Higher Merchant fees for shareasale?

setup fee of $350 + minimums

[wingslevel]

I had checked out shareasale in the fall and was attracted by the low fees and no minimums - seemed like the perfect low risk way for a merchant to try out AM.

After a busy christmas season, I finally got around to setting up my merchant account - only to realize that there is a $350 "setup fee" plus a $100 initial deposit. After that, there will be $25 monthly minimums.

From memory the setup fee was something like 125 or 150 and the initial deposit was 50 - I am pretty sure that there was no monthly minimum (which is why I liked SAS vs CJ).

Thats quite a huge change for them - I am reconsidering....

Any thoughts?

[skibum]

That is still pretty cheap for a network affiliate program. Doubt that there is much else out there that is cheaper and has any kind of traction among affiliates.

[SeanW]

$25 monthly minimums.

Assuming a 10% commission, this means that you're worried about not getting $250 a month in sales... Is this the case?

Sean

[wingslevel]

Actually, if I am calculating this correctly, I would need $1,250 a month in sales:

Sales = $1,250.00

Aff payout = $125.00

Shareasale Payout (20% of aff payout) = $25.00

Now this is a smaller site which only does about $10,000 per month, so we'll need to generate about 12% of our sales through the aff channel to meet the minimum.

I guess what was so attractive about SAS to me before was that we could just set up a program and see how it did - now, with the bigger upfront fee and the minimum, I feel like we are making a commitment and we'll have to allocate resources to recruiting affs etc.

[ezwebdesign]

Shareasale did raise their prices and it is still the best network for the price. I run a very small program and hope we are grand fathered in on the minimums. We have 300 affiliates and lucky to get 5 or 6 sales a months. We have only one product and we have 2 or 3 aff's that make sales. the 90/10 rules does not apply, more like 99/1 (1% account for 99% of our sales)

[gamiziuk]

As a webmaster/publisher, believe me, ShareASale is my favorite network. They give the webmasters great tools to implement merchant links. This is especially true if you submit a DATABASE of your products. I have better success with ShareASale than with Linkshare or CJ.

I highly recommend ShareASale. (No I do not work for them - just an affiliate member)

[SoleDrag]

Wings

Your math is off... Sean is right. We are a Shareasale Merchant and we wouldnt have joined the program with your math. :-)

[wingslevel]

cool, so what you guys are saying is that the $25 minimum applies to total commisions, not the SAS portion?

[Dan Grossman]

Quote from the pricing page: "In a given month, if your account does not generate a minimum of $25 in fees to ShareASale, your account will be charged the difference."

This pretty clearly says the minimum is in fees, not sales. So the calculations were correct.

[vik_c]

..we'll need to generate about 12% of our sales through the aff channel to meet the minimum.

This is a very conservative target. Many online businesses get the bulk of their sales through affiliates.