Monday, April 16, 2007
Time To Master Web Services And The Amazon API
It was one of my new years resolutions to finally get to grips with Amazon's web services, and I've managed to put it off until now but it's looking increasingly like something I'm going to have to learn - here's why:
I had a toy site with a spammy type domain name that was highly listed on MSN.co.uk for the search term "toys". Unfortunately it was removed from MSN's listings shortly before last Christmas which was more than a tad disappointing.
So I resolved to come back with a stronger, toy related domain, which was more brandable and less spammy looking. The success I had with US links on my Wii Preorder site last year using Toys R Us and Walmart convinced me that I wanted a brand I could develop UK and US sites for. So I did some brainstorming and and came up with ToysAndVideoGames.com and ToysAndVideoGames.co.uk.
I've got a working UK site up and running with its first few sales coming through the door. I've used the product feed from Toys 'R' Us UK (via Affiliate Window) to build the site and imagined I would do something similar on the US site . But I hit a roadblock when I discovered that to use a "merchandiser" product feed from Linkshare, I'd need to cough up $250 first which I'm not prepared to do (you can get round this by having 50 sales in previous month but I don't have that). Also, I've seen the Toys R Us product feed and commission change (down to 3%) get thoroughly slated on the AbestWeb forum so have decided not to go ahead with that option.
So I now need to find an alternative and Amazon's toy section seems like the best way to go as far as I can tell, for sheer product range and brand recognition etc, although not being too familiar with the US market, I'd love to know if there's an alternative I should be considering. I've put an Amazon aStore up as a stop gap measure but really want to set about creating a large site which will have many indexable pages.
One piece of good news is that it turns out the .com was registered previously and the domain actually has an age of nearly 6 years, so I'm hoping that may help me avoid the sandbox and quickly build some quality rankings on Google.
The other tool apart from Amazon's API I will be using, and I think it's an essential resource for this project, is a "child". My nephew can give me great insights into what toys are hot and I'm still greatly impressed from the time he instantly spotted that a Pokemon Game Boy game I had bought at a boot sale was a fake.
I had a toy site with a spammy type domain name that was highly listed on MSN.co.uk for the search term "toys". Unfortunately it was removed from MSN's listings shortly before last Christmas which was more than a tad disappointing.
So I resolved to come back with a stronger, toy related domain, which was more brandable and less spammy looking. The success I had with US links on my Wii Preorder site last year using Toys R Us and Walmart convinced me that I wanted a brand I could develop UK and US sites for. So I did some brainstorming and and came up with ToysAndVideoGames.com and ToysAndVideoGames.co.uk.
I've got a working UK site up and running with its first few sales coming through the door. I've used the product feed from Toys 'R' Us UK (via Affiliate Window) to build the site and imagined I would do something similar on the US site . But I hit a roadblock when I discovered that to use a "merchandiser" product feed from Linkshare, I'd need to cough up $250 first which I'm not prepared to do (you can get round this by having 50 sales in previous month but I don't have that). Also, I've seen the Toys R Us product feed and commission change (down to 3%) get thoroughly slated on the AbestWeb forum so have decided not to go ahead with that option.
So I now need to find an alternative and Amazon's toy section seems like the best way to go as far as I can tell, for sheer product range and brand recognition etc, although not being too familiar with the US market, I'd love to know if there's an alternative I should be considering. I've put an Amazon aStore up as a stop gap measure but really want to set about creating a large site which will have many indexable pages.
One piece of good news is that it turns out the .com was registered previously and the domain actually has an age of nearly 6 years, so I'm hoping that may help me avoid the sandbox and quickly build some quality rankings on Google.
The other tool apart from Amazon's API I will be using, and I think it's an essential resource for this project, is a "child". My nephew can give me great insights into what toys are hot and I'm still greatly impressed from the time he instantly spotted that a Pokemon Game Boy game I had bought at a boot sale was a fake.
Permalink // posted by Rob @ 10:37 PM 
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So longs as you know how to parse XML feeds, it's a doddle! To give you an idea, take a look at Top 10 Hottest Products. That's powered completely from the API.
Thanks David - I hope it's not too easy otherwise I'll be kicking myself for not looking at it earlier.
Just to follow up on this:
I was encouraged by David's statement "it's a doddle" and got stuck in today.
Turns out it really is! I didn't realise that the Amazon data was available simply by HTTP request using REST (heck, I didn't even it was called REST til today!) which does it make very easy.
My only issue now is that it's very easy to bind flatter XML to .net controls, which is produced by ECS 3.0, but I don't quite know how to bind child nodes to controls, which you need to do with the data produced in ECS 4.0. So that's what I need to read up on next.
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I was encouraged by David's statement "it's a doddle" and got stuck in today.
Turns out it really is! I didn't realise that the Amazon data was available simply by HTTP request using REST (heck, I didn't even it was called REST til today!) which does it make very easy.
My only issue now is that it's very easy to bind flatter XML to .net controls, which is produced by ECS 3.0, but I don't quite know how to bind child nodes to controls, which you need to do with the data produced in ECS 4.0. So that's what I need to read up on next.
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