Forum Moderators: skibum
We have developed a method of automatically accessing product information directly from merchant web sites. As an example, our site focuses on products related to musical artists so we automatically gather products like cd's, dvd's posters, event tickets etc. The result is a variety of products from a bunch of different merchants, some of which have affiliate programs and others not. We like to provide a comprehensive list of products because we believe this increases overall web site traffic, so we plan to have all items on our web site whether or not we receive a web site commission.
We have found this method to be a nice alternative to traditional merchant feeds because they often come in different formats and are not up-to-date. Also, we can download lots of listings for a specific product so price comparisons can be made.
Please let me know what you think the advantages and disadvantages are of this method.
I know lots of merchants have poor datafeeds or they are difficult to find and download but there are some places that have aggregated feed services.
"so we plan to have all items on our web site whether or not we receive a web site commission."
How are you monitizing all the products you pull from merchants that don't have affiliate programs? Have you had any objections from merchants about the content you are taking?
It sounds to me like you could get in copyright trouble. Did you read about a TON of Amazon affiliates that got DCMA notices and had their site PULLED OFFLINE by their hosts for displaying brand name products that were privided in the Amazon product feed. To the affiliates they were using the product info legally ,due to their Amazon agreements, but still faced legal threats and lost their sites due to displaying the product data. It's a BIG mess!
Sounds to me like you are toying with the idea of re-selling this data or offering it as a service. I would be careful and re-think this.
Linda
[edited by: eljefe3 at 1:10 am (utc) on June 22, 2006]
