November 11, 2008
Datafeeds Done Right, Finally.
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Until recently, in most affiliate networks, getting a product datafeed set up involved contacting a human being and that human being going through some manual process to set up each merchant’s datafeed for the affiliate in question.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
It was one of those painstakingly slow processes for the affiliate that caused this one to not even bother in many cases.
A ton has changed in 2008 on this front. Let’s take a look at some of the bigger affiliate networks and how they’ve got it right, as well as some things that I think they could improve on.
ShareASale
ShareASale probably had the most well-automated process the earliest out of the major networks. There is an application and approval process to get each feed, but once the merchant approves, access to the feed is prompt and automated. You access your feeds individually via FTP. A downside is that the feeds are named with the SAS merchant ID, but it can be a process to dig into the SAS interface to see the IDs. A significant improvement would be to provide me with a list of all the merchants I am approved for datafeeds with their IDs. Here’s the information for a particular merchant that offers feeds. You check the box to apply for access.
One of the really great features is that SAS is a preview of the product datafeed. This saves a lot of time in evaluating merchant datafeeds:
Linkshare
Linkshare long had the most painful datafeed process. In order to get access to datafeeds in the first place, you had to pay a $250 fee or have generated some large amount of commissions for a few months. I call this a tire-kicker fee. Keeps out the riff-raff. I believe this practice keeps out a lot more than the tire-kickers. I’m honestly not sure if this fee is in place. Once you had access, getting individual feeds meant emailing the request to a special address. A few days later it would be set up by a support person.
They’ve come a long way with their interface, and datafeed management rose along with that tide. They now have a fully automated interface for requesting access to feeds (which must be approved per merchant). Once approved, feeds appear within a day in your FTP account.
One pretty major pain is the Linkshare channels. If you want to track across more than one website in LS, you must add channels. They way they implemented this is basically parallel views per website. This carries through to applying to merchants and getting product feeds. So if I want to use one merchant’s feed on three different sites, that’s three applications and three different feeds, managed through three interfaces. I cannot imagine trying to manage a dozen websites through the Linkshare interface.
Linkshare “shares” with ShareASale the problem with using merchant Ids for the datafeed file names and providing no concise list of what those IDs are. Problem could be solved by just putting the IDs right there on the feed management page.
Google Affiliate Network
Google Affiliate Network (Performics at the time) rivaled Linkshare in painful datafeed setup process. However, they are the latest to the scene with a really nice datafeed management interface.
GAN is one of the only networks that don’t require separate approval for datafeed access. This is a nice progressive move that I hope other networks start to follow. I’d like to think that our industry has matured enough such that an extra level of security is not required on access to datafeeds. If a publisher can get into a network, and then into an affiliate program, they should have passed enough tests to be entrusted with product data.
While most networks post datafeeds to their own FTP site, GAN pushes the datafeeds out to your own server. To do this, you give them access to an FTP server and account right in the interface.
Here you can see the interface. You add feeds from available programs on the right and they appear on the left. Once selected, the feed will be sent to your FTP server on the next scheduled transfer. Also note that you can select how you want the datafeeds to be named, with the merchant name or the ID. Using the merchant name causes problems with spaces and other characters, so I use the ID. But notice that the merchant ID is listed right here in the interface. Perfect.
PepperjamNetwork
Pepperjam took on product datafeeds as one of the areas that they wanted to get right and they interviewed a lot of people (including me) while they were forming their requirements. The datafeed interface at PJN is simple and effective. You select the merchants you want to get in a datafeed, it can be one, several, or all feeds. They provide you with a simple url to fetch this data.
You can run through this process multiple times to get multiple feeds that offer different mixes of merchants.
This interface offers some nice data, including the number of products and date last updated.
The feed itself is overstuffed with fields for data, including technical specifications. Good idea, but I think that they’ll find that in practice that very few merchants will provide that level of data.
Converseon
Converseon? That’s right. This boutique network gets honorable mention because they built a kick-ass product datafeed management system a long time ago, and is definitely worth mentioning.
They’ve got an entire website devoted to the datafeed and storefront creation for their clients, ConverseonFeeds.com.
Their datafeed process is combined with a storefront generator, as you can see here. I never use storefronts, so my focus is on the datafeed delivery mechanisms, raw text and a nice webservices API delivery of product and coupon data:
What’s particularly nice is that you can narrow feeds down into categories, or specific search criteria.
Once you settle on the content, you get a URL to fetch the data using http.
Commission Junction
I cannot make a post about the major affiliate networks without including Commission Junction, else you’d be at this point thinking “What about CJ?”
Unfortunately, they don’t offer a self-service management interface for feeds. They’ve had a similar policy to Linkshare (high performance or a fee) for gaining access to feeds.
