'Net Features : GAN

eBay Alternative Swoopo on Google Affiliate Network

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:34:00 GMT

It's not often that we write about specific affiliate programs, but due to some special circumstances (we're mentioning one of the companies in the upcoming April issue) it caught our attention and thought we'd bring it to yours.

The Google Affiliate Network (GAN) announced the Swoopo affiliate program. If you use eBay to sell products, and don't know of Swoopo, you will - and most likely very soon. Swoopo dubs itself as the next generation of online auctions.

Swoopo differentiates itself through its business model. Customers (buyers) buy their bids in advance in packs of 30, 50, 100, 300 or 700 ($0.75 each). Bidders can place single bids or use Swoopo's BidButler (and can even bid on the phone). Each bid placed increases the price of whatever product is being sold by $0.15 and reduces the auction countdown by up to 20 seconds. It's really a fascinating auction model that is sure to spark the interest of shoppers.

Swoopo launched in Germany in 2005, in late 2007 in the UK, Spain in May of 2008 and most recently in the US in September 2008.

If Swoopo sounds like something you might be interested in, the affiliate program details from GAN will ensure it. GAN and Swoopo are offering affiliates commissions for new customers that purchase the Bid Packs (a $7 bounty - duration of 30 days).

Google Affiliate Network (GAN) Updates

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:29:00 GMT

The Google Affiliate Network (known in affiliate circles as GAN) announced some new features including product data feed setup in the UI and link subscriptions (formerly orange links) and will begin offering batch creative uploads to advertisers.

Participants in the Google Affiliate Network can now sign up for data feeds through the service's user interface. Publishers will see their approved advertisers that offer a data feed. Google also establishes a file naming convention for al of the feeds that publishers select to receive from Google advertisers and validates their FTP information. Those that set up feeds previously should be aware that any setting adjusted from here on will overide existing settings.

Google has changed the name of the service that delivers promotional data feeds to publishers to Link Subscriptions (formerly known as orange Links). Functionality of the offering will remain the same - publishers will continue to receive a daily file of new ads that their approved advertisers created in the system. The filename format will be changing however so that is something to watch out for.

Uploading offers individually can be cumbersome for advertisers, so Google now allows for the uploading of creating assets in large batches. Advertisers can essentially upload zip files containting multiple creatives.