Ask HN: Implementing referral codes for iPhone app.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093170

by tmpk • 16 years ago

2 2 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I am thinking of setting up a referral/affiliate program for my iPhone app. The idea is to give out referral codes to affiliates, and then ask each user to enter an optional referral code, log the code in a Flurry event, and then compensate the affiliate based on Flurry analytics. The problem is that I have to give limited access to my Flurry account to each affiliate so that he can verify how many users installed the app using his referral code.

Has someone else solved this problem in a better way? To my knowledge there is no support for this from Apple in iTunes Connect. Thanks.

gyardley• 16 years ago

Clever. I'm a product guy at Flurry, so here's my thoughts:

1) You could ask us for more granular access permissions - but that's probably not likely to happen soon, because the roadmap's pretty packed.

2) You could just ask your affiliates to trust you and give them the numbers directly - that's actually how most affiliate networks work, with the affiliates are completely reliant on the network's reporting.

3) You could use Pinch Media's analytics, which has an API that lets you access the number of unique users that completed an action, and then build a dashboard for your affiliates that calls the Pinch API. (Fine by us, since we merged with Pinch Media.) That said, two caveats: the Pinch product aggregates data slower than the Flurry product, and we're merging the Pinch product into Flurry product. Since Pinch and Flurry handle events differently, you might end up reimplementing the API calls post-merger.

4) You could start by just sending out stats to your affiliates manually, and later build your own dashboard for them using Flurry's not-yet-built API. We're committed to releasing an API for Flurry, since Pinch already has an API and we're making sure the merged product has the superset of Pinch and Flurry features. I don't have timing for you yet, though.

tmpk• 16 years ago

Thanks, this helps.

Ask HN: Implementing referral codes for iPhone app.

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