I have a sports related website that has really started to take off lately. I’ve had Adsense on for quite awhile and am finally starting to make a few bucks with. Naturally, I want to expand past Adsense, so I’ve started with some affiliate programs.
In looking into affiliates, I’ve come across making whole stores with API datafeeds and RSS feeds. This really appeals to me.
My question is, how do I start going about using these feeds? What programing skills do I need to pursue?
I’m very familiar with HTML and CSS, but other than that, I’m quite ignorant.
Choose a server side language (PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, C#.NET, VB.NET, etc). You can use any language you want, reading the feeds is nothing complicated – downloading a file and parsing some text. The work will be in what you make with the data once you get it out of the feed.
Whatever way you go, make sure the expected payoff is more than the time you’re going to invest learning how to do it. Is it worth building a whole store over picking a few products and advertising them on your site more directly?
I see what you mean.
I have always wanted to learn PHP just for some things I want to do on my site.
And as far as investing the time, I guess I’m like everyone else. I’m trying to find some ways to make a few bucks on the side and just knowing how to do something like that could really come in handy.
Thanks Dan.