By Linda Buquet

Whether you are a merchant trying to enhance your affiliate sales channel or an affiliate, interested in growing your commissions, this article can help you optimize your efforts and increase revenue.

How can Merchants help to double affiliate conversion rates? Offer them a datafeed! A datafeed provides affiliates with direct product links - including pictures, descriptions and prices, which take customers right to the product instead of just sending them to the home page with a standard banner. This results in fewer clicks and much higher conversion rates. Many affiliates find they can build an entire website filled with the thousands of products in about an hour, maximizing the merchant’s exposure and optimizing the affiliate’s sales potential.

According to a recent Press Release from IdeaLabs, Commission Junction's product catalog (datafeed) has helped to double conversion rates on the average. http://www.idealab.com/frame.tp?http://www.cj.com/corporate/press_7327.jsp

Some of the affiliate networks charge $250 - $2,000 for a data feed and many networks do not offer the option at all. Providing a private (no charge) feed to your affiliates could be one of the best decisions you will ever make.

I am an affiliate management consultant and recently had a datafeed programmed for one of my clients, Irvs Luggage Warehouse. I can tell you that this move has been OVERWHELMINGLY successful for us, boosting sales and attracting many new “super” affiliates to our program. We launched the feed the end of April, May sales doubled and July is on target to be quadruple April’s numbers. Almost all of our top producers are using the feed and enjoying greatly increased sales because of it.

Lack of a datafeed is becoming a “deal breaker” for many strong affiliates. zZounds, another client, offers the highest commission rate in the musical instruments market place, yet I had numerous “super affiliates” that would not even join unless a datafeed was available. The above article helped zZounds see the light. Our new feed is now finished, strong affiliates are joining and increased sales are rolling in.

ABestWeb has 2 great datafeed forums filled with information for both advertisers and affiliates about how to get started with datafeeds and lists numerous merchants that offer free feeds if anyone would like to learn more.

http://abw.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=548608979&f=1226064751
http://abw.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=548608979&f=8106056491

The bottom line is datafeeds work and are a valuable WIN/WIN marketing tool for Merchants and affiliates alike!