Although a lot of new affiliate marketers assume that success comes from luck, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Success as an affiliate with Shareasale or any other affiliate network comes from hard work and good strategy. Thousands of people work hard and use affiliate programs to free themselves from full-time jobs and financial worries, and with the right attitude and knowledge, you can too. To succeed with Shareasale, there are a number of steps you can take.
- Make an effort to reach out to affiliate managers. Each merchant has a dedicated contact that you can talk to about promotional methods, technical problems, and product lines. Simply visit the merchant’s Shareasale profile page and click “Contact this Merchant”.
- Use deep linking. Whenever you promote a product, link to the page that’s most appropriate. Just click on the “Create a Custom Link to a Page” link in the user dashboard and fill out their simple form to make custom links. If you want to be able to capture more detail about which link referred each sale, enter in a short tracking word or number in the optional afftrack field.
- Keep an eye on your stats. Visit the “Activity Details” and “Activity Summary” links regularly to view details on your sales and clicks. If you have specified optional afftrack values for links you’ve created, you’ll see those next to your completed sales.
- Help your customers. Click on the “Coupons/Deals” link to find available deals for merchants in the network. If you want to find links for a specific merchant, you can also visit their specific merchant page on Shareasale.
- Get help creating pages. If page design is something that slows you down, try using Shareasale’s “Make a Page” feature to create specific product pages quickly. Just enter in details about which items you’d like to promote and you’ll get back the raw HTML code you can upload to your website for an instant page.
- Keep an eye on merchant status. Sometimes, merchants get low on funds or they leave Shareasale entirely. Before you embark on any new promotional campaign, make sure your merchant is in good standing. If a program says “Low Funds”, proceed with caution. If it’s closed, move on to something else.
- Stay up-to-date with the network. Unlike many networks, Shareasale maintains an active blog with news and important information for their affiliates. Click “Merchant Focus” to read the blog on a regular basis.
- Use datafeeds to create automated sites. You can download merchant datafeeds by clicking on “Datafeeds” in the main dashboard. If you’re very technical, you can work directly with the raw feed file. If not, you can use third-party tools like PopShops.com and GoldenCAN.com to help create quick and easy datafeed websites that highlight specific products of your choosing.
- Study customer behavior. Use the “Return Days Analysis” to see if your buyers are making purchases on the same day they see your link or if they’re coming back much later. Some merchants will credit you for sales as much as 180 days after they click your link, while others will give you just a week or two. By studying buying behavior for different merchants and types of products, you’ll be in a better position to know which programs will work for you in the future.
- Get feedback from merchants.. If merchants have strong positive or negative feelings about how you are promoting their products, they may leave you feedback. By keeping track of your feedback, you’ll be able to maintain good relations with merchants and improve your efforts in the future. Just click the “View all Feedback” link to see what merchants have said about you.
In Chinavasion’s case a huge proportion of our customers do not speak English as their first language. This means you have a great opportunity to get rewarded by creating special language pages explaining benefits of Chinavasion, and collecting commission on referred orders.
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This is a great way to understand new features inside the Shareasale system, which is very complicated in certain areas.
These features are just the tip of the iceberg. Shareasale is constantly developing new features based on affiliate feedback, and you should never hesitate to explore your user dashboard or contact Shareasale for help with confusing features.