[rhkocatas]

Many of you have been asking questions about our datafeed which is available by going to reporting.net. It seems as though the biggest issue is the current system that uses 3 files to reproduce our magazine catalog. The reason we do this is because of the 1 (title) to many
(categories) relationships that we are trying to provide.

Understanding that many of you wish to work only with the titles file, we would like to propose some of the following ideas.

1) We can add another tab-delimited field to that datafeed that will include all the categories for a particular title in a pipe-delimited format For Maxim this would look like:
Maxim 12 Issues Fashion|Men's|Men's Fashion
Maxim 24 Issues Fashion|Men's|Men's Fashion
Maxim 36 Issues Fashion|Men's|Men's Fashion

2) We can provide an option that would create a file with a unique record for every title/category combination. When used in conjunction with the "Multiple Term" option this would produce a file with the following records for Maxim Magazine

TITLE TERM CATEGORY
Maxim 12 Issues Fashion
Maxim 24 Issues Fashion
Maxim 36 Issues Fashion
Maxim 12 Issues Men's
Maxim 24 Issues Men's
Maxim 36 Issues Men's
Maxim 12 Issues Men's Fashion
Maxim 24 Issues Men's Fashion
Maxim 36 Issues Men's Fashion


Given the feedback on these ideas or any other solutions that might be recommended we will put together something that works for everyone.

Regards!

Reha - uSubscribe.com

[Andy Rodriguez]

Ok Folks,

Merchant communication 101, tell him what you want, he is listening and ready to help you make money...

Fire away....

[rhkocatas]

For those who have never seen our feed please visit Our Sample (Non-Tracking) Feed (http://www.usubscribe.com/affiliate/links_VS.cfm?siteid=0000000000)

Affiliates can get a feed populated with SiteId by going to reporting.net

Reha

[Drewbert]

Option 1 would be FABULOUS!

[jackson992]

To me all the categories for the same magazine should be the same

So Maxim would be Men's Fashion etc
Newesweek would be News etc

[rhkocatas]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jackson992:
To me all the categories for the same magazine should be the same

So Maxim would be Men's Fashion etc
Newesweek would be News etc <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

So I think this a vote for option 1?

Reha

[jackson992]

yep LOL

I was just saying it another wayhttp://abw.infopop.cc/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif_

[CrazyGuy]

Yes, the current setup is a pain.

I hadn't picked up on the one-to-many aspect, which does explain why you do it that way.

Funnily enough, I just started to work today with another feed that lists its titles under multiple categories - and handle it like your option1. It works well.

I would also add a comment that your feed is very flat, and would benefit IMO from the addition of a top-level caetgory level to group some of the current categories within. The most common way we use datafeeds is to list the top level categories as the main site navigation - not practical with (I think) about 120 categories at this level.

[rhkocatas]

Mike:

We will try to alleviate the pain http://66.132.187.8/smilies/bonk.gif

We do not currently have any Top Level Cateogries. Our categories are all equal and then related to each other.

However..lets throw out some ideas....What if we..

What if we told you what our XX most popular categories are...or if we added a category rank to the third file. That way affiaites could define their own Top Level based on how many they wanted to include.

We are planning on adding a sales rank column to the feed as well that will list rank from 1 to 1200 of every title.

Trying to make it work for all!

Reha

[CrazyGuy]

Reha

In the absence of an extra structural level, prioritising by rank would certainly be next best.

If we're moving towards a single file with a multiple-category field, I'd suggest implementing this as an extra fields in the single-feed:

category ranks - ordered and structured like the multi-cat field, like:

Maxim 12 Issues Fashion|Men's|Men's Fashion 4|3|8

This would be in addition to the title rank - useful as it would allow the extraction of top X lists and also for display by popularity rather than alphabetic etc.

[edited to clarify for Reha - I'm quoting Mike in my sig. I'm not Mike. shudder]

[rhkocatas]

So to be clear in the primary file you want us to add..

Category Field [Fashion|Men's|Men's Fashion]
Relative Category Rank [4|3|8]

What about the numeric category value as mapped in the 3rd file?
Example for Maxim [15|37|129]

This would allow you to dynamically create category links from the feed such as
www.usubscribe.com/category.cfm?grp=15 (http://www.usubscribe.com/category.cfm?grp=15)
www.usubscribe.com/category.cfm?grp=37 (http://www.usubscribe.com/category.cfm?grp=37)
www.usubscribe.com/category.cfm?grp=129 (http://www.usubscribe.com/category.cfm?grp=129)

Any other requests?

[Drewbert]

How about this...

In the main file add an extra field - as per option 1 - listing the category #'s the magazine belongs to, pipe delimited ie 3|8|15.

In the category list, add a field that lists the subcategories of the category and a field giving the parent category.

So you have:

Cat Name Parent Children
1 Auto 0 12|23|24|31
12 4x4 1
23 Trucks 1 24|25
31 Racing 1 32|33|34

[rhkocatas]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Drewbert:
In the category list, add a field that lists the subcategories of the category and a field giving the parent category.

So you have:

Cat Name Parent Children
1 Auto 0 12|23|24|31
12 4x4 1
23 Trucks 1 24|25
31 Racing 1 32|33|34 <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Problem here is that we do not have the traditional parent-child relationships in our system. Think of it as Knight's of the Round Table kinda gig.

What we have been thinking about is looking at each category and then summing the total sales for that category. We would then create a category rank that could be used to fake the parent-child concept.

