Virtually every online merchant has an affiliate program these days. Even with a big shift in spending towards pay-per-click advertising, affiliate marketing has remained strong and is expected to grow by 30% over the next year (according to a Piper Jafrey analyst).

But offering your affiliates typical text/banner ads to promote your products is becoming less and less effective. An increasingly popular method of boosting affiliate performance has been the use of data feeds. Data feeds are basically data exports of a merchant’s inventory which affiliates use to create virtual store fronts. Many of the largest online retailers such as Amazon and Overture provide data feeds to their affiliates not only because they are a relatively inexpensive marketing tool but because they work.

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Typically merchants offer data feeds as CSV or XML files which affiliates then have to either write code to build a web site from or use an off the shelf PHP, CGI or ASP script. A new trend has been the use of data feed services such as FeedShare.com which allows affiliates to quickly and easily add a virtual store front to their web site with as little as one line of JavaScript. This frees your affiliates from having to build or buy/install a custom script and constantly update their copy of your data feed. FeedShare automatically updates your affiliate sites so they always show your latest inventory.

If you sell products online and run or are looking to run an affiliate program, offering your affiliates a data feed is a must. To make it easy for your affiliates to use and update your data feed, look into using a data feed service like FeedShare.

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