Affiliates – you probably know all about banners, text links, and other traditional creatives, but what is this business about “datafeeds” everyone is talking about? What are they, and how are they useful?
A datafeed is simply a list your merchants provided of their products, in a standardized format. Each row is a product, and columns are information about them. Depending on the merchant, it can be updated as often as every day.
Basic Tips: How do you find Product Datafeeds in ShareASale?
1. Are you looking for products from one of your existing Merchants? If yes, type in said Merchant’s name in the Search Box (upper right hand corner of your account). Then click “Get Links”. Now simply click on the “Datafeed Products” Tab.
2. Are you looking for specific products, regardless of the specific Merchant? If yes, head over to the Merchant Tab >> Search for Merchants. Simply type in the product you are looking for, select the radio button for “Product” and click search.
3. Do you want to create something that looks like an actual shopping page or multi product display page? If yes, you’ll want to check out ShareASale’s Make-A-Page, under the Tools Tab >> Make A Page.
Advanced Tips: What tools are available for more tech-savvy Affiliates?
1. Do you want to see how detailed or robust a Merchant’s Datafeed is? Head over to the Merchants Tab >> View Merchants with Datafeeds. You can see which Merchants have datafeeds and how much detail they’ve added about each product, i.e. did that book Merchant include ISBN’s? Download the .csv file so you can see the full feed.
2. Interested in using scripts that connect with our API to search for products or Merchants? No problem! You can use either the Product Search API or the Merchant Search by Product API.
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API Product Search | ShareASale BlogAlthough datafeeds provide a great way for Merchants and Affiliates to sync up product information, what about querying for specific products at any time? The getProducts API allows you to do just that without downloading and parsing large files, or having FTP access.
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Merchant Search by Product API | ShareASale BlogIn the ShareASale interface, you may be familiar with our Baskets feature to quickly find Merchants and products to save for later. What about automating this process?
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3. Want to download datafeeds more efficiently? Our ShareASale FTP server lets you download each merchant feed file via FTP, which is great for automating syncing updates with your database. Head over to the Links Tab >> FTP Access for Datafeeds
yuval says
July 3, 2014 at 2:37 amhi
I’m trying to apply for multiple programs FTP access. the page instructs to
“To apply for multiple programs FTP Access – simply check the box next to the Merchant feed, and submit the form below.”
looked everywhere can’t find any checkbox anywhere .
please help!
Yuval
DataFeedBeginner says
August 19, 2015 at 7:36 amWhat is the alternative to having a feed? I mean how do you get your data to your affiliates, webshops, etc. ?
Brian Littleton says
August 19, 2015 at 1:43 pmThere really is no alternative – the best way to do this is to provide a datafeed.