
- Sometimes it’s frustrating as you have to wait until merchants accept you before you can start promoting their products.
- It is hard to get into some of the programs. My applications for some of the programs have been rejected without a valid reason.
- Programs can close down, meaning you need to go back and change all the links on your website.
How Do You Get Paid?
The minimum threshold is $50 and you can set it to a higher amount if you prefer. Cheques will be posted once your balance hits the threshold you agree on. Depending on where you live payment options include direct deposit and cheque by FedEx.
Is Shareasale A Legitimate Platform?
Yes Shareasale is safe and legitimate for both merchants and affiliates.
Do Merchants Pay To Join?
If you want to sell something through Shareasale as a merchant there are costs.
To get started with ShareASale merchant account, you need to pay the following fees :
1. A one-time network access fee of $550.
2. A minimum deposit of $100 into your account which will be used to pay out Affiliate Commissions and ShareASale Transaction Fees.
So the minimum cost to start a merchant account with ShareASale is $650.
After that Shareasale does take a percentage of each sale.
How Does Shareasale Affiliate Platform Compare With Other Affiliate Programs?
Shareasale has a wider choice of products than one would find in Clickbank, although most are tangible products so the commissions won’t be as high. Clickbank pays great commissions, but the products are all digital.
The platform itself is also a lot easier to navigate than a lot of its competitors.
The customer support is impressive. I had a problem and it was resolved in a day.
Shareasale is convenient, so if you are an affiliate marketer of any kind I would strongly recommend adding this platform to your marketing arsenal.
