As many of our Affiliates already know we offer several configuration options for tool subscriptions in AvantLink. By ‘subscription’ what I mean is that Affiliates can configure our Affiliate tools as saved campaigns which can be updated or modified even after the subscription campaigns are published to their site(s).
Although we offer choices of dynamic RSS, dynamic Javascript, dynamic Web Services and static HTML as subscription options, with this post I would like to focus specifically on our industry leading (and in fact industry only) Affiliate ID embedded RSS feeds. Below I am going to do my best to convey the benefits of using our Affiliate RSS feeds and I will also provide information on how Affiliates can publish any RSS feed as web page content (not just the RSS product or coupon feeds we offer through AvantLink).
First and foremost, in the context of this post, when I refer to Affiliate RSS feeds I’m talking about product-level detailed campaigns that deep link to corresponding merchant product detail pages. I am not referring to an RSS notification system for new promos, new merchants or company news (although, we have RSS feeds for these features, too!). I mean actual RSS feeds embedded with your Affiliate ID that can be published to your web pages and/or syndicated around the web. With these embedded RSS feeds each outbound link will hold your Affiliate ID and therefore set a cookie for respective merchants when someone clicks through.
AvantLink is the pioneer in Affiliate embedded RSS feed technology. We’ve been offering these advanced level tools from day one when we opened for business in October of 2005.
Oh and BTW, these RSS campaigns are 1) Spiderable by the search engines, and 2) DYNAMIC! This means that you can optimize a page around a merchant, product group or category, publish a relevant RSS feed and forget about it. The product content or promotional offers that output through RSS feeds are maintained from the merchant side. That is, if a merchant flags a text offer to be included in their Dynamic Coupon Feed, it shows up on your site as new, fresh, spiderable content. If a product drops out of a merchant’s datafeed or a sale price expires, it reflects in real time on your pages the same way. Oh yeah, did I mention this RSS content is spiderable? 😉
As far as publishing RSS feeds to web pages…no worries! For Affiliates who haven’t written their own script (or found a script on the web) to do this, we offer a sample script to make this possible. An added bonus is that this script may be used to publish content from any RSS feed you can find on the web, not just through the RSS feed you can configure and retrieve from AvantLink.
To clarify everything, I am posting specific examples of our various tools in action. Of course, this is with consent from an Affiliate. The site is BikeRackOutlet.com and it’s a sales platform dedicated to the RackAttack.com Affiliate program in AvantLink. This site perfectly showcases several of our dynamic (and spiderable) tools:
Product Display Builder Example:
http://www.bikerackoutlet.com/thule.php
(This page is optimized around ‘Thule Roof Mounts’ and all product detail content is both dynamic and visible to the search engines.)
Web Service Datafeed Client Example:
http://www.bikerackoutlet.com/ra/shop
(This datafeed is optimized around the RackAttack.com product line. The content is dynamic and spiderable, outputting through one template file that holds variables that deliver content through AvantLink on behalf of Rack Attack. Note specifically the internal redirects on the Buy Now links at the product detail level!)
Dynamic Coupon Feed Example:
http://www.bikerackoutlet.com
(See the ‘On Sale RSS Feed from RackAttack.com:’ below the fold on the homepage. This is a promotional feed managed by the merchant. As the merchant updates specific line-item offers, this Affiliate site will update in real time.)
Coupon Feed Syndication Example:
http://www.bikerackoutlet.com
(See the ‘Subscribe Now’ options for RSS readers above the actual feed itself. This gives the Affiliate’s customers the option of subscribing to the promotions RSS feed directly from the BikeRackOutlet site. Here’s the kicker. If a site visitor does in fact subscribe to the feed from that Affiliate site, the Affiliate’s tracking ID will be embedded on outbound links from the subscription! Note we offer subscription icons to popular RSS readers the same we way we offer banner campaigns.)
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OK I hope this information helps Affiliates understand the benefits of publishing dynamic and spiderable RSS product feeds to their sites. AvantLink is the only Affiliate network that offers Affiliate RSS technology to this extent.
If you would like more information (including the sample script and instructions) on how to publish RSS feeds to your sites drop me a line. I would be happy to send you the related files/scripts.
Happy converting!
Gary & AvantLink