Need to download affiliate datafeeds? Try FTPiggy!

On 01.15.09, In Affiliate Marketing, by Hugh

If you’re an affiliate of any kind, chances are you’ll need to regularly download datafeeds from on or many affiliate networks to keep your information up to date. This can be a complete pain in the rear end for even the most seasoned developers - solutions to the problem include manually downloading each feed and [...]

If you’re an affiliate of any kind, chances are you’ll need to regularly download datafeeds from on or many affiliate networks to keep your information up to date. This can be a complete pain in the rear end for even the most seasoned developers - solutions to the problem include manually downloading each feed and then uploading it to the server (not a happy situation with hundreds of feeds), to writing complicated shell scripts with hundreds of lines, which you’ll have to execute server site via cron and take up heaps of memory in the process. Several months ago, I found a great solution to a boring problem - FTPiggy.

For a tiny fee (it’s actually free for beta testers at the moment), FTPiggy provide you with a simple interface to manage your datafeeds, from pretty much any affiliate network. As long as your network can provide you with data download urls to grab feeds, you can use FTPiggy.

Signing up is quick and easy, and once you’re logged in the user interface is intuitive. To start off, you simply add a ‘destination’ which is a folder on your server you’d like the feeds saved to. Simply add the domain / ip address of your server, folder path, ftp login details, test, and you’re done.

Next, to set up each feed you simply add a unique name for your feed (I use merchant / network / site), add in the datafeed url, choose the destination for the file to get uploaded to (you can have multiple destinations for multiple sites), choose the frequency for the upload (weekly or monthly), choose whether to upload it zipped or unzipped, and click save. All done!

Your job is now scheduled to run, and FTPiggy will download your datafeed at the appointed time, unzip it, then upload it to your server. If you’re eager you can manually run the job immediately.

Managing jobs is easy - there’s a very simple search function which works well, especially if you name your jobs properly. You can even check out errors, usage, and other handy information.

Enjoy!