Advertisements Last modified: 2011-04-10 Status: Implemented / Implementation may differ from these notes Idea: (semi-)large "Buy now" / "Download now" button on VN pages, linking either to the product on a webshop or displaying a dropdown list with available releases with links to webshops. A link to a webshop only appears if it has at least one release of the VN on their site, and the link always points directly to the product page, not to the search function or the homepage. A webshop link is internally linked to a release in the database, so we have all kinds of information including whether it's a download or package, and in what language it is. Preferably, the link also indicates the price and whether it is in stock. Possible parties interested in advertising: - J-List Has an affiliate system that includes direct links doesn't store JAN/UPC/catalog numbers - Play-asia Has an affiliate system that includes direct links stores JAN, UPC, and catalog numbers - DLSite English Has an affiliate system that includes direct links Most releases don't even have a JAN code or catalog number - MangaGamer Rather specific "shop", but could count as one. Has no affiliate system, but is planning to add one, as announced in http://mangagamer.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/holidays-passing/ Releases don't have catalog numbers or EAN codes - PaletWeb Has no affiliate system Does have JAN codes for a few titles, but inconsistent Rather messy website... finding/updating links will be a chore - CDJapan Doesn't have that many VNs from what I've browsed, but still several Has an affiliate system (seems to include direct links) Has catalog numbers for most (all?) releases - Hendane! Does not seem to have many VNs (3 or 4?) Has no affiliate system Does not have JAN or catalog numbers - Himeyashop / Erogeshop (out of business?) Has no affiliate system but has shown interest in link exchanges in the past Does not store JAN/UPC/catalog numbers "Temporarily" closed, so probably not a good time to ask for ads? - Eroge-Europe.com (out of business?) Seems to have an affiliate system, haven't really looked at it yet Does not store JAN/UPC/catalog numbers So who is going to update all those links? Three possibilities: 1. Automatically By matching JAN/EAN/UPC or catalog numbers from our database with the information on the webshop, and fetching the information necessary for the links. Since Play-asia is the only one storing that kind of information, this will be rather specific. We can't really expect all other parties to update their system, and for DLSite and MangaGamer it would involve creating (official) catalog numbers for each entry - which would be easy for MG, but certainly not for DLSite. Even if a shop stores it, we'd need fast and up-to-date access to it. We have several thousand JAN codes in the database. If we want to make sure our information is accurate and up-to-date we'd have to check for the availability of each release each day. Doing this will most likely require the other party to update their site with an API providing this information. I somehow doubt they would... 2. Let the advertiser add and update the info Add an admin interface to the site allowing advertisers to add links to their shop to release entries - also allowing them to indicate the price and stock availability. Since advertisers benefit from these links, we can assume that, if they agree to do this, they will keep the info up-to-date. However, for some reason I don't think many advertisers would want to invest that much time in advertising on a single site. Instead of the advertiser itself, it would also be possible to look for a dedicated user to do this for them. Though somehow I doubt we'd find someone like that, and I don't feel like doing that myself. 3. Let our users add and update the info Add webshop links to release entries. Since the price and stock availability tend to change over time and our dear users are either pretty slow on the uptake or too lazy to update VNDB, we can forget about any other information besides the links. :-( It might, however, be possible to automatically fetch the price and stock information anyway since we have the URLs, but in that case the webshop should either allow us to crawl quite a lot or provide an alternative method. Since the list of webshops we link to is not a static one - shops can be added or removed after a while - we can expect these links to be edited quite often, which could make a mess with the edit histories. Alternatively, we could do it VGMdb-like: allow users to simply manage links where the release is sold, regardless of whether they are advertising on VNDB or not. This would still make it possible to special-case advertisers and give them special treatment or fetch additional information.