On August 1st we will be implementing a change to the format of datafeeds hosted on ShareASale. These changes have been engineered so that they should only affect you if you want them to. Merchants will be able to continue sending old formats, and the fields will all be placed at the end of feeds so as to minimize impact to Affiliates.
Here is some specific information for both parties.
MERCHANTS:
ShareASale is releasing a new datafeed specification. This new specification will allow you to make more product data available to your affiliates. This new specification introduces 15 new data columns to the affiliates. To make use of these new columns, you will need to alter the datafeed file that you send to ShareASale. Please note that you can continue to send your datafeed updates in their existing format indefinitely. You only need to make a change if you wish to utilize the new data columns. The new datafeed format will be released to the affiliates on August 1st 2009, but you can begin sending the new format file anytime.
Highlights on the new feed include:
Quantity Discounts
Product Cross Selling
Additional Category Fields
Product Options (including the ability to change the base price based on a given option)
Complete details on the new specification can be found at:
http://www.shareasale.com/m-productmassupload.cfm
AFFILIATES:
The ShareASale datafeed specification will be changing on August 1st, 2009.
We will be adding 25 columns to the feed. Fifteen will be populated with new data and ten will be reserved for future use. This change may require you to update the procedure that you use to import ShareASale datafeeds.
Highlights include:
Merchant defined SKU value (unique)
Quantity Discounts
Product Cross Selling
Additional Category Fields
Product Options (including the ability to change the base price based on a given option)
The full and detailed specification can be found inside your Affiliate Interface in the Help Center @ http://www.shareasale.com/a-helpcenter.cfm?ID=39
Doug says
July 9, 2009 at 7:20 amThis is great, however what would be better from a data perspective is to some how require the merchants data conform to some sort of common format. For example a category column is only allowed to have one word or category.
R.Agi Sagita G says
July 12, 2009 at 2:26 pmI am currently running several websites that depends on shareasale datafeeds and page wizard.
Additional data to the feed especially the unique Merchant defined SKU value might help our customers to search a specific merchandize through search engine.
I’m looking forward to the new settings and thanks for the improvement.
Cheers
Agi
dmobile215 says
July 14, 2009 at 1:40 amI am having trouble setting up with this service as well I am not sure why but something is not adding up right now!
john says
July 15, 2009 at 3:27 pm“Additional Category Fields” this is what i am waiting for.great job guys.thanks.
Eddie Drye says
July 28, 2009 at 7:26 pmAt Avoli.com we are excited about the new fields HOWEVER. I think it’s more important to enforce uniformity among feeds. Data integrity, required fields, structured dependable column values such as Brand, Mfg. Merchant ProductID’s that stay consistent on which products they point to, thus making featured product selection an issue. Fixing these datafeed issues would ensure better shopping experiences. And PLEASE give affiliates a way to download banners not by merchant but by ALL merchants by size. This would allow for automated banner management which is a HUGE part of any affiliates time, thus giving affiliates more time to work on creatives etc.
We love ShareASale!
Rapee says
July 29, 2009 at 6:54 amThank you for your news update. I need to modify my procedure. I still wait for api request ontime.
Douw says
August 3, 2009 at 11:59 amGreat stuff hope to be hearing more from you in the future
Hassan Jawaid says
August 29, 2009 at 6:39 amThank You GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Vefhýsing says
September 1, 2009 at 12:15 pmThank you. Good job!
Tissa says
January 2, 2011 at 9:40 amThanks for the heads up.