The Affiliate tool that started it all
The AvantLink.com web service datafeed client has a lot of importance in the history of the AvantLink.com affiliate network. This tool was originally conceptualized and coded by yours truly back in August, 2004. Leading up to this point I had written several scripts for affiliates that wanted to advertise via custom merchant product catalog implementations on their affiliate websites. On each of the implementations the basic underlying datafeed update, processing and page creation code was the same, with some minor customizations mainly to handle the distinct affiliate website HTML template wrapper.
I didn’t like the idea of having to maintain and support these update scripts on several different affiliates sites, so I began investigating some alternatives. At the same time, I had been doing some separate research into SOAP web services for my full time job at a Utah based marketing company. After some minor tinkering with web services, the light bulb lit up. Why not centralize the datafeed updates on a central server and just have a client script on all the affiliate websites that pulls the real time data from the central server and presents it on the affiliate website within a custom HTML template wrapper?
With this type of architecture, the downloading of the merchant datafeeds and database update processes only happen on one server. Bug fixes in these processes only have to get fixed in one place. The affiliates get the benefit of having those processes offloaded to the central server as well as always having up to date product data. The only thing that actually exists on the affiliate website are some scripts to handle the web service communication between the affiliate website and the server as well as the presentation of the final product catalog web pages.
Thanks to the magic of open source software such as PHP, MySQL and the Apache web server, it was fairly easy to put all of this together in a way that had more then acceptable performance from both the central server and affiliate website side.
This tool was originally marketed as a third party tool that affiliates could pay a monthly fee for. I also developed a version for Backcountry.com as part of their proprietary “Affiliate Headquarters”. From there, with the help of a couple business partners, the idea of a new type of affiliate network with a full suite of integrated affiliate tools was born. The web service datafeed client was our first official product level ad tool in the AvantLink.com affiliate network. (Note: Backcountry.com has since all but abandoned their proprietary Affiliate Headquarters in favor of partnering with AvantLink.com as their affiliate network technology provider).
Why am I covering all of this you may be asking at this point? Well, we just rolled out a major update to the underlying code and overall functionality of the web service datafeed client at AvantLink.com. The original underlying code base held up pretty well for almost five years, but it was definitely time for a major overhaul. This one tool has driven a lot of paying customers from affiliate websites to merchants over the years and I believe that the major improvements put together by our CTO, David Clark, will keep the sales flowing for many years to come.
So, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on the affiliate tool that started it all 
Scott Kalbach
