ShareASale is an affiliate network with LOTS of retail merchants that pay high commission rates and have long cookie lengths. Promote ShareASale affiliate products for higher commissions. It’s a great network for both beginners and experienced affiliate marketers.
Apply To The ShareASale Affiliate Program
Create an email address for your site (your ShareASale account will be processed more quickly if you use an email associated with your website instead of using Gmail, Yahoo or another kind of free email address).
If you haven’t set up an email address for your website, then click on the link below. This is a very easy process and will only take a few minutes.
How To Set Up A Website Email Address
The 1st thing that you need to do is:
Click this link to log in to ShareASale
Then follow the step-by-step instructions below that will take you through the ShareASale Affiliate Sign Up process.
I am even going to show you how to find a merchant for your niche. I am going to show you how to sign up for these merchant accounts so that you can start making some money right away. Remember, most of these merchants pay higher commissions than you may have been getting.
Click the Affiliate Sign Up link
Choose a user name, choose a password, confirm your password and use the drop down box to select your country of residence:
Click the link to “MOVE ON TO STEP 2”
Enter your website URL:
Be truthful answering the questions on the bottom of this screen but the following are most likely to get you approved (ShareASale’s agreement actually says your website should be in English and if you don’t know what the other questions are asking then you are probably not doing those things anyway so it’s safe to say “no”):
Click the link to “MOVE ON TO STEP 3”
Check the button to use an email address that is tied to your website domain so you’ll be approved more quickly:
Enter your email address:
Click the link to “MOVE ON TO STEP 4”
Complete the personal information on the next screen – where it asks for a description of your site write something that describes your website and how you advertise products:
Complete your application and make sure to click a confirmation link in the email ShareASale sends you to confirm your sign-up.
Apply to Merchants
Once ShareASale has approved your application, you need to apply to merchants inside of the ShareASale affiliate network to promote ShareASale affiliate products. Once you’re approved by a merchant you can then include affiliate links for that merchant in your website content.
You can apply to multiple ShareASale merchants and are not limited to just one.
Merchant Searches
To search for merchants on ShareASale:
Log into your ShareASale account
Hover over “Merchants” in the navigation menu and then click on “Search For Merchants”:
You have four search options available:
1. Search by categories
2. Search your favorites (you can favorite a merchant that maybe you think you won’t be approved for now but want to come back and apply to later)
3. Keywords
4. Modified (advanced) search
Use the Modified (advanced) search option:
Click the “Modify Search” option:
You can now search merchants using a combination of fields:
Choose only the fields you want to use to search for merchants – you don’t have to use every box:
Enter a keyword (or not)
Choose a program type:
Per Sale – a commission % is paid for each sale
Per Lead – a commission is paid for each “lead” (a visitor who might turn into a sale in the future – you have to reach a certain level of sales on ShareASale before you qualify to promote these kinds of programs)
Flat Rate – a flat dollar amount is paid for each sale
Program Features:
Exclusive to ShareASale – these merchants do not have an affiliate program through any other network
Provides a datafeed – if you use a tool or programming to work with merchant datafeeds and only want to see merchants who actually have a datafeed then you would want to check this box for your merchant search
Auto-approval – if your website is new or you don’t have a lot of content on your site you may want to stick with searching only for merchants who pre-approve applicants rather than applying to merchants who are going to review your website
Two-tier program – these are merchants who pay affiliates something (a flat fee, a share of commissions) for bringing in other affiliates
Has coupons available – if you run a coupon site or are putting together a post on available coupons you might search only for merchants who have coupons available
On AutoDeposit – because a merchant on auto-deposit is less likely to go offline and run out of funds to pay affiliates, you might decide it is safest to only search for merchants who have auto-deposit set up
Status
Approved – merchants who have already approved you as an affiliate for their program
Not Applied – use this to find merchants to whom you have not already applied
Category – another method for searching by category
Join Date
Use this field to search only for merchants who have joined before or after a certain date. This is useful if you want to avoid promoting brand new merchants who have not been on ShareASale long enough to have proven their performance with affiliates.
Program Metric:
EPC Greater Than – Use this to search only for merchants who have had sales above a certain amount in the past 30 days
Commission Rate Greater Than – Use this to search only for merchants who pay more than a certain commission rate (i.e., greater than 10%)
Average Sale Greater Than – Use this to search only for merchants who have had average sales greater than a certain amount
Reversal Rate Less Than – Use this to search only for merchants who have had a reversal rate lower than a certain amount
Using the modified search option can save you a lot of time. It can whittle the list of merchants down to those who meet certain criteria so that you don’t waste time analyzing merchants who don’t meet your needs. This means that you can promote ShareASale affiliate products sooner.
