Category: 
Thursday, 6 September 2007 @ 11:28 am (Chris Frost)I suspect there are 1000’s of us that bought domains with a cracking idea yet in the light of day, it seemed like a stupid one and you soon realised you have another useless domain that you will probably do nothing with. The problem with these domains is that you keep renewing them just incase you eventually get round creating one of the best websites known to man all at the expense of £2.59 per year (123-reg co.uk domain prices!). I remember an interesting post by Kirsty Mc back in June where she talked about buying domains whilst drunk, although I am happy to report that I still haven’t purchased MoldovianClogDancing.co.uk!
So what do you do with all of these domains? If you really think there is no point in wasting time developing a website then why are you keeping hold of them and what should you do in the future? This is a question I faced a few weeks ago with MakeupBits.co.uk, a name I purchased many months ago and like many others, did nothing with.
Earlier this week I read an A4U Forum post by Steve that talked about a new release of Affilistore, a PHP and mySQL script he has developed and is giving away completely free of charge;
Affilistore will create affiliate websites from multiple merchant product feeds and the latest 1.1 update allows you to create price comparison websites.
I wanted something quick and easy, something that would let me make use of the domain name yet would take a minimal amount of time to implement and customise, after all its probably going to do 3 sales a year if that. So I downloaded Affilistore and started tinkering around with it, to see if it was something I could make use of, without spending a great deal of time on. The screenshots below show what the website looked like when installed and how it looks after 4 hours of chopping and changing;
Once you have installed the code, you simply copy and past the URLs for datafeeds from each network (I have only tried AWin and POR). Once imported, simply match the datafeed fields to the Affilistore fields and away you go. Whether Makeup Bits makes any money or not, time will tell but by creating something like this within less than 4 hours (that includes installation, tweaking, changing fonts, colours, logo etc) its definately better than sitting on a domain name and doing nothing with it for years and year. If you get stuck, although the Affilistore forums are quiet, Steve is quick to respond and the more of us using it, the more active the forums will become.
Give Affilistore a go now on one of your lying in wait domains… its a simple quick fix to the age old problem of unused domain names.
Horaayy..there are 6 comment(s) for me so far ;)
I was going to try that before. I’ve been playing with the BANS software to the same end. I was wondering about the feeds. I’ve never used a feed before via the affiliate networks. Is it a case of pick a single merchant and apply, then you can use their feed - or can you use general feeds without being approved to the merchants? Sorry, lazy question I know. I’ve not needed to use feeds before so I’ve never really looked into them.
I had the same question. How does the feed work? I am an Italian newbie and I have heard of such a thing. Can you let me know how it works and if you are aware of any Italian affiliate feeds?
Thanks in advance.
Francesco
OK I will try to answer your questions…
When you first install the script, it will ask you for details such as website, mySQL database etc, so you need to create a database and a username and link them through your normal hosting control panel.
Once this is done, then go to an affiliate network and choose a merchant which you are already a member of, for example Paid On Results and HQHair. You can then obtain a link for the datafeed and you simply copy and paste it into your Affilistore installation script.
Affilistore will then go away and download all the data and you will then be asked by the script to match the fields i.e.
PRODUCTID —> PRODUCT_ID
AFFILIATE_URL —> DEEPLINK
IMAGE100X100 —> PRODUCT_IMAGE
Once you have matched the fields, thats it! The data is imported and then you can start tinkering around with the layout and design.
As for Italian feed, I am not really into the European Affiliate Market so couldn’t comment. I know a few networks such as DGM, CJ and TD do operate outside of the UK so you’ll have to take a look.
Hope this helps, don’t forget, any problem pop over to the Affilistore Forums where you will be able to get help too.
Thanks for that - I was thinking that would be the case and wanted to check. I was having difficulty getting my head around apply for affiliate programmes prior to not having a site. Some will automatically accept you, but many won’t.
Sweet advice! Downloading now
Thanks for the inspiration, to have a mess about with the script. Had done relatively well with v1.0 on one of my sites and have just completed a similar! modification to v1.1 on another domain.
Once again thanks for the inspiration to get up and go!