Once set up, it requires a support call to get feeds added and removed from the datafeed download. They do offer a number of great configuration options. I also know that they’ve got a nice internal interface for configuring feeds for publishers. Hopefully they’re working on exposing this in the affiliate interface.
Give it another look…
If you’re like me, you may have given up on datafeeds in certain affiliate networks long ago and never looked back. A lot has changed this year with product datafeeds. I’d encourage you to go back and take another look.
i think linkshare still charges for the option of feeds or did they change it? do you know whats the situation now?
Scott,
Thanks for the mention and also for assisting Pepperjam Network with building our next gen product feed technology Pepperjam Store Builder.
Just an FYI - the product feed section of PJN you refer to above is officially being replaced by Pepperjam Store Builder. The new PJN Store Builder allows affiliates to not only download flat files like those shown above, but also gives the option of manipulating those feeds prior to the download (i.e. by merchant, category, keyword).
Finally, with PJN Store Buider the affiliate has the option of generating a dynamic feed, which allows them to automatically create a customized storefront widget on their site.
All the above takes less than 60 seconds and was designed to be easy enough for beginners, as well as professional product feed wizards like yourself.
Thanks,
Kris
Sorry Kris, I missed that the store builder was replacing the feeds.
I checked it out, but not being a big store builder guy, I admit my look was cursory.
I really don't know for sure.
Last I looked at the help text not too long ago (within the past few months) I think it talked about the fees still.
I wish CJ comes up with the best feed system.
Scott, have you looked at our feeds? And the feed distribution/subscription processes? We actually allowed 100% customization (from data format to column structure) of feed subscriptions over three years ago. You should check it out and report back. Gary M
Hi Gary. No, I haven't taken a look at your feeds as we don't promote any of your merchants. It's nothing personal, we're VERY niche focused, so it can be tough for us to find a match in all networks.
Get a costume merchant, for example, and we can become very active, as Kris will attest to. (Well of course he wouldn't without my permission. That wouldn't be appropriate.)
Anyway, I apologize for not getting that far for this already long post. It looks like I owe PJN another look and I'll take a look at yours as well.
Scott, I understand. Thanks for the follow-up. Just note that you'll need to be active in at least one program to have standardized access to the tools and API. Drop me a line if you want any suggestions on how to activate for review/demo purposes.. I think you'll dig the configuration and subscription entry process (which allows you to go back and edit/modify any feed subscription). GM
they are the best already imho http://webservices.cj.com/
The APIs are very good to have, but they don't replace product feeds.
This is really informative and engaging. Thanks for the heads up on data feeds. The valuable informations are best blogged here.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat, ha, gotta love it. Thanks for the great post.
Betsy Buchanan
Wow, a nice article. Thank your for giving us many informations about affiliate networks and datafeeds. I am a newbie, so this kind of things is very useful for me.
Scott,
The LinkShare is still charging affiliates $250 for the datafeed access:
<a href=”http://helpcenter.linkshare.com/publisher/questions.php?questionid=62″>http://helpcenter.linkshare.com/publisher/quest…
Sorry,
I did not mean to mess up the above link.
no problem, but you know with Disqus you can edit your comments. (Though I cannot edit your comments.)
Scott,
I am not sure what I can do to edit it. All I did was to copy and paste the link, no HTML formating just straight copy and paste if you know what I mean. When I click “edit” it shows me just that- a link without any html tags….
Tried to edit it. Evidently once a comment has a reply you no longer are able to edit the comment. Sent you an e-mail with screenshot.
ok vlad, seems that disqus is trying to do something with the long URL to shorten it. I'll drop those guys a note.
Thanks for the post. This is really helpful. I can imagine how painful it is with Linkshare. Those requirement are “indirect” payments to them to just get everything done. It is not easy to get the data feed done.
It was only a matter of time before someone got ti right! And Kudos to them for being the ones!
Thanks for presenting these services but I still can not see anybody coming close to CJ, the flexibility they provide in their URLs and the great SID variable that you can use pass some dynamic content to your report make tracking way more effective than the other platforms, however those features might not be interesting enough if you do not have a custom tracking mechanism on your website.
Thanks for great article
Just was working with my LinkShare…
As you mentioned, for better tracking you need to create a separate channel. So I did. However after applying to a merchant I was denied…
Now the fun part is that in one of the channels I am approved with this merchant. Any idea why this took place and how to avoid it???
Thanks for the great article in you blog! More power to you.
The data feed information is very useful in conjunction with network marketing, and other business endeavours.
A great tool to use, and a very informative piece. Thanks
interesting topic here. Very informative