An affiliate datafeed is simply a product database. It’s usually laid out in raw CSV format, which is often referred to as spreadsheet format. There is no HTML links, formatting, image display or otherwise. The content is simply provided in separated fields, so that a programmer or affiliate marketer can use it in a wide variety of ways.
Using affiliate datafeeds is an advanced affiliate marketing technique, and it’s probably one of the most profitable approaches to affiliate marketing as well. When you’re using an affiliate datafeed, you are essentially creating an online store filled with products. All of the products have pretty images for prospective customers to see what the product looks like, and all of the products have your affiliate links attached so that you’ll earn sales commissions each time a customer buys something through your store.
Affiliate datafeeds were abused by spammers many years ago, to create websites with millions of product pages overnight. This practice was not liked by the Google search engine however, and those sites were eventually dropped from the search engine index.
When used properly, affiliate datafeeds are quite powerful – and still very profitable even today – because they allow you to get a lot of products online for sale very quickly. The data provided can be manipulated in any number of ways too, so you’re able to create something more unique and customized as desired.
As an affiliate, you can mix together datafeeds from multiple merchants for example, to create a shopping comparison engine. Or you can take a simpler approach and just create a large niche specific store offering similar products from multiple merchants. This way even if one merchant only offers 10 of a given product, your affiliate store or site can offer hundreds because you’ve integrated products of the same type from other merchants.
