Affiliate Marketing with Datafeeds - The Journey
My name is Dave Turnbull, I'm 16 years old and have been making websites for a few years now. My aim is to be making $50,000 a month (approx $1666 a day) by the time I am 20.
Currently I only earn $1000 a month, but have numerous communities in the works to help me reach my goal. However, all my revenue so far comes from Adsense, TLA, and Adversal. I'd like to diversify some more, which is why I am diving into Affiliate Marketing.
I've decided to make this thread to keep track of my progress with affiliate marketing using only data feeds, and a script I've programmed myself.
Note: All these dates/times are in GMT +10
June 2nd
First day adventuring into the world of Affiliate Marketing. My whole aim is to profit nicely from affiliates with only spending $7.98 on a each domain - no PPC, no paid advertising whatsoever etc.
I've programmed a script using PHP and MySQL to:
a) Import the data from a | Pipe Delimited Datafeed script (courtesy of ShareASale.com)
b) Display this data in a useful format
An updated list of features of the script is below.
My plan is to find a decent merchant, make 4-5 sites advertising this merchants products, but each of these sites will be advertising different categories in their niche to make them unique. I will rinse and repeat this process over the next few months and see if I get any decent results.
I've found a merchant, and made three sites so far, all .net's but with the key phrases as the domain name. Each key phrase gets a few hundred searches per month according to Overture. The merchant I chose is great because they offer such benefits as Same Day Shipping, and free shipping for orders over $x, and also the tracking cookie lasts 365 days which is a nice bonus.
No new sites so far today, I've just been working on making the script more unique, and read a few articles regarding making data feed sites.
The next big feature I plan to add to the script is a commenting system as that will make the site seem more professional etc. I have it in my mind how to do it, but I'm quite lazy - I'll try to get it done tomorrow, as I have a day off school.
I've been looking at popular data feed sites (such as eToys.co.uk) and been trying to get some inspiration. I should probably make a nicer design as at the moment all three of my data feed sites are fairly ugly. Before I start advertising these sites aggressively I'd like to overhaul the design, and make the script far more unique than the average datafeed site.
2:32 PM: Everything before this was a recount, just to make sure everyone was up to speed, from now on I'll be posting updates closer to the actual time.
I'm not much of a programmer, so making this script hasn't been incredibly easy, and I've made it harder for myself as I kind of rushed into it (completing the "first draft" of the script in under 2 hours). Now I'm going back and making the script 'nicer'. I'm splitting some parts into functions, setting more variables to make it easier to update files without overriding data and I'm also commenting quite a bit. I'm basically writing the script like someone would if they intend to sell it....except I don't intend to sell this one, I just want it to be as easy to understand as possible incase I come back in 4 years time and wonder what the heck it does, lol.
4:46 PM: Had a bit of a break, but started messing around with my script again. Didn't end up doing much, but seeing as the merchant I am advertising has Guaranteed Same Day Shipping for some products, I thought it wise to advertise this on the products pages. Using a simple IF statement I made it so products that are guaranteed to ship on the day of order have big red text saying "Guaranteed Same Day Shipping".
June 4thMade some great progress. Whilst walking my dog (great way to clear your head
) I was formulating in my head how to go about making a comment and approval system. Whilst this may be easy to some people, like I've said before I'm not much of a programmer. So I got home, opened up Dreamweaver and got it right first try which made me very happy. 
A commenting system is something that kept popping up in articles I read about making unique data feed sites. My commenting system works like this:
User goes to product page --> Fills out form --> Details entered into database with a field set to 0 --> I log into the admin panel --> Approve Comment --> Database updates that field and sets it to 1 --> Comment appears on product page.
After lookin' through some other data feed sites I've decided to work on a more shop-like design. At the moment it's just a simple left navigation, and products display....need to make something more unique.
June 19thBeen quite busy with a lot of stuff lately, which is why I haven't done anything affiliate-related. Although, the sites are in Search engines now and are getting a bit of traffic.
My name is Dave Turnbull, I'm 16 years old and have been making websites for a few years now. My aim is to be making $50,000 a month (approx $1666 a day) by the time I am 20.
Currently I only earn $1000 a month, but have numerous communities in the works to help me reach my goal. However, all my revenue so far comes from Adsense, TLA, and Adversal. I'd like to diversify some more, which is why I am diving into Affiliate Marketing.
