ShareAsale Affiliate Program Review: Earn Affiliate Income

Do you want to earn from your blog from this very moment?
I am damn sure AdSense isn’t making up your coffee prices as well.
Are you looking for a blog revenue program better than AdSense?
If you just nodded your head to say “um hmm” all the three times, this post is for you.
In this post, I am going to show an effective blog monetization technique that is often under the radar because the big bloggers using this won’t want you to know this.

Blogging is for sure a passion for many of us. But let’s face it, you cannot stick to your passion and give it full time unless it is the source of your bread and butter. But what if your blog has no decent traffic and or is not yet approved by AdSense?
Here is a source that accounted for almost 40% of my earnings in December 2014, an approx. of 470$/ BDT. 36190.00 (I know it’s not huge but is enough for many.) I don’t believe in eating up my blogs estate or in decreasing my readers UX with serving cheap ads. It’s when I started using this program.
Although I use various noticeable monetization programs to monetize BloggerTipsTricks which includes:

1. Direct ads (See advertise page)
2. Sponsored reviews
3. Blog Services
4. Affiliate Marketing etc.

but Affiliate marketing worked best for me last month. I don’t brag about my earnings in general but I am showing my screenshots here, because I know it can motivate someone reading this to make even more money. I myself joined shareasale after I saw the earnings report of a popular blogger.
Here are a few screenshots that prove my claims:

Note: $155.98 is finalized payment of month November 2014 which I received on Dec 20^th 2014 and I made over $470 in Dec 2014 which I will receive this month i.e. Jan 2015.

How you can also make Money from your blog?

The program that accounted for 40% of my income in Dec 2014 is ShareAsale. Shareasale is an affiliate program that pays you to promote the products registered with them. It is a two way program in which merchants register their products on the platform and affiliate marketers like me and you sign up to promote these products and get paid for each sale made. Read these basics of affiliate marketing before you get started.

Why I recommend shareAsale

There are many great marketplaces like Commission Junction, Clickbank etc. from where internet marketers can pick and promote the products that suits to their blog audience but the reasons I recommend to use Shareasale are:

1. Shareasale has a very user friendly and easy to use interface.
2. You can sign up for almost any product you want. Products range from genesis themes to many fortune 500 businesses.
3. Pay Per Sale and Pay Per Lead both type of programs are available there. Few programs pay 2 Tier commission too.
4. The main reason is I am using it and making a good amount of dollars, and I know you too can do it.

Who can join Shareasale Affiliate Program?

Anyone can join shareasale, you only need to have a medium to reach your audience to sell them. If you have a blog, no matter in which niche, you can join shareasale. ShareAsale has a wide range of products you can choose to promote. Here is the list of few of the products/services you can start promoting right away based on your blog niche:

1. Technology: Alishell LLC
2. Blogging: StudioPress, WPEngine, Hootsuite
3. Clothing and fashion: Eczosplay, Mart of China
4. Food and fitness: Pregprep, World Genetics Nutrition
5. Dating: Quality blooms, cards
6. Books publishing: Blurb
7. Weddings: Ybridal etc.

How to use shareAsale: A complete user guide

While using shareasale is not very cheesy, I am presenting you a guide to use shareasale as easily as possible.
STEP 1: Signing up:

1. Go to Shareasale.com

1. You will be guided through five steps that are pretty self-explanatory. After completion of the sign up process, you will have to wait for confirmation and account approval.

1. If you use an email id from the domain of a site you are going to promote it (like: example@domainname.com), then it is approved fast, however you can sign up with a simple email service like Gmail, or outlook id.
2. If you have signed up from a normal email id, you need to confirm that you own your website.

STEP 2: Confirmation and account approval:
Confirming can be done easily by either clicking an approval link sent to the email address registered with the domain or by placing a custom text code between the <head> and </head> section of your website template.
STEP 3: The dashboard:
The dashboard is as easy to navigate as it could be.

1. The first thing you notice is a to-do-list that enables you to find what incomplete tasks you need to perform.

1. In the given screenshot, I need to confirm my tax details as well as verify my website as I have signed up through my Gmail account which is no harm.
2. Shareasale supports direct transfer of balance to the banks of many countries including India, so if you are from one of countries that comply with their payment norms you can get the affiliate commissions from shareasale deposited directly to your bank account.

1. In the above form you just have to insert your bank name, city, your IFSC code of the bank, and your account number that’s it.
2. The threshold payment for shareasale is 50$ only. This is easily attainable by any blogger. Sometimes a single sale makes more than 100$ alone. The payment is made on 20th of each month.
3. You can check out your earnings daily.

STEP 4: Getting started WITH SHAREASALE AFFILIATE NETWORK:

1. For new publishers (we, the affiliate marketers) we have the merchants section where you can hunt the top merchants (the companies whose products will be promoted by you).

1. You can then sign up for the merchants individually; if there products interest you to promote them.

1. Some affiliate products require a confirmation from the merchant in order to enable you to promote it.
   For example – Hootsuite, Hootsuite pays a pretty good recurring commission on every sign up and I was interested and decided to join it. Now when I signed up for the product, I had to wait for a day to get approved by them before I could promote them.
2. After getting approval from merchants, you can get your affiliate links/banners from Links section to promote on your blog.

1. Also, you can join the shareasale “Aquarium”, the other name for forum, were you can interact with other brands and find better merchants.

Some Tips to Get More Affiliate Sales

Are you worried how to get more income from shareasale? In this section I will explain how I made money by promoting products through shareasale affiliate network.

1. Promote products that pay you hugely for single sign ups.

We cannot wait for a product that pays two cents per sale made, instead products like linktrackr, and genesis, which pay a huge 331$ and 33% of the sales made respectively.

1. Choose products that fit your niche:

I would say choose products that fit your niche and topic of blogging. After all we do not want to harm our readers by promoting irrelevant items.

1. Promote products you use or have an idea of it. This will help you in serving any doubt that the buyer asks you before buying a product.
2. Hide that dirty ugly link for God’s sake:

Most affiliate links come with product code, publisher code and tracking units. Though these all are helpful and necessary it will scare off the potential buyers who might think they are spam links. You can use WordPress plugins like Pretty Link Lite or GoCodes to cloak your affiliate links.
 
For example: A link that looks like this:
http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?B=363452&U=841050&M=37818&urllink=
Becomes like this after using the above plugins:

1. Clear the doubts of your readers:

Try clearing the doubts of your readers regarding the product. This is directly linked with the point 3 above. If you have used a product or have reviewed one on your blog, it can be useful for clearing the doubts regarding it.

1. Where to promote your product:

You can always promote your product on your blog, on a fan page, on landing pages, in forums that allow affiliate marketing. You can be innovative as to where you can promote your product. Just be creative for promoting them on your blog for example, write a review of the product or make a list post list including that product. You can also create a Blogging resources page.

Over to you

I think promoting products that you have personally used and benefitted from is the most powerful secret to affiliate links. I myself have always practiced it. If you want to make money from initial blog stage with less traffic you can do it also with shareasale. It’s because though your audience is small you should keep it dedicated and promote the products that are a part of their niche. So, what are you waiting for? Are you all ready to make your first dollar online? Sign up for a shareAsale account here and start earning online passively.