Thank you. I do get an affiliate fee for each sale. Most retailers provide csv feeds when you join their affiliate program. Parsing and organising the data can be quite difficult as there is no uniform structure and most retailers provide bad/incomplete data. There are a lot of weird edge cases I need to work around.
Some ad blockers are very aggressive at blocking affiliate links. uBlock Origin blocks all track.webgains.com links and even closes the tab if there's a redirect, which is probably what is happening with the first link. I'm adding a feature that will call an ajax request first, and if it's blocked then I will simply redirect to an untracked link. Unfortunately I will lose potential commission this way, but at least the website will still work for everyone. It should hopefully work if you disable your adblocker.
As for the Metrofone link, it's just a redirect on their part. I did a curl request to check this:
> GET /pclick.php?p=29805977293&a=119158&m=6506 HTTP/1.1
> Host: www.awin1.com
> GET /basket/add/contract/iphone-12-5g-128gb-black/three-100gb-new-24-month-14.00/free-delivery?source=awin&awc=6506_1629914525_c508aa142e90213248adbdee4b995550&utm_source=[redacted]&utm_medium=AWIN&utm_campaign=[redacted] HTTP/2
> Host: www.metrofone.co.uk
> GET /contract-phone-deals/iphone-12-5g-128gb-black?basketRedirect=true HTTP/2
There are a lot of weird edge cases I need to work around.
This sounds like a potentially more valuable product to me. Any time I find myself doing integration work like that in an e-commerce setting I think "hm, could this be the Stripe of X".
Yep, I've definitely thought about it. There's only one other company in the UK that does this. They supply their feed/API as a service to nearly all the big comparison sites.
i'm looking a new phone and total cost of ownership might swing buying it through this site
where do you source the deals? is there an api?