Gone are the days of flat file manipulation and sharing 4th click revenue… Datafeedr is here. HURRAY!

Datafeedr is a slick new solution by Stefan Everaet and Eric Busch for WordPress bloggers who want to easily incorporate merchant product datafeeds into their blogs.

Features include:

• You’ll never have to deal with raw datafeed files again – HURRAY! Datafeedr has eliminated the technical hurdles for converting raw datafeed files into webpages. Just pointing and clicking is all what is needed.
• You won’t have to rely on supplied merchant datafeed categories (some were very VERY sloppy – if they existed at all). Now you can create your own store categories and subcategories.
• You can add search for and choose exactly which products you want to add to your store..
• When you ‘subscribe’ to a specific search, existing products will automatically be updated and new products meeting the search criteria will be added to your product list.
• You can combine products from different merchants across different networks in one store.
• Currently, there are products available from Shareasale, CJ, Linkshare, Netshops, Bridaluxe, as well as Shareasale coupons and deals. Plans include adding Affiliate Window, Commission Monster and PepperJam.
• Individual products can be embedded in blog posts.
• There’s also a drip feed option… so you can post a product (or two or three) per day and send those out via feed to your subscribers.

Stefan and Eric have posted a very good video on the homepage showing how the setup process works and detailed video tutorials are available to help you set up your own affiliate store using Datafeedr.

Subscription plans for this service are available starting at $27 per month.

I highly recommend that you watch the video so you can see for yourself what a slick operation Datafeedr is. Personally, I LOVE it!

Given up as an eBay seller? Think eBay affiliate!
I did some selling back on eBay way back when I was dabbling in ALL ways to make money online. Unfortunately, I found it tedious to write listing descriptions, and thought that packing and shipping the goods after a sale took too much of my time. Honestly, I was (and am) too lazy to sell hard goods on eBay.

Despite my laziness, I appreciate why so many do so well trading on eBay. It can be exciting, addictive and highly profitable. That explains why it’s such an extremely popular venture for SO many.

How many, you wonder?

Well, at the end of 2006, there were 222 million registered eBay users, and one source reports that of those, 79 million are ACTIVE eBay users.

Understanding its popularity, I didn’t want to leave the eBay scene behind entirely when I traded in my seller’s hat. I decided to stay in the game by purchasing and reselling an infoproduct package of online auction tutorials.

When I started selling that package, I signed up as an eBay affiliate and placed the link on the site to make a few bucks from people that visited the site but did not buy the ebooks. To my amazement, there were many months when commissions from the eBay registrations and bids through that affiliate link amounted to MORE than the value of the ebooks sold.

Here’s how that happened.

As an eBay affiliate, you earn $25 to $35 for every new active user you send to eBay through a registration link. Plus, you get 50% to 75% of eBay revenue on successful transactions.

eBay’s compensation structure is depicted in the 2 graphics below.

eBay Affiliate Success Stories

Many eBay affiliates earn over 100 G’s every month – well over a million bucks per year and eBay’s top 100 affiliates average nearly 25 grand each month.

There used to be snippets of 3 success stories featured on the eBay affiliate site. They included RollingStone.com which had incorporated over 7,000 Editor Kits throughout their Web site; Chris Bowler who was averaging over $7500 in eBay commissions per month and Ravenwood Marketing which had become a top-10 affiliate using paid search campaigns.

Note: According to the eBay affiliate agreement, affiliates are no longer compensated “for paid search traffic purchased from Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, nor from any of their content networks, such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds, if it is linked directly to the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains (not “Commission Earning Activity”)“.

Tools for eBay Affiliates

eBay offers a number of different tools for use by its affiliates. I however really like “Build a Niche Store” which was developed by Kelvin and Adam Firminger, and have incorporated its functionality directly into my travel blog.

The program allows users to post eBay listings from categories that they choose. For example, my site returns Airline, Cruises, Lodging, Luggage, Vacation Packages and Other Travel listings as you’ll see listed in the right-hand naviation under the eBay logo and Store Categories.

The categories expand once selected. For example, the Luggage link expands to include Backpacks, Business Cases, Carry-ons, Duffle Bags, Garment Bags, Sets, Suitcases, and Other Luggage.

When a visitor either buys through one of those links or registers and becomes an active eBay user, I earn a commission.

To learn more about this very reasonably priced software, please visit the “Build a Niche Store Website“.

Building an affiliate web site that sells between 5 and 20 products is relatively quick and easy to do. An experienced webmaster could build a site like 101Date.com in a weekend. If it took a week or even a month to build, that’s a minor investment in a site that will reap rewards for years to come. But how long would it take to build a site that promotes THOUSANDS of products such as magazines, garden items, posters, t-shirts or lingerie?

Or, what if you want to promote multiple merchants that carry products in the same niche?

The answer is simple – incorporate merchant product datafeeds.

DataFeed Format and Content

Merchants provide datafeeds to affiliates either as ‘flat file’ spreadsheet downloads or via FTP. Datafeed spreadsheets are typically available free of charge to affiliates. FTP access however often requires approval from the merchant as it often costs them money for the network to activate each affiliate’s access. Therefore, be specific as to how and where you plan to use the datafeed when you apply for access.

A product datafeed typically lists product names along with their categories and subcategories, descriptions, coded affiliate links, product graphic image URL’s, prices and even applicable keywords or tags.

Here is a screenshot of the Nature Hills Nursery datafeed (text file) that I downloaded from Shareasale.

Looks pretty ugly, eh?

So, how do you turn THAT ugliness into something that looks as good as the first screenshot of my Travel Magazines page above?

You need a datafeed processing service or software.

These services range from javascript snippet generation, to software loaded on your computer, to software you upload to your site and completely third-party solutions. Some require constant feed maintenance (keep downloading / uploading the new feed or regenerating the script. They also range in price from free (not really — you give up commissions with some of them) to paid services for as little as $5.99 per month.

Read more about Affiliate Datafeed Integration Software and Services now to find out which I MOST highly recommend. Hint: It’s the easiest one to use.