March 5th, 2010 → 3:36 pm @ Eric Nagel // 13 Comments
This is the first in a series of how to build a datafeed site. I’m building the site right now, and will share the experience with you.
This will be an intermediate to advanced method of using datafeeds to build a site. If you’re looking for a simple way to get started, go check out Pop Shops or Datafeedr. What I’m going to show you is how to build a high-quality site, driven by a datafeed, for free.
The absolute first thing you need to do is pick a niche. I’m not going to help you here, but because I’ve been talking with Deborah Carney (aka Loxly), I’m going to build a tea site. Loxly manages the American Tea Room affiliate program, so I’m going to use their feed, along with Art of Tea (both ShareASale merchants). After the site is “done”, I’ll look at adding a CJ merchant feed in there.
To find merchants in ShareASale that have datafeeds, login and look under “Find/Join Merchants” and click on “View those with Datafeeds“. To keep things simple, pick a merchant (or two, or three) with a couple hundred products. If you choose ecampus, with 2.7mm products, you’re on your own.
Choosing a domain name isn’t extremely important, but as Vinny O’Hare reminded me, have the keyword in there. So I’m building out GreenWhiteAndBlackTea.com. Just make sure you keep the domain under 35 characters, so you can use it as your AdWords display URL.
Set-up the hosting, and make sure you create a MySQL database when you do this. We’re going to save the datafeed in MySQL, to make a dynamic site. Don’t worry, I’ll give you the products table structure… all 41 fields!
Next, find a template from Free CSS Templates that matches the theme of your niche. You’ll see on GreenWhiteAndBlackTea.com I’m using the Begrimed theme.
Themes from Free CSS Templates include a single index.html file, but I want you to break this into 3 php files: header.php, index.php, and footer.php. Index.php should include header.php, then have the content unique to the index page, then include footer.php. My index.php file is simply:
<?php
include('./vars.php');
$bNavHome = true;
include('./header.php');
?>
<div class="post">
<h2 class="title">Welcome to GreenWhiteAndBlackTea.com</h2>
<div class="entry">
<p>This is <strong>Begrimed </strong>, a free, fully standards-compliant CSS template designed by FreeCssTemplates<a href="http://www.nodethirtythree.com/"></a> for <a href="http://www.freecsstemplates.org/">Free CSS Templates</a>. This free template is released under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/">Creative Commons Attributions 2.5</a> license, so you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want with it (even use it commercially) provided you keep the links in the footer intact. Aside from that, have fun with it 
</p>
<p>Sed lacus. Donec lectus. Nullam pretium nibh ut turpis. Nam bibendum. In nulla tortor, elementum ipsum. Proin imperdiet est. Phasellus dapibus semper urna. Pellentesque ornare, orci in felis. Donec ut ante. In id eros. Suspendisse lacus turpis, cursus egestas at sem.</p>
</div>
</div><!-- ends class="post" -->
<?php
include('./footer.php');
?>
Don’t worry about vars.php right now.
That’s enough for one day. Next, we need to download the datafeeds, and get them into MySQL.
Tags: Datafeeds, PHP, Programming, ShareASale
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
PandaMarketer
6 months ago
This is what I like about your blog, Eric, it’s not for the novice programmer (or those afraid of PHP tags)! Since I heard a nice podcast called Both Sides of the Tracks, I have been thinking about datafeeds too.
Building a Datafeed Site – Step 1b | Eric Nagel
5 months ago
[...] next step in building a datafeed website is getting the data into the database, but to do this, we need to build an administrative section [...]
Building a Datafeed Site – Step 2 | Eric Nagel
5 months ago
[...] now, we have selected the niche and chosen a template, added some supporting files and created the database, and are now ready to populate the products [...]
How to Build an Affiliate Datafeed Site Series from an Affiliate - 5 Star Affiliate Blogs
5 months ago
[...] Building a Datafeed Site – Step 1 [...]
Internet Marketing Roundup
5 months ago
[...] only a select few of us in the States get to enjoy. Anyway you can find his datafeed posts here: Step 1, Step 1b, Step 2, Step 3, and Custom Categories. Thank you so much for this Eric, very [...]
Roll Your Own Datafeed Site | NickyCakes.com
5 months ago
[...] Here’s the first post in the series, which you can follow all the way to the end through his blog. If you’re struggling with ppc and need a more robust, long-lasting alternative, then SEO driven revshare sites based on datafeeds might be what you’re looking for. They definitely take time, but are not hard to throw together at all, and if you outsource the SEO work, you could probably make a solid business out of it. [...]
Angelo
5 months ago
Check out FeedShare.com as well. Lots of data feeds from various networks and it’s 100% free unlike Pop Shops and Datafeedr.
Update #1 | Carl Gutierrez
4 months ago
[...] into starting up some datafeed sites using Eric Nagel’s case study to get [...]
Bishop
4 months ago
So, I did everything from the instruction, the result is good! thanks!
Mike Johnson
2 months ago
I understand that you know the technical side of building a site like this, the only problem I see is that there are already a dozen plugins or more available that can do this entire process in minutes as opposed to building it from scratch like this.
JMHO.
Mike
ArtMan
2 months ago
Mike,
The advantage of doing the code is you’ll have more control over the end results and how it works. With an alreday-made plugin you are very much limited to the Author is providing.
Now I’d like to know if this is easy to implement into wordpress.
Art
Rehabbing a Defunct E-commerce Site with Affiliate Products, DoublePlus E-Commerce Blog
2 months ago
[...] I ran across a neat set of posts by Eric Nagel on coding a datafeed site using PHP. That sounded like a lot of fun! I don't get to do much PHP work anymore, and the thought [...]
Isaac
1 week ago
First visit to your site, a welcomed resource I’ll be following your feed articles closely. I’ve been looking around for a solution for my current website a mobile phone comparison site. Not a great niche I know but I appropriate the effort you have gone to here thank you.