For example this would lead to Sports having a higher rank then Golf, Tennis,etc. Affiliates could then decide on their own how many Top Level Categories to build out...

Example:
CatNumber Name Rank Related Categories
1 Auto 5 12|23|24|31
12 4x4 45 1|23
23 Trucks 32 1|24|25
31 Racing 69 1|32|33|34

Wow...Does anyone actually understand what I am talking about http://66.132.187.8/smilies/banghead.gif

[Nature Boy]

I'll probably be in the minority here, but I like option 2. I had a feed from another merchant that was like option 1, and frankly, I never could get Webmerge to put individual items in multple categories.

If option 1 was the only way to get categories, I would only use the first category listed and file 13 the rest. Unfortuntely, this would hinder my promotion of the feed.

Either way, as long as there are categories, that's a big step forward http://66.132.187.8/smilies/thumbup2.gif

It would be nice to have the same size small image and large image or at the very least, the dimensions of said files so we can use height= and width= when displaying the image.

[rhkocatas]

Ok...well we will offer both option 1 and option 2 as I can see is appealing to different affiliates.

As for other changes we will also include links to the following images
www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405747.jpg (http://www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405747.jpg)
www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405748.jpg (http://www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405748.jpg)
www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405228.jpg (http://www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405228.jpg)
www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405165.jpg (http://www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405165.jpg)
www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405003.jpg (http://www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405003.jpg)
www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405002.gif (http://www.magazine-services.net/covers/10405002.gif)

PLUS THE LOGO (uSubscribe Exclusive)
http://www.magazine-services.net/covers/magazine_logos/1200.gif

Also enhancing Datafeed so that entry page could be changed from http://www.usubscribe.com/order.cfm?id=63424 to
http://www.usubscribe.com/order_new.cfm?id=63424 or
http://www.usubscribe.com/order_gift.cfm?id=63424 or
http://www.usubscribe.com/order_renew.cfm?id=63424 or
http://www.usubscribe.com/cover_view.cfm?id=63424

If anyone has anything else now is the time to speak before the cooks enter the kitchen.

Reha

[kkcoolj]

What about a field that shows changes to the file?

Another affiliate program uses flags for a "new" product since the last update, or the date of entry into the catalog?

Or another valueable thing would be to have a separate data file perhaps of all titles that have been removed ("dead") historically. So whenever a title is deleted from the active catalog, it is moved over into the "dead" file. That way we can do a quick compare and just pull those from our current files vs. a complete rehash every time we pull a fresh version of the catalog? Does this make any sense?

[rhkocatas]

We are going to get started on this tomorrow and should have something in a few days. One last thought.....

Would any of you find it useful if the urls for the individual magazine home pages were contained in the file such as www.time.com, (http://www.time.com,) www.businessweek.com, (http://www.businessweek.com,) etc....

[rhkocatas]

Almost forgot...what about including keywords?

Maxim,Maxim Magazing,Maxim Subscription,Maxum, etc?

[kkcoolj]

Mr. Reha,

WOW you just read my mind! Yes to the pub url's and yes to the KW's please.

[NoviL]

Ok,

Here's my first question about the datafeed. Isn't it possible to see the total cover price for a subscribtion directly on the datafeed?

I mean, i.e. Skateboarding (24 Issues) product has a cover_price of $3.99. When we multiply this with 24, we get the Cover Price value on uSubscribe's product detail page, which is $95.76.

What I ask is if it's possible to see this value directly on the datafeed?

[Andy Rodriguez]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by NoviL:
Ok,

Here's my first question about the datafeed. Isn't it possible to see the total cover price for a subscribtion directly on the datafeed?

I mean, i.e. Skateboarding (24 Issues) product has a cover_price of $3.99. When we multiply this with 24, we get the Cover Price value on uSubscribe's product detail page, which is $95.76.

What I ask is if it's possible to see this value directly on the datafeed? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Novil,

We will look at this for future releases, however I would suggest creating an easy formula on excel for your spreadsheet. Simply take the price field and create another column with a factor of (x12)or the frequency of the magazines issue dates.

Thanks,

[Nature Boy]

Just downloaded a new feed and I must say it's looking pretty good. I like how there seems to be not alot of tweaking that I need to do to it. http://66.132.187.8/smilies/thumbup2.gif

Just wanted to let you know though, that I'm finding 12 magazines/items without categories:
Blender
Cargo
FEED- Beats, Rhymes & Lights
FEED- Beats, Rhymes & Lights
FEED- Beats, Rhymes & Lights
The Golfer
Pontoon & Deck Boat Magazine
E-Pregnancy
Family Energy
AARP The Magazine/Membership
Batanga
VP Magazine

Other than that, I'm diggin it. http://abw.infopop.cc/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

A couple of questions though, how often is the feed updated or how often would be best to update the feed?

[rhkocatas]

NatureBoy:

Feed is updated "realtime" but changes to out catalog occur daily...Bottom line...refresh as often as you want for current data but safe to say that there are rarely more then 10 changes a month and usually for odd titles like "Eastern European Underwater Basket Weaving Quarterly"...k?

We will get the other 12 titles catagorized by tomorrow...

[Nature Boy]

Very cool http://66.132.187.8/smilies/thumbup2.gif

In the process of finishing up my magazine site now.

[rhkocatas]

Nature Boy:

We haven't forgotten you! In the process of updating those missing categories we came across a small bug in our admin that Osiris needs to fix. I will PM you when the categories are in there. Should be about a day.

Sorry again for the delay. http://abw.infopop.cc/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif