Q: With the emergence of RSS Feeds, do you think that affiliate marketing will catch on to this? I do not see how affiliates would want to add additionally technology to their sites which would complicate tracking and compensation. What do you think? Is there great potential for RSS Feeds in the affiliate channel?
A: The early adopters have been dabbling with RSS in affiliate marketing for quite a while.
As far as I can see, it’s been catching on pretty well, both with merchants and affiliates, over the past year.
Merchants are using it both to communicate information to affiliates, as well as to share content and information.
There are a number of examples of blogs/RSS and their uses in affiliate marketing in the Open Directory.
One barometer of the interest in RSS in the industry is that when there was a panel on RSS and blogs at Affiliate Summit 2005, the crowd was standing room only.
I expect the uses of RSS to become more advanced, and for affiliate managers to utilize RSS to communicate with their affiliates to be for more commonplace in the near future.