ShareASale offers merchants the ability to create flexible and dynamic commission structures. By default, ShareASale’s powerful commission tools allow for commission per affiliate, tiered commission structures, and access to a host of possible commission rules. Advanced implementations with ShareASale allow for couponcode commissioning options, new versus returning customer commission rules, and product SKU commissions. ShareASale’s rich commission options and advanced features can be used to address almost any commission structure; however, ShareASale goes even further and provides a flexible solution for merchants that need to setup a commission structure outside of ShareASale’s rich commission ecosystem.
By working with ShareASale’s technical team to develop a commission implementation plan and with the assistance of a developer to setup the xtype solution, merchants are able to pass free form data to ShareASale on an order by order basis. Merchants can then create commission rules using the free form order data passed in the xtype solution. A sample usage for the xtype solution would be a merchant with retail and wholesale sales tracking through their website. Retail and wholesale transactions typically have markedly different profit margins and thus require a different commission structure in order to ensure that commission payouts stay within those margins.
Let’s look at a sample scenario of retail versus wholesale commissioning using xtype to differentiate commission rates. In our example, the sample merchant wants to have an attractive commission rate on retail sales, where they have more flexible margins. The merchant is able to offer 20% commission on retail sales. Wholesale transactions, with their tighter margins, need to be commissioned at 10% in order to maintain a healthy profit margin. After working with ShareASale and a developer to install the xtype solution, all transactions that are retail have an xtype of “retail” and all transactions that are wholesale have an xtype of “wholesale”. The sample merchant is then able to build out a commission rule setting retail sales to 20% and wholesale sales to 10%:
In our example, after implementing the commission rule, an affiliate referred two sales. Sale 11105 was a retail order of $19.99. Sale 11106 was a wholesale order also with an order amount of $19.99. Sale 11105 calculated affiliate commission at the retail rate of 20%, whereas sale 11106 calculated affiliate commission at the wholesale rate of 10%:
As you can see in this example, xtype is a powerful tool that has the flexibility to meet rarefied commission needs. If you have advanced commission needs, please contact ShareASale so that we can assist you in forming your custom commission plan in order to meet your program’s needs.