Datafeed management System Now Available To View

[John Jupp]

Putting this in the Lounge as it's worth mentioning here.

Hi

It's taken the best part of a year but we're ready to launch Backdoor Investments Ltd's new product:

The Datafeed Management System

Visit www.convertafeed.com/demo.html for a snapshot look at the system. We'll be making the product available for retail in a few more days. Just hooking up the payment system and sorting out availability to offer free online tutorial for those who get stuck.

When we start the retailing side we'll be announcing a special A4UForum discount code on this forum so that you can purchase at a reduced introductory rate of £35 (RRP £50). The system will be available very, very soon.

We've finished the Beta testing and we have tried the system using networks based in Australia, US, UK and Europe. It works on all of them.

In addition we shall be submitting the system to four networks around the world to evaluate the product. If they are of the opinion it is a worthwhile tool for affiliates generally then we shall be discussing with them to supply a permanent discount code for affiliates registered with their networks.

I have spoken to two network managers and both have accepted to evaluate our product. I shall be speaking to the final two as soon as we launch the retail part of this venture.

More information soon folks!

[justhomdotcom]

John, on your demo page , any chance you can make the screenshots popup into larger sizes as it's really hard to see what they are like if you use a high screen resoloution or even better set up a video demo using something like camtasia

[John Jupp]

I'll set a url in each image so you can view a full size screenshot

OK now removed the jpg enlarged pictures in favour of a .psp which I hope shows things more clearly

[John Jupp]

The system makes it perfectly possible for ANY merchant to offer a datafeed driven WHITE LABEL solution or landing page using a datafeed for all their affiliates.

Further development could include the retro-fitting of a payment system. We have one designed but this is not available in the offered package.

[tombark]

Hi, What are the technical requirements that the affiliate will need.

[John Jupp]

The Management Website and ALL Receiving Websites MUST be located on the same server. The system uses MySQL and there are clear instruction on how to set up a MySQL database.

Once you have set up the database you list all the websites you want to use (adding more later as reqd) then you add the networks you wish to work with. Then you add the merchants you wish to work with and then get their datafeeds. When you get the feed the software extracts the field data of the feed and displays this. You set the fields according to the extracted data and just update. The system then shows you a rough representation of what the feed looks like on a website. You make a note of the merchant number and copy/paste that number into the index page of the receiving website. A full package for receiving websites is supplied. Then just refresh and the site is live, getting data from the MySQL database on the management site. Then all you do from now on is just go periodically to the Get Feeds section and you at a click of a button get the latest feed direct from the merchant/network. Some networks like Commission Monster do not offer facilities for affiliates to get feeds except by manual download. So all you do for those is get the feed and store it on your server. The management system can point at a folder or a direct url

The system is LINUX based.

[drivetowin]

John

Looks good - just so I'm clear is it one feed to one website or does it let you combine feeds from more than one merchant?

If it does combine feeds then do all of the feeds need to be from one network or can it combine feeds across networks, i.e. merchant a from AW, merchant b from TD

[John Jupp]

Hi

What you can do because it is not geared specifically as a price comparison script but I have checked and it can be done is:

PROVIDING the feeds are from the same network (we haven't checked to see if we can mix networks) as multiple networks have different fields, you can upload as many merchant feeds to your server from the same network and combine them into a single .csv feed. This single feed is then read.

We have tested up to 250,000 products using the Woolworths feed but I cannot say how long page loading may take with a couple of million products.

This is because the software views each url for images thoroughly in order to determine if an image is corrupted and that affects page load time on larger feeds.

[John Jupp]

In addition you can do the usual thing which is separate landing pages for each merchant to a single website (this can be multiple network), such as shopping portals searching by merchant name etc.