David Fiske Affiliate marketing & web development musings from Fiske Towers

A few things have happened since I last posted a lecture.

Firstly, I have installed the price comparison software and that works great. The only problem is with the CSV and XML feeds from affiliate networks.

They are inconsistent so I am having to create my own product feed.

The problem with this, besides being time consuming, is that it is no longer a simple download procedure I need to follow to update the prices. I now need to manually check all the prices.
 
However, on a positive note, the feeds are now clean and work like a dream! They look very fancy and do exactly what I expected them to!

Retailers are also causing a problem. I highlighted Co-op Electrical Shop as a possible retailer but have since found that they do not sell Sat Nav systems. Also, dabs.com do not allow deep linking.

Deep linking means to link to a specific URL inside an affiliate link. Affiliate links look similar to: http://affiliatenetworksite.com/affiliateID=12/programID=21/siteID=121

Deep links would be more like: http://affiliatenetworksite.com/affiliateID=12/programID=21/siteID=121/url=www.url.com/123.php

So why is this a problem? Deep linking allows to link to a product summary page. A visitor will search my site for a system, finds one he likes and clicks on it. Without deep linking, they would just be taken to the home page. The visitor has to search all over again and probably loses interest. Deep linking allows me to link to the exact page of the system - the one with the purchase link!

So, there are less retailers to search amongst but I have only used Tradedoubler so far. I have about another dozen feeds to create so the next lecture should be tomorrow.