ShareASale Product Datafeeds for Affiliates and Merchants

ShareASale Product Datafeed for Affiliates
ShareASale Product Datafeed for Merchants
ShareASale Product Datafeed for Merchants Column Specifications
ShareASale Product Categories and Sub Categories

ShareASale Product Datafeed for Affiliates

Return to Network Specific Implementation Guides and Documentations or to Affiliate Datafeeds Resources.

ShareASale is an affiliate network in the United States for small to medium size advertisers. ShareASale is the only network in the United States that does not allow affiliates to utilize desktop software to promote advertiser offers (such as browser toolbars and similar tools). ShareASale provides product data feeds via FTP to affiliates free of charge, but the advertiser has to enable feed access to affiliates manually and pay a nominal $1 activation fee per affiliate (one-time fee). The product data feed provided by ShareASale has the following format and structure:

Format: Delimited
Column Delimiter: Pipe/Vertical Bar
Row Delimited: CR + LF (Windows Line Break)
Text Qualifier: None

Notes:
Columns in red color are new.
The Information for a product will be in a single line. The Line break in the example was only added for display purposes. The Download via Web Interface has the Header Row included and the (your) Affiliate ID is already encoded in the Link. The Feeds via FTP do not have the Header Row. Also the Links require the replacement of the string: YOURUSERID with the (your) ShareASale Affiliate ID.

To learn about the meaning of the columns in the feed, have a look at the Feed Definition for Merchants below.
It is very similar to the feed provided to Affiliates, because it is basically the basis for the Affiliate Datafeed.

There are three ways to access datafeeds through ShareASale.com.
1. File Download via the ShareASale.com Website
2. FTP Download via the ShareASale FTP Server
3. Real Time XML feed for Premier Affiliates

Flat File Download

Datafeed flies can be downloaded in a pipe separated format (|) from the ShareASale website.
Click the "Datafeeds Available" page to download files.

FTP Datafeeds

Datafeeds are available from the ShaerASale.com FTP server. You will need approval from each merchant partner to access the datafeed via FTP. The FTP server is at:

Address: datafeeds.shareasale.com
Port: 21
Username: Your ShareASale Username
Password: Your ShareASale Password

You can request access from the Datafeeds Available page and view your current approvals from the FTP Access for Datafeeds page.

You have to apply for FTP Access for each Merchant individually. Each activation (per Affiliate Account) cost the Merchant $1. Tip: If you apply for Feed access via FTP, explain why you need it and what you want to do with it. It helps to get approved.

Download Automation and DB Import

Downloading and processing datafeeds is a pain that can be automated.

Check out the free PHP and MySQL database automation script by Shawn "mobilebadboy" Kerr to ftp download feeds and import them into MySQL automatically on a frequent basis.

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ShareASale Product Datafeed for Merchants

Return to Network Specific Implementation Guides and Documentations or to Affiliate Datafeeds Resources.
You have the option to maintain Products manually via the Web Interface by default.

Please contact ShareASale via Email to enable automatic/sheduled uploads of your Product Datafeed, if you require it. The Datefeed file that needs to be sent to ShareASale has the following specifications.

CSV (Comma Separated Values) File = Comma Delimited text file
- with Windows line breaks (CR LF/chr(13)+chr(10)) as Row Delimited
- and Double Quotes (") as Text Qualifier.
The first column has to contain the column header labels.

It has to look like this (columns in red color are new):

"SKU","Name","URL to product","Price","Retail Price","URL to image",
"URL to thumbnail image","Commission","Category","SubCategory","Description",
"SearchTerms","Status","Your MerchantID", "Custom 1", "Custom 2", "Custom 3",
"Custom 4", "Custom 5","Manufacturer","PartNumber","MerchantCategory",
"MerchantSubcategory","ShortDescription","ISBN","UPC"

Please note that each product should be on one line, no line breaks (note that there are line breaks in this example for readability reasons).

