Web Marketing Strategy Update

This is something I rarely talk about, but datafeeds are a great way to make money with affiliate programs.

A datafeed is essentially a product database that merchants make available for their affiliates to download.

The data is contained in a large text file, with one product per line. Each line will contain things like the product name, its code number, price, description, order link, and image links.

These different bits of information are usually separated by commas or tab stops, (although the pipe (|) symbol is sometimes used), leading to comma-separated value, .csv or tab-separated value, .tsv files.

Whilst the datafeed might look like an unreadable mess in a text editor, if you open the file in spreadsheet software like Excel or Filemaker, you will see the information is actually in neat columns as defined by the commas or tabs.

You can buy software and scripts (or roll your own) to manipulate this data to create websites with hundreds, even thousands of pages in no time.

These can be static pages pages you upload to your server, or dynamically generated on the fly as the page is requested (my personal preference).

1. Publish A Free Ezine For Selling Products

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter to promote your own or affiliate products, MLMs, etc. This is the most common format, and to work well requires quality — preferably original — content related to your business and products so that it stands out from the crowd.

2. Publish Free Ezine For Selling Advertising Space

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter to sell advertising spots and exclusive mailings to other businesses. Similar in format to the previous example, except that instead of using the ezine as a vehicle for promoting your own products, you use it to generate ad revenue. This approach is often favored by those new online and / or without their own product, using mainly contributed articles for content and combining the promotion of affiliate programs with ad sales.

3. Publish A Paid Subscription Ezine

You could charge a monthly or yearly subscription to your ezine or newsletter. Unless your annual subscription is fee is relatively little, you will probably make more money with a low monthly fee automatically charged to the subscriber’s credit card. Note that you need quality, highly targeted original to be successful selling ezine subscriptions like this.