Do most affiliates here use datafeeds? If not, do you update by hand every new price and information? Obviously this applies more to affiliates that have more than a few products on a site. Looking to see how others do things. Thanks, brandon
I use datafeeds and use automatically updating datafeed scripts. There is no good off the shelf solution, you need to write your own. It is important to make your pages unique to avoid dupe content filters. So, I add in some fields to the database scripting to randomly change product titles and descriptions. Also, mix up feeds from different merchants on your site so you are not just mirroring the merchant site.
I've been using datafeeds for a while. I'd don't manually update prices though. I download feeds, convert them to mySQL using mySQLyog Enterprise, export, then overwrite on the server. I need to fine tune this process. Ideally, I'd like to setup a cron job to download the raw .txt file and repopulate the database in the wee hours of the morning. It's one of those things on my plate to attempt. Ideally, finding a tool that will take the .txt tab/comma separated datafeeds in getting them into mySQL format is what you want. I have one php page that displays categories and product listings, then another that displays the actual product. Basically two pages to drive a datafeed site, not including contact and sitemap.
It really depends on what you want With a really detailed description I could give you an approxomation.
Well, wouldn't you know I just posted it on php-freelancers earlier http://www.php-freelancers.com/index.php?a=project&pid=2090&last=2091&next=2085& Please respond here first though.
I am reviewing some prorgrams that will make things easier for datafeeders and also help with duplicate content issues. Also looking at some options for converting feeds to RSS so they can be auto-updated dynamically yet still show spiderable HTML. Have a friend working on one program and the others I am trying to eval. Will probably build a page about all the tools when I am done. I'm not saying to wait for any of my tools. Go ahead and get a programmer to do what you need to do custom. These will be tools that enhance feeds and make them easier to update - they won't necessarily build a datafeed site from scratch. A lot of people I know just use Web Merge, tweak their own templates and content to make it unique, cron jobs to update. Is WM no longer a viable feed option?
I use both, affiliate with and without datafeeds. The main benefit to using an affiliate w/o a datafeed is that less affiliates will have the same content b/c it takes so much more work. I can also write a script to spider the affiliate's site (in some cases) and automatically check for pricing changes and update them. Affiliates with datafeeds are obviously easier to start and update. But alot of times they use crappy names, titles, etc and you want to change them anyway...