I've decided to make this thread to keep track of my progress with affiliate marketing using only data feeds, and a script I've programmed myself.
Note: All these dates/times are in GMT +10
June 2nd
First day adventuring into the world of Affiliate Marketing. My whole aim is to profit nicely from affiliates with only spending $7.98 on a each domain - no PPC, no paid advertising whatsoever etc.
I've programmed a script using PHP and MySQL to:
a) Import the data from a | Pipe Delimited Datafeed script (courtesy of ShareASale.com)
b) Display this data in a useful format
An updated list of features of the script is below.
My plan is to find a decent merchant, make 4-5 sites advertising this merchants products, but each of these sites will be advertising different categories in their niche to make them unique. I will rinse and repeat this process over the next few months and see if I get any decent results.
I've found a merchant, and made three sites so far, all .net's but with the key phrases as the domain name. Each key phrase gets a few hundred searches per month according to Overture. The merchant I chose is great because they offer such benefits as Same Day Shipping, and free shipping for orders over $x, and also the tracking cookie lasts 365 days which is a nice bonus.
The Script
This is a unique and custom script I've programmed using PHP and MySQL and which utilize to reach my goal.
June 3rdThis is a unique and custom script I've programmed using PHP and MySQL and which utilize to reach my goal.
- Full mod rewrite - text_id_productname.html
- Random products displayed on the main page, and product pages
- Easily change the template
- Using variables I can just overwrite all the files to upgrade them and it still works, 1 file contains all settings etc
- Google Search integrated
- SEO taken into consideration (H1 Tags, plenty of inbound links etc)
- Product pages display:
- Product Name
- Product RRP and Store Price
- Image of Product
- Description of Product
- Link to Buy Product
- Custom Message (to help avoid duplicate content) - Comment/Review System (comments require approval)
No new sites so far today, I've just been working on making the script more unique, and read a few articles regarding making data feed sites.
The next big feature I plan to add to the script is a commenting system as that will make the site seem more professional etc. I have it in my mind how to do it, but I'm quite lazy - I'll try to get it done tomorrow, as I have a day off school.
I've been looking at popular data feed sites (such as eToys.co.uk) and been trying to get some inspiration. I should probably make a nicer design as at the moment all three of my data feed sites are fairly ugly. Before I start advertising these sites aggressively I'd like to overhaul the design, and make the script far more unique than the average datafeed site.
2:32 PM: Everything before this was a recount, just to make sure everyone was up to speed, from now on I'll be posting updates closer to the actual time.
I'm not much of a programmer, so making this script hasn't been incredibly easy, and I've made it harder for myself as I kind of rushed into it (completing the "first draft" of the script in under 2 hours). Now I'm going back and making the script 'nicer'. I'm splitting some parts into functions, setting more variables to make it easier to update files without overriding data and I'm also commenting quite a bit. I'm basically writing the script like someone would if they intend to sell it....except I don't intend to sell this one, I just want it to be as easy to understand as possible incase I come back in 4 years time and wonder what the heck it does, lol.
4:46 PM: Had a bit of a break, but started messing around with my script again. Didn't end up doing much, but seeing as the merchant I am advertising has Guaranteed Same Day Shipping for some products, I thought it wise to advertise this on the products pages. Using a simple IF statement I made it so products that are guaranteed to ship on the day of order have big red text saying "Guaranteed Same Day Shipping".
June 4thMade some great progress. Whilst walking my dog (great way to clear your head
) I was formulating in my head how to go about making a comment and approval system. Whilst this may be easy to some people, like I've said before I'm not much of a programmer. So I got home, opened up Dreamweaver and got it right first try which made me very happy. A commenting system is something that kept popping up in articles I read about making unique data feed sites. My commenting system works like this:
User goes to product page --> Fills out form --> Details entered into database with a field set to 0 --> I log into the admin panel --> Approve Comment --> Database updates that field and sets it to 1 --> Comment appears on product page.
After lookin' through some other data feed sites I've decided to work on a more shop-like design. At the moment it's just a simple left navigation, and products display....need to make something more unique.
June 19thBeen quite busy with a lot of stuff lately, which is why I haven't done anything affiliate-related. Although, the sites are in Search engines now and are getting a bit of traffic.
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