eCommerce Affiliate Networks

Google Affiliate Network: an affiliate marketing company, specifically affiliate network, formerly known as DoubleClick Performics, which was bought by Google in 2007. Google Affiliate Network helps advertisers increase online conversions on a performance basis and enables publishers to monetize traffic with affiliate ads.

Commission Junction: an online advertising company owned by ValueClick and operating in the affiliate marketing industry. Commission Junction is the largest affiliate network in North America, and its corporate headquarter is located in Santa Barbara, California.

LinkShare: a leading provider of full-service online marketing solutions specializing in the areas of Affiliate Marketing, Search Marketing, and Lead Generation. As the online marketing industry continues to evolve at a fast pace, advertisers, publishers and agencies are turning to LinkShare for technology innovation, superior service and most importantly - Results!

Linkconnector: an affiliate marketing network helping merchants and affiliates increase online sales and revenue. LinkConnector has introduced exclusive technologies to the market that give our merchants and affiliates a strong advantage. These technological advantages, together with our unique philosophical approach to affiliate marketing, make the LinkConnector truly different.

Pepperjam Network: the new standard in performance-based marketing. Pepperjam, a GSI Media company, is an industry leader in online performance marketing and technology. Pepperjam Network drives quality pay-for-performance results, provide unparalleled service, and maximize long term relationships between online merchants and publishers through our people, expertise and technology. Pepperjam operates a next generation performance marketing network, which provides innovative tools and analytics to optimize the complex performance marketing channel.

Buyat: the next generation of affiliate marketing. Buy.at is an affiliate network that was acquired by Digital Window on March 1, 2010 having previously been owned by AOL. It is based in the United Kingdom.

Shareasale: an affiliate network providing pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-click programs for webmasters. ShareASale is an affiliate marketing network based in Chicago, IL USA. ShareASale services two customer sets in affiliate marketing: the affiliate, and the merchant.

Amazon Associates: make money advertising Amazon products.

Bing Shopping Data Feed

As Google Products put more requirements on its data feed and competition is getting more intense, we have to work on diligently on the new ecommerce marketing strategies to improve website traffic and sales conversion rate.

Bing Shopping Data Feed came to my notice when I browsed Google Products' blogger on new data feed requirements.

Here is the top search result on Bing Shopping Data Feed by Aten Software. They did a pretty good job on search engine optimization (SEO), at least on this query.

How do I set up a data feed for Bing Shopping?

Use the instructions below to set up a Bing Shopping feed for your Yahoo Store. If you have multiple stores, you can manage them all from within one Adcenter account.

1. Sign up for Bing Shopping at Microsoft AdCenter.
   • Bing Shopping Merchant Portal is a sub-account of Microsoft AdCenter
   • You will be required to enter a credit card, but you will not be charged anything unless you set up pay-per-click ad campaigns.
2. Log into Microsoft AdCenter
3. Go to Tools > Bing Shopping Account Management
4. Either create a new account or migrate your existing account by entering your Store Settings or Bing Shopping login, respectively. (NOTE: If you are prompted to sign-in, do that, sign-out, and then repeat the previous two steps.)
5. On the "Store Settings" tab, although it does not say this, you are required to upload a logo and fill in the other information.
6. On the "Catalog Management" tab, make sure the following settings are selected and then click "Save".
   • Feed Format: Bing Shopping / Cashback
   • How to Provide Feed Files: Merchant upload
   • Feed file name: bingshopping
7. On the "FTP Settings" tab, enter an FTP login and password and click "Save".

Your Bing Shopping account will now be set up, but the FTP account will be "Inactive". Please allow up to two weeks for the FTP account to be activated. Once that is done, continue to set up the feed on our site as described next.

7. Log into our site and click "My Account > Add Feed".
8. Enter your Store Name, select the Bing Shopping Template, and click "Create Feed".
9. Continue to "Modify Settings", and enter the Objinfo and/or Catalog export URLs for your Yahoo Store.
10. Enter the FTP Username and FTP Password from the "FTP Settings" tab in your Bing Merchant account. Set the submission frequency to 'Daily'. Click "Update" to save the settings.
11. Run a submission task to perform your first upload.

• After your first submission, it may take up to 10 business days for the products to be listed.
• Please contact freeshop@microsoft.com if you have any questions about the status of your listings. They tend to be very responsive (within 1-3 business days).

SEO Tools to Improve eStore Site Rankings

There are many SEO tools out there to help with your eStore site rankings, and I'm sure you've seen and used plenty of them.

Have you used SEOSiteCheckup? If not, this tool gives you detailed information and tips on all aspects of your site, many of which you might have not seen before. Just enter your site's web address and check for html page size, html compression, site loading speed, visitor breakdown, robots.txt, common keywords, meta tag analyzer and tons more! Check out SEOSiteCheckup now and try it for yourself!

SEO and Page Rank

The aftermarket auto lights site is up and here comes the hard part: how to attract users to our site? In order to be listed on the top pages on Google, we need to come out of good keywords and Google friendly practices. We used a site to evaluate out SEO setting. I am still not sure what to do to improve the page rank other then beg for links from other sites.