LinkShare’s Build-the-Best-Widget Contest

Let’s say a family friend of yours just put up a Web site on which she sells hardware and software. And let’s say you have a blog where you write reviews of the latest computer games. To help your friend out and send some potential customers to her site, you begin including a simple banner ad, linking to it, on your blog. The ad has modest success and you begin thinking about ways to make it more effective. What if you made it interactive and showed visitors to your site a few of the different laptops that your friend sells? What if visitors to your blog reading a review of a game were automatically shown an ad for it? What if you collected information on the readers who make repeat visits to your blog and showed them products from your friend’s site based on their choices? Ads that are interactive, that take context into consideration, or that track a user’s behavior are called widgets. In this contest, LinkShare is awarding a trip to New York City (please see the legal disclaimers for details) to the programmer who builds the best widget.

The LinkShare network is a collection of tens of thousands of high-quality Web sites on which the products or services of merchants like your friend are marketed in a variety of ways. We track the sales on these sites and can determine which type of widgets work best. We use Web services to get data out of our system and into the widget.

LinkShare has several REST-based Web services for sending widgets.

1.    LinkLocator Direct II sends a list of any of the ads available to link to a Web site.
2.    Merchandiser Query tool sends links to products based on the keyword search provided.
3.    Automated LinkGenerator allows a user to build deep links to any product on an advertiser sells.
4.    Targeted Merchandiser API allows a user to get products based on context of the referring page.

Use these Web services technologies to build a widget that is technically impressive and takes a creative approach to marketing. Build the most impressive, most creative widget and you’ll win!  Our judges are looking for a solution that is innovative in its approach to generating sales for a merchant—innovative in its use of technology and its marketing presentation. They are also looking for a solution that is effective.

To participate is easy. First, join LinkShare as a “publisher,” it’s free and anyone can do it. Once you’ve logged into our interface, you’ll need to pick up a token to access the Web services feeds. Next, use our feeds to get product links or promotional links to a merchant’s site. Finally, put these links, with working LinkShare click tracking, into a dynamic widget.

To see examples of dynamic widgets, visit the Web sites for Tumri, Chitika, Pop Shops, and Lab Pixies, all of which specialize in creating them.

Good luck!

Please see attached disclaimers for information on how to enter, deadlines, judging, eligibility, prizes, notification and conditions.