1. Go to ShareASale.com, click on Affiliate Sign Up.
Filling out the application itself will take about 5-7 minutes. Once the application is complete, our team reviews it and will send you an email notification upon approval. This could take 1 to 3 business days depending on the type of application you fill out. We’ll touch on that in step #3.
2. Create your username, password and select your country of residence.
Carefully create your username, it cannot be changed after you move on to step 2. Your password, however, can be changed once your account is approved.
3. List your primary website and answer a few questions about it.
Most of these are pretty straight forward questions, but here are a few common answers to questions that arise on this section:
- Primary Website = The website you will utilize for Affiliate Marketing.
- PPC = Pay Per Click. If you utilize PPC such as advertising on Google, Facebook, etc… you should check this box.
- Select “Yes” if you utilize coupons at all – this includes content blogs that have a coupon tab or section.
- ShareASale doesn’t allow Affiliates to place advertisements on sites that you don’t own. An example would be placing a creative on Craigslist.
4. Add your primary email address
5a. Tell us about yourself (and your website)!
You might be tempted to not include your mailing address, but I wouldn’t suggest it! We use your address to send Affiliate Payment Checks and without an address, these checks get sent back to us. Make sure that your address is included in your account to receive your payments with no problems.
The very last field also includes a spot to write a small description of your site. This should be anything that might help Merchants make a decision about an application to join their program.
5b. A few more questions
- Is your website an incentive program? An incentive program is a website that rewards its visitors for performing specific actions. A website that pays customers to take actions such as reading emails would be considered an incentive program. If you aren’t sure if your site qualifies as an incentive program, we have an “I don’t know” option!
- Do you own the domain you are registering with? If you do not own your domain, such as common domains .wordpress.com, .blogger.com you should indicate here.
6. Select your payment method
ShareASale allows payments to be processed in by Check via Postal Mail, Check via FedEx or Direct Deposit. Choose the best one for you! And don’t worry! You can change your payment method at any time by going to your Edit Setting Page.
7. Read and agree to the ‘User Terms of Agreement’
8. Check your email for a confirmation link
As mentioned, our approval process can take between 1-3 days, depending on your individual application. Keep your eye out for an email from ShareASale stating that your application has been approved or declined.
9. Click the confirmation link.
The email that you receive from ShareASale for application approval will include a confirmation link. Click on that link and follow the directions to verify and finish up your application.
10. Check a few more boxes, then Finalize!
Verify that you’ve read & agreed to our terms and conditions and then click the final box before being taken to your Affiliate account.
11. Merchants > Search for Merchants
As a new Affiliate, this is one of the first steps that you should take after signing into your Affiliate account. This is where you will not only be able to search for Merchants and products, but also request to join their programs, thus getting access to creatives to put up on your website.
12. Search for Merchants by product, keyword or name.
You can search our database of Merchant Programs by product, keyword or name. The search results that you receive will default to the most relevantMerchant listed first. You can change this by doing an advanced search or by changing the “Sort By” menu drop-down.
13. Browse the results, join a program
ShareASale will spit out lots of results and it is up to you to choose the best programs for you website. Here are some tips, however, for things to look for when searching for Merchants.
- The Name of the Merchant – who is the Merchant?
- The Commission Rate for their Program – how much are you going to get per sale?
- Keyword Matches, Stats, Details, Previews – this will give you more information such as EPC (Earnings Per Click), Average Commission Amount, Average Sale Amount and Cookie Duration. Also pay attention to whether it has Auto-Approval, Auto-Deposit and/or a Datafeed.
- Join Program – did you like what you saw? Request to join their program!
14. Write a description, read the terms, apply for the program.
Don’t skip out on writing a description. This is your opportunity to explain to the Merchant why you want to join their program – describe what products you’d like to promote or what niche your website it is. Use it to make your application stand out! This is also a great way to tell the Merchant about any other sites that you have. The Merchant might not understand why you may have another website which is in the fashion niche. Include this website in your description!
After reading the Merchant’s terms, accept the terms and click the box requesting to “Join this program.”
15. Get Links for Program (or wait until approved)
If a Merchant has Auto-Approval, you will immediately approved for their program and start getting links to place on your website. If it is not Auto-Approval, you’ll have to wait until you are approved to get links.
To get links to all programs you are approved for, you can do this at anytime by going to Links > Get a Link/Banner.
16. Browse creative inventory, choose a creative.
On the Get Links page for an individual Merchant, as a member of their program, you have the ability to grab any text link, banner or product provided. Keep in mind that you can always create a custom link if they don’t have what you are looking for!
Once you have chosen the creative you’d like to place on your website (a banner in this case), simply click it to get the html for that specific creative.
17. Copy the HTML code for the creative
After clicking on the creative, a box will appear with the html for you to easily copy and paste to the back-end of your website. How easy is that?!?
Alura says
March 29, 2017 at 1:23 amHey, thanks for your post! This was pretty helpful for an absolute beginner like me, the problem is I don’t actually know what to do with the HTML text.