Affiliate Mashup Scripts
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What is an Affiliate Mashup Store?
Mashups are a Web 2.0 term for combining multiple feeds of data, creating a new site or content from them. Wikipedia defines a mashup as "A web application that combines data from more than one source into an integrated experience."
Affiliate marketers have been encouraging people to buy products, and earning a commision from the sale, for many years now. The internet gives affiliates new opportunities to sell existing products in a new way, but it also opens up a low cost and easy way to sell 'knowledge' products - things like ebooks, scripts, and tools.An affiliate mashup store is a way of combining multiple product feeds from different vendors, along with other related information that's useful to the user, to create a new site or web experience.As a quick example of what's possible, have a look at Midnight Playtime, a UK lingerie store that uses a mashup script to pull together content and information relevant to a lingerie shopper.
How do Affiliate Mashup scripts work?
Large web vendors like Ebay and Amazon, or dedicated affiliate programs like Commision Junction, have specialised for many years in creating programs to encourage affiliates to sell their goods.
As technology progresses, affiliate managers have been able to start changing the way the huge amount of data they have is accessed by their affiliates. You can now subscribe to dedicated RSS feeds of affiliate products, or access production information via XML data feeds.Affiliate mashup scripts work by parsing these raw data feeds into HTML, then using a language like PHP to plug these chunks of rendered HTML into your site. So you can have an affiliate product list embedded in a sidebar on your Wordpress blog, for example.In fact, if you look at the in-line adverts on many Hubs and Squidoo lenses, you'll see that these are the same thing - taking a data feed of products from a site, and blending it in to your content. Hubs and lenses make a great example of what it's possible to achieve when mashing up some data feeds.A video guide to what is possible with an affiliate mashup script
How you can build an affiliate mashup store - for free
You may have come across BANS - Build A Niche Store. BANS isn't strictly a mashup script, as it builds sites purely using product data from Ebay. It is however very polished, and it's easy to quickly build a unique and relevant site.
Paul Hedger has developed a powerful affiliate mashup script that can build an entire store, pulling together product feeds from places like Commission Junction (which has one of the largest number of affiliate programs), Ebay, and Amazon. The script allows you to quickly build a themed store, with multiple pages of related products and information, adding real value to the user.However, I did mention that magic word - free. If you want to see what is possible with an affiliate mashup script, but don't want to spend any money just yet, you can. Sign up to Paul's newsletter, and he's giving away a cutdown version of his affiliate mashup script.It's the same script that was used to build the Midnight Playtime store I linked to earlier, so that should give you a good idea of how powerful and flexible affiliate mashup scripts can be.Find out more about affiliate mashup scripts and their uses
- Affiliate Mashup Stores explained
A Squidoo lens with some detail on how affiliate mashup stores can be built and how they work. - The Affiliate Mashup Store
A site with reviews of affiliate mashup scripts, along with some good links to articles and guides on how to make the most from your affiliate store. - Star Wars Lego in the UK
Another good example of an affiliate mashup store, this time based around one of my all time favourite toys - Star Wars Lego. - Using Data Feeds For Your Affiliate Business
It is a good idea to pick a wide range of source items - for example using Youtube, Amazon, and eBay. This gives you relevant data feeds to create mashup scripts for your website that hit a variety of areas. - The Benefits of Using an eBay and Amazon Affiliate Mashup
There are a number of benefits to using an eBay Amazon affiliate mashup on your website. One of the biggest is that both eBay and Amazon are huge sites and highly popular - as a result they generate a huge amount of traffic. - Mashup Man's affiliate mashup links
Mashup Man has compiled a good resource for affiliate mashup scripts and related information - have a read through his Grazr reading list.
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Share your thoughts on building sites with affiliate mashup scripts
This is very good information and is something i will deffinately have to investigate. I also rated to show my appreciation
Good hub. Custom scripts are used by all successful affiliates. Unfortunately, there isn't much information available about them for the average affiliate. Thanks for sharing.
I can always use mor useful information on affiliates & marketing.
I'm using Paul Hedgers free cut down version of his affiliate mashup script. It can be found at: local-bargains(dot)co(dot)uk/test/index.php.
For a free script it gives pretty good results with a bit of tweaking. I was also very surprised to see the page get indexed in google very quickly.
darrenbrent01 says:
14 months ago
very good information on this maschup script, i think it will be a big help for marketers for their internet business. thanks for sharing.