Let’s be honest, we’re all here to make some money! Affiliates are working hard to promote their merchant partners with links, encouraging readers to click and buy. Merchants are working day and night to make sure their affiliates are rewarded for the effort! It’s a beautiful model and everyone wins, as long as someone is there to handle the payment processing.

That’s where ShareASale comes in. We process the payments and make sure payments are sent out on in a timely manner. Let’s now see how this works on both the merchant and affiliate sides.

Merchants

During account setup, Merchants are asked to pay a $625 setup fee and a minimum deposit of $125 to start funding inside their accounts, for a total cost of $750. The deposit is used to pay out commissions to affiliates in addition to the ShareASale transaction fee. Merchants can replenish funds at any time via the Deposit Center.

A merchant pays a commission when a completed sale is referred from an affiliate (there are other actions that generate payouts, but we’ll talk about manual commissions/bonuses in another post). The merchant’s account balance will then be deducted, in real-time, the predefined amount (commission plus the ShareASale transaction fee). Transactions that come through from affiliates will be locked and paid out on the 20^th of the following month (assuming the merchant account is set at the default lock date).

In a given month, if your account does not generate a minimum of $50 in fees to ShareASale, your account will be charged the difference. There is a grace period, see below:

• 0-30 Days – No Minimum Fees
• 30+ Days – $35 Monthly Maximum

ShareASale’s commission fee is 20% of the affiliate payout, here is an example of a typical sale a merchant may see.

The merchant’s initial balance is $125, a sale takes place that generates a $10 commission to an affiliate. This ten dollars will then be deducted from the starting merchant balance. 

ShareASale’s transaction fee of 20% is applied based on the affiliate payout, so in this example it is $2 (20% of a $10 commission). The total payout in this case would be $12, leaving the merchant with a balance of $113.

We have recently added SMS notifications on certain account activity, so Merchants can now opt-in to receive SMS alerts when their balance reaches a set threshold for notification to add money to the account.

Auto-Deposit (You will want to do this!)

It’s highly recommended that our merchants setup Auto-Deposit. If Auto-Deposit is not an option, manual deposit payment via credit card, eCheck or Paypal is available.

Payment via Wire, ACH, or Company Check are available for accounts looking to deposit $10,000 or greater into an account. Please open a Help Ticket and enquire about additional options by visiting our Help Center.

Why do we suggest this?

Affiliates use a report as a consideration when looking at prospective programs to join. It’s called the “Uptime History Report”, which is a series of time stamps showing when a specific merchant is either set to “Low Funds”, “Temporarily Offline”, or “Online”.

Low Funds = The ShareASale Network Low Funds trigger point is $50. If a merchant account reaches a balance of $50 or less the account is flagged as “Low Funds”.

Temporarily Offline = When a merchant account reaches a balance of $0, the program is taken temporarily offline until funds are replenished. When an account is offline, affiliate links are disabled.

Online = Once funds are added to a merchant’s offline or low funds account, the program is marked as Online.

Affiliates will be less likely to join a program that has a tendency to go consistently offline as this disables the working links on their site and then leaves their visitors with a disrupted experience. Auto-Deposit being setup automatically takes money from a credit card on file and prevents an offline status from happening.

Affiliates

It is always free to join ShareASale as an affiliate, the sign-up process is quick and easy and once you are approved into the ShareASale network, thousands of merchant programs will be waiting for you to join them as a partner.

Once you have selected merchants to partner with, you can get their creatives and use them on your website or blog. You will get paid as sales occur through these links and you will be able to see all the information inside informational reports like your Activity Details.

How Do I Get Paid?

Affiliates can choose to get paid by check, the minimum payment threshold is $50. They can raise this to a higher payment trigger amount if they like. This is done from inside their edit settings page near the middle.

Affiliates can also be paid by ACH direct deposit or wire transfer. If the affiliate chooses to have payments sent through direct deposit, they need to fill out the form found here in Payment Settings. They will also need specific information from their checks or bank to complete this form. Also, while there is no fee for direct deposit, there is a $29 fee for wire transfers.

When Do I Get Paid?

Payments are sent out on the 20th of every month for the previous month’s commissions (unless the merchant has opted for an extended lock date). Commissions that an affiliate earns in January, for example, are eligible for payment on February 20th. If the 20th falls on a weekend, payments are sent out on the following Monday.

If affiliates have any questions about this, please contact our support team and they will be happy to answer any payment questions.

Where is My Money?

Affiliates can easily find why a payment hasn’t shown up in the Rejected Payment Report.

It is fairly common to have one number be out of place or something similar, resulting in a payment not arriving to the affiliate. With this report, it is easy to see if a payment has been rejected and also see the status of the payment.

We have a 90-day cancellation policy. Unless returned to ShareASale, checks cancelled within 90 days from the original issue date have a $35 cancellation fee.

If an affiliate waits until after 90 days, we can re-issue their check free of charge. Affiliates should always make sure their address is updated within their ShareASale account.

If merchants and affiliates have any questions regarding payments, they can find many answers in the Help Center. They can also contact our support department with any questions.