November 22, 2008
LinkShare Web Services Explained, Affiliate Geeks Rejoice
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Nice post from Ian Rosenwach at Linkshare about what is otherwise their much un-talked about Web Services.
LinkShare Web Services Explained | LinkShare Blog: “Web services are especially useful for technically savvy programmers who’d like to integrate LinkShare tracking links directly into their websites. For example, social shopping sites have been especially effective in allowing their users to customize their pages and profiles, then integrating tracking links on-the-fly.”
This is exactly how we use their web services, though it seems to be serious overkill for what can be such a simple thing, i.e., take a link and put the url on the end of it, like you can at ShareASale and CJ. Yes, not all merchants support deep linking, but we can work that out. Networks should really stop trying to save us from ourselves.
Anyway, good for Linkshare for providing a number of features via web services. It’s really too bad that the networks go virtually unrewarded for developing them.
I don’t know what’s more exciting, these Web Services from a network or the fact that a product manager from a network is writing about them on their blog.
Seriously, this is great Ian, keep it up!
Great article,
keep writing ,
i love your blog.
I wish I understood more about this type of technology. What is the purpose of this linkshare? I am just starting to learn the importance of deep linking as it relates to the SERPs. http://www.lapcfixer.com
@Robert:
Linkshare is a rather large affiliate network that acts as an intermediary between us (the affiliates) and a wide array of different merchants, most which are e-commerce versions of retail brick-and-mortar establishments from what I can tell. It's a nice setup to have all of these merchants under one virtual “roof”, but as an affiliate I have found it a bit overwhelming because you still have to apply for each merchant's affiliate program individually. Many of them will not accept you automatically, and they all seem to have different rules for who they accept, what their commissions are, etc.