Where’s the affiliate marketing App Store?

The mention of an Affili.net application store in this week’s A4UExpo newsletter caught my eye so off I went to check it out. Perhaps it’s completely slipped me by but this was the first I’d heard of their application store and a quick browse around threw up some little gems. Either way it got me thinking.

I think pretty much every affiliate network has an API these days and the technically minded amongst us use this a quick, powerful and customised way to interact with data, whether this be checking stats or pulling product information.

There are of course other standalone 3rd parties out there such as Affmeter and DC Storm for Affiliates that take this one step further by offering paid for solutions to retrieve cross network conversion statistics and paid search ROI management solutions respectively. Not forgetting the excellent Easy Content Units, which for a small cost allows you to cut and paste price comparison functionality to your site.

We all know and have heard about the App store from Apple which now boasts an incredible 140,000+ apps but as the name of this blog post suggests, where’s the affiliate App Store? Imagine a place, an archive if you will that serves as a central location for paid for and free scripts, tools, apps, code snippets each allowing you to interact with individual networks API’s and cross network data? These could be paid for iPhone apps or simple code snippets developed by networks or even open source by those who simply want to help others. I recall when Zanox launched their Application Store and now we have Affili.net. Is this going to be the direction networks head into 2010 or something the Germans have nailed down and the UK lagging behind?

Imagine an iPhone version of AffMeter? How awesome would that be? Imagine you have a new website and quickly need to drop in some price comparison code to retrieve real-time price listings for a particular product? A quick trip to the affiliate app store, search, buy/download, done! Of course the slight draw back is that networks are probably going to develop for their own platform exclusively but can you really blame them if it’s going to give them competitive advantage? For affiliates who develop Apps this could actually become a new revenue stream. If you have a great idea, a clever bit of functionality that others could benefit from, share it, spread the word and profit.

I’m pretty sure the first person to develop an iPhone app which allows you to pull cross network affiliate conversions for the UK’s popular networks will not only get the kudos they deserve but a tidy profit to boot. Providing they sell it for a reasonable price of course ;)

So let’s here from you. If you had a dream bit of code or an iPhone app relating to affiliate marketing what would it be and what would it do?

Thanks
Paul