An Example:

"1183-4888","Shareasale.com Product 1",
"http://www.shareasale.com","199.00","500.00","http://www.shareasale.com/image1.gif",
"http://www.shareasale.com/image2.gif","100.00","4","32","This is a description of the product",
"Listing some search terms here","instock","47","Custom Field","Custom Field","Custom Field",
"Custom Field","Custom Field","Producer Inc.","PROD123","Stuff",
"Stuff for Buffs","This is a short product description.","978-0-00000-000-0","123456789012"

The Pipe character (|) is a reserved character and should not appear anywhere in your file.
Any double quotes in your data (") should be escaped by doubling them. For example, the product name

Frame, 13" square Would be written: "SKU","Frame, 13"" square","Product URL" ...

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ShareASale Product Datafeed for Merchants Column Specifications

Return to Network Specific Implementation Guides and Documentations or to Affiliate Datafeeds Resources.

#	Name	Data Type	Max Length	Null Value Allowed	Comments
1	SKU	Text	255	No	Mandatory Unique Value
2	Name	Text	255	Yes	Product Name
3	URL	URL	255	No	Direct URL to the product
4	Price	Numeric	-	No	Product Price, numeric with 2 decimal places e.g. 100.99, without the currency name, code or symbol
5	RetailPrice	Numeric	-	Yes	"Retail" or "List" price, numeric with 2 decimal places e.g. 199.99, without the currency name, code or symbol
6	Full Image	URL	255	Yes	URL to product full size image
7	Thumbnail Image	URL	255	Yes	URL to product thumbnail image
8	Commission	Float	-	Yes	Dollar amount of product commission (do not enter in a commission percentage). This will not affect the tracking or the actual commission rewarded on the sale, and is only for a quick reference for the affiliate.
9	Category	Integer	-	No	Product Category - see ShareASale defined category numbers below
10	Subcategory	Integer	-	No	Numeric Product Subcategory (1-3 digits in length)- see ShareASale defined subcategory numbers below
11	Description	Text	No limit	Yes	Product Description
12	Search Terms	Text	255	Yes	Comma separated list of product search terms
13	Status	Text	255	Yes	Stock Status. instock - Indicates an In Stock item backorder - Indicates an item on backorder cancelled - Indicates an item no longer offered soldout - Indicates an item that is sold out.
14	MerchantID	Integer	-	No	Your ShareASale MerchantID. You can find your Merchant ID in the top left corner of the ShareASale web interface for advertisers/merchants (login required).
15	Custom1	Text	255	Yes	Any extra data you would like to add and that help your affiliates. Which additional information could be useful to your affiliates depends on your niche or industry, such as product dimensions, weight, special delivery/shipping options, colors, product types, themes, styles, promotions, dates etc.
16	Custom2	Text	255	Yes	Any extra data you would like to add.
17	Custom3	Text	255	Yes	Any extra data you would like to add.
18	Custom4	Text	255	Yes	Any extra data you would like to add.
19	Custom5	Text	255	Yes	Any extra data you would like to add.
20	Manufacturer	Text	255	Yes	Name of the Product Manufacturer.
21	PartNumber	Text	255	Yes	This should be a manufacturer provided value that uniquely identifies this product. This could be a model number, part number, etc.
22	MerchantCategory	Text	255	Yes	Product Category Name
23	MerchantSubcategory	Text	255	Yes	Name of the Subcategory for the product.
24	ShortDescription	Text	255	Yes	Use for providing a short and highly descriptive product description without any HTML markup or formating. This discription is often used by affiliates for the display in product listings or in product widgets and show-case creators.
25	ISBN	Text	25	Yes	Applies to books, magazines and some other print publications only, the International Standard Book Number, short ISBN or ISBN13 (Bookland) for all publications after 1/1/2007. learn more ...
26	UPC	Text	25	Yes	Unique Product Code (UPC-A, 12 digits) used in the United States and Canada only; or better, the EAN-13 code (13 digits), which was implemented by the International Article Numbering Association (EAN) in Europe. UPC-A is a subset of EAN-13, which means that all UPC-A codes can be converted to EAN-13, but not the other way around. If neither EAN-13 or UPC-A is known, provide the shorter UPC-E (8 digits representation of UPC-A), if available.