There are a couple housekeeping issues I want to take care of before I get going.

1. This site will obviously promote SingleFeed as a data feed management service, but I will also discuss other solutions provided by Channel Intelligence, Channel Advisor, Mercent, Performics, MerchantAdvantage, RedZoneGlobal, etc. There are a lot of companies trying to help merchants perform better on the shopping comparison engines, and I hope to include them all in the discussion here. I’d love to even have those companies become regular contributors to LoveYourFeed (seriously!).

2. I will accept advertising on this site, but I won’t take money directly from a shopping comparison engine. Will I take money from another division of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, eBay, EW Scripps, Experian, etc.? Not sure yet.

I will never display ads from Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network. Sure, I’m leaving easy money on the table, but I think there are plenty of other advertisers around that would be interested in reaching an active audience of internet marketers.

Expect the usual suspects…SEO firms, PPC management companies, e-commerce providers, etc. I’m going to be picky about my advertisers, so don’t expect just anyone to show up.

3. I hope to engage the shopping comparison engines in a more open dialogue through LoveYourFeed.

Right now Shopzilla, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, etc. do a poor job of communicating outages or problems with their sites. Google and Yahoo! issue ‘weather’ reports and frequently update developers of changes to their services. I’m going to encourage the shopping engines to use LoveYourFeed for the same purpose. I’ll even give each shopping engine access to this blog as I want them to truly start a dialogue with merchants. Over the last year, the shopping comparison engines have taken a lot of flack for rising PPC rates, lower conversion, and fairly poor customer service. Yes, I’m making a generalization (many engines have and continue to delight merchants), but I think more communication is a good thing. I know not everyone will participate in this discussion, but it’s worth a try.

I’ll also allow the shopping engines to post their own optimization tips and strategies. Doesn’t it make sense to have Shopzilla talk about submitting and optimizing a Shopzilla feed?

4. I’m juggling a couple hats, so there might be conflicts of interest. We’ll see. If you have any concerns, just let me know. At the end of the day, my value to any one of my audiences is enhanced through managing the other services.

5. I hope to have plenty of guest bloggers as I’m just one of many internet marketers using the shopping engines. I’d love to have people like Lisa Bari (Art.com), Paul O’Brien (HP Home & Home Office, SEOBrien), JP Werlin (Downtown Ecommerce Partners), Nathan Kartchner (SewellDirect), Victor Berggren (Tampa Bay New Balance), David Dwek (Etronics), and Christal Condon (Home Decor Products, Inc., BuildersSquare) get involved. Sure, not everyone is going to be willing to share ’secrets’, but if we put together our collective thinking caps, we’ll be able to intelligently add to the conversation like Danny Sullivan did in the early days of search engine optimization on Search Engine Watch.

I’m passionate about this industry and want to see it continue to grow and succeed. Yes, I obviously hope to profit from SingleFeed and LoveYourFeed, but if that’s all you see, then you’re missing the point. I’ve helped merchants, VCs, analysts, media, the shopping engines, and others understand what’s going on in the shopping comparison engine industry.

Now it’s time to focus on you, the merchants, and give you the tools, research, and insight you need to understand and love your data feeds.