Datafeed Requirements

Overview

In a nutshell, any Affiliate that wants to feature a product on their page or through our content tools will be looking for programs with a Datafeed. This page contains the instructions for building your Datafeed which you can upload directly through the interface.

A Datafeed allows Merchants to provide lists of products to their ShareASale Affiliates. They use this to promote individual products rather than just banners, text links, or coupons/deals and these links tend to be some of the highest converting. The product datafeed is important because it powers our product API, Make-a-Page, Product Showcase, Product Discovery Bookmarklet, and many other Affiliate tools.
It also provides Merchants with the ability to manage multiple stores using StoresConnect and Product Level Commission rates as additional options.

Datafeed Format & Requirements

There are 6 mandatory fields that are required in every datafeed file for each product listed. This data must be filled in their designated columns as listed below.

The six required fields are:

• SKU (column A) - must be unique, duplicate SKU's will be removed
• URL to Product (column C)
• Price (column D)
• Category (column I) - must correspond to the ShareASale numeric options listed below the datafeed specifications table
• Subcategory (column J) - must correspond to the ShareASale numeric options listed below the datafeed specifications table
• Your Merchant ID (column N)

Datafeed Requirements and fill-out Template: https://account.shareasale.com/m-productmassupload.cfm

Category Reference Numbers and a download-able fill out Template are listed at the bottom of this article.

You should download the example template from the above link and populate the columns based fields listed above.

Please note that although there are only 6 mandatory columns where data must be populated, all columns must be represented in the file and in the specified order. So, even if a column allows a Null(blank) value, the column must still be included in your CSV file and can be treated as blank space if you choose to not enter any data in the field. Your file must be a .CSV and then zipped for processing.

The table below details the format of the datafeed spreadsheet. All columns must be included, but most can be left empty if the data is not available or relevant. Mandatory columns are shown in Yellow.

Once your datafeed has been created and filled out that is when it is ready for uploading to the ShareASale interface.

Your file must be a .CSV and then zipped for processing. Please note, Excel can save a file into the .csv format for you. You need only open your file --> select SAVE AS --> select FILE TYPE .csv --> hit SAVE.

General Pointers

Product SKU - must be unique. These are used as identifiers in our system, so any duplicated will be rejected. If you are utilizing StoresConnect, SKUs will still need to be unique per store.

Merchant ID – Should be the same for all products. Can be found in the top left corner of your ShareASale account.

Mandatory Columns – Some datafeed columns are mandatory because of how they work within ShareASale. These are shown in Yellow in the table above.

Valid Category / Subcategory – These columns must be populated with numerical codes(number codes). Text category tags are not permitted. The number codes can be found at the bottom of this document.

No Pipe Characters – “|” Characters are not permitted and will be scrubbed.

Text Escaping – Any sections with HTML or text sections (Description, Short Description) will need to have any special characters such as commas escaped by adding “ “ around the content of the cell. Quotations themselves can be escaped by doubling them:
…,”This is a fancy, pretty 12”” bracelet!”,…