Affilistore Revisited

The first time I got took Affilistore for as spin, it was still version 1 and I could not have chosen worst web hosting provider (Yahoo!) to host my website. The problem with Yahoo is that did not have access to htaccess file therefore it is impossible to implement custom URLs through what is known as mod rewrite. Besides there few limitation in the first version of Affilistore that prevented me from using this script as often as I wished.

If this the first time you read about Affilistore, you should know that Affilistore is a script that allows you to create affiliate websites using product data feeds. Such websites tend to keep visitors for a longer period of time on your website. The downside of such websites is that there are many other affiliates that use the same product data feed, making it more difficult to achieve some decent positions in the search engines. Having said that, there are ways to make your website unique. The latest version of Affilistore has a few features that can help you to make your website standout.

Affilistore 2 lets you manage multiple data feeds. This feature can be very useful if you plan to feature the products from multiple merchants. It may also help you slightly to make your website unique.

Let your visitors review the products on your website. Of course it is up to you to encourage such reviews. But if you do these reviews are definitely going to make your website unique and will provide value to other shoppers. This option along with opportunity to manage several product data feeds can create quiet decent shopping/comparison website.

RSS Feeds. Affilistore outputs two RSS feeds. One for “News Items” and another for “Popular Products”. “News Items” is a blog feature which you can use to update your regular visitors about news on your website. Popular Products is a feature that determines which products on your website are viewed more often. With some creativity you can use both of these RSS feeds to promote your website.

Bonus Tip: It is very easy to get carried away with scripts like Affilistore and create a website with 1000s of products. While there is nothing wrong with large websites, it would be wise to add products gradually. This will lower the chances of getting your website “sand boxed”.