First Sale on ShareASale with a New Website (10 VisitsDay!)

byamjadjudeh

1.5K followers

Updated 3 years ago

I've just logged into my ShareAsale affiliate account to see if I'm getting any clicks to my affiliate links on my new website, which is getting less than 10 visits per day, and found out that I have already made a commission on a product I reveiwed.

The is a physical proudct, and the original price is much lower than what the referral purchased (Around $800), but it seems that they went to another option on the same website that is more expensive, which led me to getting around $134 in commissions from that one sale.

This website is not my first website, but it is a new one, and it is NOT in the MMO-IM space, and this is my first ShareASale commission after I was denied to join the platform in the past.

I'm so excited and want to share few lessons from this little experience:

How to Get Approved on ShareASale as an Affiliate?

In the past, I tried to join ShareASale as an affiliate with my personal email, and I mentioned my website that I was using to promote Wealthy Affiliate and different internet marketing products.

The main issue was the fact that my website's name was too long and was more keyword-stuffed rather than a brandable one, which looked a little bit unprofessional, despite the fact that the content I was creating was really helpful and many fellow WA members praised it when I asked for a feedback.

My second try was at the beginning of this year 2021, with a new website that I started back in October 2020, with a brandable name in a niche that has nothing to do with internet marketing and making money online, and I had around ten articles on that website back then, including a review on a high-end product that was already available on Amazon, but I wanted to join the merchant's affiliate program that was run by ShareASale.

Especially that the merchant offers a 10% commission, while Amazon's pays only 3%, and despite the lower price on the merchant's website, I still can make a higher commission per sale because of the 3 times hire commission, and the lower price with the merchant's money back guarantee would mostly increase the conversion rate.

So, I created an email using the domain of my website, which can be done in one minute thanks to the email platform here at WA, I applied again to ShareASale with this email, provided my new website, what merchant and exact product I want to promote, how I intend to promote it, and why my website will be valuable to that merchant, and within less than 48 hours, my application to join ShareASale was approved.

Then I applied to the merchant themselves with the same details, and they approved my application immediately.

Summary: If you want to increase your chances of getting approve as an affiliate on Share A Sale, have a clean website with a brandable domain name and some quality content, apply using a professional email and be specific about the merchants and products you want to promote, and how do you entend to promote them.

It is preferred to NOT include the PPC method when you are asked about how do intend to drive traffic, as they might think that you would be bidding on branded keywords, which is unacceptable by most merchants.

Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin

When I applied to ShareASale the second time, I wasn't getting any traffic on the new website back then, and I was too slow in creating content on that website, because I started another website in a different niche at the same time (Please, DON'T do that!), in addition to my original bootcamp website in the MMO space.

That made my content creation process very slow and inefficient, and instead of creating at least 20 articles per month on this one website, I probaly wasn't creating less than 15 articles in total on the three websites together.

This made it difficult to stay consistent, which didn't allow me to get serious impressions on Google until I decided to fully focus on this website, and then the impressions' stats in Google's Search Console started to climb up.

Summary: Pick one battle/site, and keep working consistently providing high quality content like the one you learn to create here at WA, and Google will love your site.

However, this sale didn't come from Google's traffic, which leads us to the third lesson:

Don't Ignore Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Others

This is one of the lessons you will learn in the fifth level of the OEC training here at Wealthy Affiliate, but it is a very important one.

I'm still getting little traffic to this new website, and most of it comes from Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.

I got ranknings there because I submitted my website to the Bing Webmaster Tools as taught in this lesson, while many other website owners ignore doing so thinking that the traffic coming from these search engines is insignificant.

And that creates more room for me, and for other fellow WA members who don't ignore these search engines.

Not to mention that many people who use these search engines, especially Bing, are actually older people who use the desktop Edge browser because they probably find it difficult to install Google Chrome.

And Edge comes with Bing as a default search engine.

These people have some money to spend, and they use the desktop screen to look for stuff to buy because it is much more convenient for them.

Summary: Listen to Kyle and Jay when they tell you NOT to ignore Bing, Yahoo, and others.

MMO Is NOT Everything

Making money in the Make-Money-Online related niches is not the only way to generate affiliate commissions, and trust me, it is not the most profitable.

I have been working on my MMO site for more than three years, and the different niches related to this field are very competitive, and it takes lots of content, and most important, experience in niche refining your niche and finding keywords, if you want to succeed there.

It was a mistake that I started with that site when I was still a beginner in affiliate marketing and blogging.

I did all the mistakes you can imagine with that website, from choosing a long 4-word domain name, to going braod in keywords and chasing multiple categories, to getting frustrated and not creating content consistently because it was very difficult to rank and get traffic, ....etc.

Yes, I made some good money with it, but I felt like it was going to be much better and more rewarding to direct my energy somewhere else where there's much less competition than this space.

besides, writing reviews about all the trash products in the MMO industry was really toxic and made me feel sick with every sales video I watch for those scams.

That's why I decided to change my direction into something not related to making money online, and from what I can see so far, espeically after I have finally focused on this one site, there are much more keyowrds with much less competition and more traffic volume in other niches than it is with the MMO niche.

And despite the low percentage of commissions on physical products, you can still make more money bacause of the traffic volume, and because it is easier to sell tangible products to normal people looking for then, than it is to sell an online course for people trying to make money, with all the noise in the MMO space.

But even if I wanted to sell digital products in my niche and get higher commissions, it would still be possible as there are courses and digital tools in almost any niche.

Summary: If you haven't started your first site, it is better to choose something different from IM-MMO.

And if you already have your website in that field, and still can't figure it out, don't be afraid to change your direction with the lessons you learned so far.

I hope these four lessons where helpful to you and learning how to get approved on ShareASale and make commissions even with a new website.

If you have any question, please, leave it below and I will be happy to help you out :)