Affiliate Stores

Do you find yourself complaining that the data you get on your feed isn’t to the same standard that you see on the Vendor website?

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Following the release of Affilistore Enhanced 2.5, it was reported that some browsers revealed some need to revisit the CSS on the default theme.

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It has been in the pipeline for a while, but now Affilistore Enhanced is ready for release.

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Steve has now published an announcement on the changes between Affilistore 2.01 and 2.1 here. I reproduce his announcement below with my comments upon the changes in italics.

- Put content first in html
* done, files changed - index.php, style.css and index.tpl
This should help SEO and conversion as we see more relevant text on the search engine results

- change Single products page to say N/A when 0.00
* done, files changed - singleproducts.inc.php
Better, but I still don’t like suggesting that a price is ‘not applicable’. I prefer ‘POA’ - Price on Application. But you can edit this easily

- Add select all in admin search tags
* done, files changed - st.inc.php
A good move … allows you to bulk delete tags that are going nowhere fast

- Add save list, recently viewed and recent searches
* done, files changed - singleproducts.inc.php, products.inc.php, userhistory.inc.php, index.php and related tpl files
A really nice change to give links to the recent and saved products - I would like the option to show a thumbnail, but nonetheless a good feature

- Add text area to generated navigation pages
* content field added to affiliSt_categories, change to index.php and index.tpl and cd.inc.php
Another nice change, allowing you to add a text block at the top of each category page. I haven’t tried it out yet, but if it allows HTML, you might be able to include linked banners and other material.

- Fix content units
* done
Steve hasn’t gone in to detail, but I believe that this may be a fix related to a problem introduced in v2.01 whereby the link to merchant did not work as the wrong parameter was passed to the affiliate linking go.php script

- Fix product categories navigation to work when not using rewrote urls
* done, files changed - categories.inc.php
I didn’t use the non-SEO links, so can’t comment here

Plus, to tidy things up and reduce the php code a bit, I have made changes several pages to use a switch statement rather than if/else. The effect of this is that URL structure will be slightly different from version 2.01. For a working example of AffiliStore 2.1 see http://www.mountain-bike.org.uk.

Overall a nice update without anything earth-shattering to report, but sometimes slow and steady improvements are best.

Remember that Affilistore Enhanced is due for release on this blog over the next 24 hours. I am not unbiased, but I think that Affilistore Enhanced moves Affilistore forward considerably. Recognising Steve’s terrific script, all license conditions that apply to Affilistore are applicable to Affilistore Enhanced … but the good news is that if you purchased the Remove Footers Link patch from Affilistore, it will also work for Affilistore Enhanced.

Not to be confused with Affilistore Enhanced which will be made available on this blog imminently, Steve Balfour has released an upgraded version of the ‘official’ Affilistore.
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Steven has advanced the development now and I have pleasure in announcing that Affilistore Enhanced production release 2.5 will be released on 15th November. Here is Steven’s full update :

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If you haven’t been watching Steven’s blog, then you will not have seen the following:

AffiliStore Enhanced RC3 has been completed. This is an internal release with a range of minor fixes and changes ready for the release of AffiliStore Enhanced 2.5. No fixed release date, but should be before Nov18. It’ll have to be then as I have other commitments on and after that date.

The RC3 version is active on the AffiliStore Demo. Changes include:

• Restructured templating and object parse order.
• Multi Feature Product
• New base/default template
• New Wireframe templates - WF1 - WF10. SEO friendly template structure.
• HTML tidy - seo friendly
• Blocks by theme
• A few other fixes & modifications

I thoroughly recommend Steven’s anyname blog and you can see the above post over at http://www.anyname.co.uk/2008/11/affilistore-enhanced-rc3-the-final-countdown-release/

Why not sign up for my feed and be amongst the first to hear when Affilistore Enhanced is released.

When you are constructing Affiliate sites with a product search, do try and catch as much affiliate revenue as you can.

If you don’t have the particular product that the visitor is looking for, then point them somewhere else where you will also earn a commission or search fee.

One of my favoured approaches is to point them to a paid search tool e.g. Kelkoo, who pay on a per-click (lead rather than sale) basis.

If we take Affilistore for example, then the “no products found” text will be found in the skins templates folder in products.inc.php. A little judicious editing around the noprod section and you can insert the alternate search engine code as follows :

<!– BEGIN: noprod –>
<p>No Products Found</p>
<!–START MERCHANTcode:–> other HTML here
<!–END MERCHANTcode:–>
<!– END: noprod –>

Now, even if we haven’t been able to provide the product, then hopefully we can take a small payment for a paid search even if we can’t raise some affiliate commission.

If anyone can figure out how to add a cookie and test the value, then it would probably be better if we only displayed the alternate search after a few attempts to find a product in that session; obviously we would rather sell the product than take a few cents, but a few cents here and there do add up.

Here is how it looks on my page :

No Products Found

FoodwithPassion recommends SmartShopping if we have not been able to help you find the product you want.

If the visitor clicks through, then I receive a payment baed upon subsequent visits to the retailer. And the initial click drops a cookie such that I will be rewarded for subsequent clicks.

You decide what works for you. Of course, you are not restricted to adding a search engine. You can adapt the technique to display any banner or code you like and to any script or website in a “product not found” situation.

Maybe you could even integrate ebay or Amazon alternative products?

Think about what you can do to keep the visitor profitable for you, especially at the exit pages.

Many of the articles on this blog deal with more advanced Affiliate Marketing techniques, and I sense that I may have forgotten newcomers to the world of Affiliate Marketing.

I intend to remedy that by starting an Affiliate Marketing for beginners | Start an online business course.

Why not sign up to get posts delivered by email and start learning how to generate an internet income:

The Affiliate Marketing course for beginners starts HERE!!

Just released in the last couple of days is a neat tool to import any csv (comma) delimited affiliate feed and present each item as an individual post.

You can see an example here on My Santa’s Christmas Gift Ideas blog.

The tool is not a plug-in in the strictest sense as it is a standalone script that does not appear through the admin plugins section.

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