A couple of days ago I’ve learned about LuckyLocal.com. They position themselves as a local shopping API solution for affiliates. Similar to datafeed-import tools/services like GoldenCAN and PopShops, but with a local twist.

Here’s my brief look at how it works for affiliates:

You open an account with them, and just as at GoldenCAN and PopShops, you will enter your affiliate network IDs (and sub-IDs, should you want to set any). Unlike at GoldenCAN, where you have to do it for every merchant, but very much like at PopShops, it’s a once and for all procedure:

Then you want to select which merchants to “add to site” (they must be the ones you’ve already joined through respective affiliate networks):

Interestingly, Shopzilla is also listed among “Affiliate Networks”, which allows for partnering with merchants that do not have affiliate programs as such (e.g.: Lowes), but do advertise on Shopzilla.

I find it interesting to find Shopzilla on the list of networks, because they are actually also an affiliate, and work with many merchants on performance basis themselves. Here’s, for example, their data from Commission Junction:

So, after you’ve selected which merchants you’re gonna work with, they recommend determining your programming skill level on a 3-level scale, and depending on your programming experience and expertise, you can either integrate merchant products using Widgets:

…or you can go and play with their API solutions:

An example of how the functionality works (or looks in action) may be found here.

When I asked the LuckyLocal.com folks what they believe to be their biggest difference and advantage over solutions like PopShops and GoldenCAN, they replied without a second thought: of course, our “local shopping API”! That’s really their main competitive advantage. Here’s how they desribe it themselves:

For the first time, you, as an affiliate can integrate a local shopping search engine on your website. Local shopping search engine allows your visitors to search for products/services within a local vicinity using zip code or automatically using Geo IP.

Local shopping search engine helps shoppers locate in-stock products from local stores with real-time pricing and availability check. Affiliates can integrate local shopping search engine easily just by inserting a few lines of html code.

This is definitely an interesting development to see, and I wish them luck in their further promotion and development.

If you want to try them out, they are offering a one year free trial if you sign up with them as an affiliate by January 31, 2011 [details here | and per this comment, no credit card now required]. May be worth a try.

Just to be clear: this post is not sponsored in any way, and reflects only my personal opinion on (and experience with) a new affiliate tool/service.

Got an email from an affiliate which goes as follows: “I’m a new affiliate and I would like to know if you know of any Turn Key operations available at this time.”

While you can certainly purchase an already functioning affiliate website, and start your affiliate journey this way, I would highly recommend you start by building something yourself. First of all, because purchasing a successful affiliate website will undoubtedly be a more expensive way to start as an affiliate; and secondly, due to the simple reasoning that to become a successful affiliate marketer you really want to learn things from the inside out, thereby becoming capable of exploring new niches, and monetizing newly-built websites.

In response to the above affiliate’s question I’ve asked him if he has ever heard of PopShops. He said “no”, and the idea for this blog post was immediately born. There are several truly turn-key affiliate solutions that are worth looking into:

• PopShops (creation of custom data feed-based stores)
• GoldenCAN (data feed and coupon import)
• DatafeedR (similar to the above two)
• BizZites by Traffic Genesis (affiliate website building solution)
• DatafeedStudio (excellent solution for feed importing and creation of comparison shopping sites/pages)
• myDataFeedScripts (scripts to build data feed-driven sites)
• FeedShare.com (feed and coupon integration)
• ForMeToCoupon.com (powerful coupon integration tool)
• WP AmaNiche (WordPress plugin for Amazon affiliates)
• phpOstock (WordPress plugin for Overstock affiliates)
• BuildANicheStore (niche affiliate stores for eBay Partner Network)

Most of the above do not require any technical education/experience, and any “new affiliate” can start using these right away.

If I have missed any tools/solutions that you believe should be included here, please do let me know by posting about them in the comments area below.

As I was looking for a coder to help one of our clients (her store is running on Yahoo Merchant Solutions) put together an affiliate product feed, I ran across a YourStoreWizards’ shopping feed service. I must admit, I have never heard of them before, and was hesitant to recommend them, but I did mention this solution to the client as one of the options she may want to look into.

Yesterday I got an email from her which read: “YourStoreWizards has been so helpful! I would highly recommend them for Yahoo stores.” It is not in my rule to endorse any product (or service) in my blog unless I have personally tried it, but this particular merchant’s satisfaction got me intrigued and I asked her to elaborate on what exactly made her so happy. She wrote back:

I found them to be very attentive to my needs and very responsive in addressing any issues. We were literally emailing back and forth all day yesterday, making custom adjustments to finalize the feed. I was impressed with how they took the time to explain everything and explain how to do things in detail (not just related to the feed but also for Yahoo store functions). They answered all questions promptly and in detail and didn’t make me feel badly for asking them. I also found them very knowledgeable on Yahoo store programming and because of that, they could easily customize programming to my needs.

There are two lessons we can learn from this:

1) Merchants with Yahoo stores who are getting into affiliate marketing may also find the solution offered by YourStoreWizards of help. They help merchants put together feeds for such affiliate networks as ShareASale, Commission Junction, Google Affiliate Network, and several other ones. In addition, they also sell a solution for affiliate programs run on multiple networks, or an “affiliate program duplicate transaction removal script” [details here]. Of course, if you have access to a coder that can build a custom script for you (prices for these may vary from $50 to $250), you may want to go via an alternative route, but this seems to be a good solution to keep in mind too.

2) Customer service and technical support are extremely important components in merchant/advertiser-supplier relationships. I am sure it is not just me, but other affiliate program managers and merchants are also frequently struggling to get their questions answered (and receive quality resolutions) by affiliate networks and other solution providers. In many cases, success (or failure) of an affiliate program is fully dependent on the quality of these two components.

Disclaimer: The above opinion is based entirely on one given merchant’s experience with one give solution provider, and is free of any monetary or other types of extrinsic motivators.