Need more formats to support for my marketing feed builder

[AbleMods]

I'm finishing up my super-duper CPC marketing feed file builder module this week. Basically it dumps your store catalog into an export file you upload to a particular Cost-Per-Click (CPC) search marketing engine.
AC7 supports three formats already, however the filtering options are more limited than what I need. So I wrote my own routines and added some new formats to support. Now I can make marketing feed files specific to certain vendors, specific price ranges or even both. Eventually it will support "Campaigns" where all the settings for the feed construction are saved to a "Campaign" for later retrieval. This will help immensely with maintaining a consistent CPC marketing program. Just select the campaign name and say "Go" - everything will be built just like the last time.

Anyone know of any other formats I could support?

PriceGrabber.com is out, they don't offer auto-categorization so you'd have to manually associate every category in your storefront with their category list. Great if you have 5 categories, bad if you have 210 like me
MSN Live is out, I couldn't even get it to work last time and it took 3 weeks for them to tell me it failed. You read that right, 3 weeks. If someone has used them recently and found better success, PM me your experience and I'll reconsider.

Features include:

• Filter by Minimum and Maximum Price
  Filter by Specific Vendor
  Explode Variants into separate products
  Auto-add AC7 Affiliate tracking code to product URLs
  Auto-add 3rd Party Affiliate tracking code to product URLs
  Choice of using product Summary or Description field
  Choice of including/excluding out-of-stock items
  ...Suggestions welcome

Currently it has been tested with and supports:

• Google Base (Using XML)
  Yahoo Product Submit
  Shopping.com
  Shopzilla.com

[batmike]

I'm not sure if you have any experience with Pronto.com ... I don't either but I heard about from someone I talked with. Anyway, just another of the same sites, but if you think it might add some benefit, maybe people will want to use it in addition to the others.

Other than that, sounds great!

Mike

[Robbie@FireFold]

http://www.pricewatch.com
http://www.NexTag.com
http://www.mysimon.com
http://www.dealtime.com


Some listed here: http://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/review.jhtml?id=7951

The more the merrier!

[Robbie@FireFold]

How about Amazon? I'm not sure how their stores/feeds work. I know some people have success there though.

[AbleMods]

I was studying amazon a little bit last night. They have some sort of local client install that accepts a feed file. I'll read more about it later this week.

I'm in discussions with PriceGrabber.com regarding their lack of auto-categorization of product uploads. I really don't want to write some sort of AC7-category-to-pricegrabber-category matching routine - just doesn't seem feasible. How they stay in business without auto-categorizing products for people is beyond me.

[batmike]

We use Amazon with a lot of success but their data requirements are fairly specific. Of course, it kind of depends on the type of product, as some of their departments are not as strict as others, but for us, they need UPC codes for everything and because of the way their system matches products in their database, I end up with titles and descriptions that I never put in (or are just plain wrong) but there's nothing I can do about it since my feed is right.

Anyway, it's a frustrating thing to work with, but it does do very well at the same time.

Anyway, I would love to see an Amazon export from AC, though once you have this add-on done, I was planning to add it in myself, but probably in a more simplistic way than you might end up using. If you decide to try incorporating it, let me know if you have any questions about the feed requirements and I'll do my best to answer them.


Mike

[AbleMods]

I'm still trying to figure out how to be competitive in the market and afford amazon's 15% fee

[Robbie@FireFold]

15%!!

Ouch.

[AbleMods]

The lowest is 8%, but Sporting and Outdoors is 15%. Even if I could live off a 5% markup (which I cannot), I doubt anyone is going to pay a 20% markup for what I sell.

It doesn't cost much to try it, so I may still give it a shot. But I'm not pouring 20 hours of time into getting it going, so it'd better be a fairly painless setup process.

[batmike]

They do give you a credit on shipping, so if you're used to allowing free shipping, then it cuts down that percentage somewhat. But I do agree that it's a big hit

[AbleMods]

Actual response from my application to PriceWatch.com...

Thank you very much for your interest. Your application will be reviewed. We cannot guarantee a response

Excuse me??

[AbleMods]

DealTime.com and NexTag.com and non-tech product listings of PriceWatch.com are all included in Shopping.com. So listing with Shopping.com also lists you with those sites as well. Theoretically.

Only tech products can be listed with PriceWatch.com themselves.