For instance, suppose you want to find all merchants who meet the following criteria:
Sell clothing
Pay per sale
Use auto-approval (which means you don’t have to wait for someone to review your application before you’re approved)
Use auto-deposit
With whom you have not already been approved
Who have been with ShareASale for more than a year
Have an EPC greater than $20
Have a reversal rate less than 20%
You would select each of those filters in the Modify Search pop up box:
Once you click the Search button, you know that all the merchants you see are going to meet those criteria so there’s less time you have to spend reviewing each one individually to check that information:
Join Program Button
Once you find a list of merchants that fit your niche and criteria you need to click the Join Program button for each merchant.
When you click the Join Program button:
A pop-up box comes up showing the terms of that merchant’s affiliate program – scroll down and read the terms:
Scroll back to the top of the pop-up box and check the box to confirm you’ve read the program agreement for that merchant:
An auto-approval merchant – you can click the Join This Program button and be done. This is the best way to promote ShareASale affiliate products.
Not an auto-approval merchant – go to the Optional box just under the Join This Program button:
Enter some information about your promotional methods and marketing plan for your website. Merchants just want to make sure you’re not using any strategies with which they wouldn’t agree AND that you take your site seriously enough that you do have a marketing plan. You should include things like:
Whether or not you use PPC to get traffic
If you use social media for traffic and, if so, which social media sites you use
Whether or not you use content marketing to get organic traffic from Google (this is what I would include in every application as it is my main source of traffic)
Average monthly traffic to your website (you can round up)
Want to go the extra mile? Include your phone number – nothing says you’re serious like giving the merchant’s affiliate manager a chance to call you!
Mention what your website is about and why you’re passionate about your niche
Click the Join This Program button
If you were auto-approved for any merchants in ShareASale then you’re ready to create affiliate links for that merchant.
If you applied to any merchants who do not auto-approve you may have to wait a few days to get an email response to your application. In that case you can’t create affiliate links for that merchant until you’ve been approved.
Once you have at least one approval in ShareASale you can create your first post featuring your affiliate links. Now you can promote ShareASale affiliate products.
Log into your ShareASale account
Go to Tools/Make a Page:
Enter a word in the search field that represents a kind of product that is related to your niche and click the Go button:
Scroll through the product choices and click the + button next to 4-6 products that are similar (same color, all for women, all for men, all for children, all related to the same holiday, all made of the same material, or same size, etc.):
When you’ve finished with your selection click the Product Display Options tab on the right side of the screen:
Set layout width, layout height, thumbnail max width, and thumbnail max height to the following:
Click the Save/Get Options tab:
Click the Get Page Code option:
Copy all of the provided code (make sure you have it ALL from top to bottom!):
Now go back into your WordPress dashboard, go to Posts/Add New:
Give your new post a title that describes the products you’re featuring in your post. Try to use words you think people would use when searching Google for these kinds of products and the words that describe the thing you thought all of the products had in common:
Click the + box to add a new kind of block to your post:
Do a search for “html” and click on the Custom HTML block type:
Paste all of your code from ShareASale into the block:
Click the Preview button for your post and look at the post preview that comes up in a new tab of your browser:
Look at each product – if you have any that have scroll bars you should go back to ShareASale and adjust the layout and image widths to see if you can find settings that eliminate the scroll bar, copy the new code and replace the code in the Custom HTML block with the new code. If you can’t find settings that remove the scroll bars remove that image from your selection and try replacing it with different ShareASale affiliate products:
When your products look good, hover over the title field of your post and click the + sign underneath the title to add a new block (you may have to click in the title field to get outside of your HTML block):
Choose to add a paragraph block:
Write a sentence that introduces your topic and includes your post title in the sentence:
Write at least 3 more sentences that talk about the products you have in your post without using words from your post title if you can avoid it (use synonyms or the words “it” or “they” – you don’t want to be too repetitive with words you use in your content – Google doesn’t like that). You can talk about what you like about these products, what made you choose them, the similarities they have, or the differences they have:
Click the Categories button on the right sidebar:
Uncheck the Uncategorized category:
Click the Add New Category link:
Categories are like folders on your computer where you store files. You create categories for your site where you can store posts that are about the same kind of topic. Come up with one or two words to describe the category for your post:
You Need To Click the Publish button:
Click the Publish button again:
Click the View Post link to see the live view of your new post:
The product names and images in your post are clickable. If a visitor clicks on one of those products and buys something from the retailer while your affiliate cookie is still live (see cookie length for your merchant in ShareASale) you will get a commission! You can now promote other ShareASale affiliate products.
Keep adding more posts to your site following the steps above. However, there’s more you can do so you’ll get more traffic and more sales:
Add posts to your niche that don’t include affiliate links. Google isn’t keen on sites that have ONLY affiliate posts. If you know how to do something related to your niche then write and publish a post about how to do that thing.
If you have a site in the kitchen niche and you make pies you could take images while you’re making your next pie and create a post that walks the reader through all the steps you took to make that pie. Add your own images to the post to make it look nice.
Learn more about SEO and how to improve your rankings in Google search results
Change the look of your site by changing your WordPress theme
Check your website speed and make improvements so it loads more quickly