Why it is difficult to build in-house affiliate stats tracking

Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: Why it is difficult to build in-house affiliate stats tracking
Host: John Wright
Published: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 13:19:00 +0000
Duration: 5:22

Speaker labels are a two-speaker split from pauses (host vs guest). Timestamps are `[HH:MM:SS]` from the episode audio. Light ASR; names and brands may need a pass.

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[00:00:00] John Wright: Welcome to the affiliate BI podcast. I want to talk to you about building your own in-house affiliate stats tracker. All right. So we already know that's a little bit of a mouthful, but I just did a post or a poll on LinkedIn and I asked this question. I said, how easy or difficult do you think it is to build an in-house stats tracker for affiliate click and revenue data? I said, is it easy, medium, hard, or I don't know. And we've got some initial results and most people think it's hard. Uh, 70% of people think it's hard and it's very hard.

[00:00:36] John Wright: I know this because as our journey as a company, we built our first version of our affiliate stats app and we had to shut it down after two years. It was, it was not a fun experience and we weren't even sure if we were going to rebuild the app again. So why do I ask this question in the first place? It's because quite often I get some companies that they tell us they're not going to use our software and they're going to build this in-house and I say, okay, um, you know, it sucks for me to hear it, but I'm also kind of almost laughing inside just because I'm like, this is a brutal proposition. It's, I think people think that what we do is very easy.

[00:01:15] John Wright: You're like, there's an API. You just use the API to get your stats. I mean, how difficult could this be? And on paper, that's true. It's true until you start testing these APIs and make, wait a minute, um, this data isn't lining up. Why? And then you got to start kind of reverse engineering and figuring things out. And yeah, it was just nothing's more frustrating than running into one of these dead ends and having to solve it. And whether you're doing with the scraper or you're trying to use API, you're trying to make the data that you see in the actual login map, what your, your tool is trying to tell you.

[00:01:50] John Wright: Um, so again, it sounds super easy, but it's until you do it, it just, it's not fun. Um, I can tell you that, you know, today we have 13 people full time in our company. And it's all we do is just, it's just data and product. We don't have like marketing or sales other than some of the work I do on LinkedIn and just doing some outreach. But I mean, we're a heavy tech company. And I also know if we were to launch, let's say an affiliate network, the reason why I don't even feel comfortable saying it, let alone wanting to do it. It's simply because that's just a lot of work. I mean, when we were running our affiliate business, we were affiliates and then

[00:02:30] John Wright: using the money from the affiliate stuff to pay for building Stastrone. I knew we were running two businesses at once, but you know, the idea behind selling the affiliate sites to not just, uh, financially power Stastrone, but I also wanted to do the same with focus. Now, when companies say they're going to just build what we do. We know it's such a heavy proposition that it's, it's more than just money. It's kind of like you're asking an apartment to do something. And quite often what I know to be true is that some of these tech departments have multiple jobs. So we're doing this full time. And not only are we doing it full time, we're doing this and we're, we're fixing bugs because we get the feedback from customers.

[00:03:09] John Wright: Customers say, Hey, it'd be really cool if you can do this. So we've been just doing this for years. So I think if anyone wants to start and say, Hey, you want to try to compete with us and, and try to at least cover, let's say two to 300 affiliate programs, that could take a long time. Now, the problem is that when they look at the project and the, the challenge on paper, it looks easy. So I don't blame people for doing it, but I just wanted to say something that I just think that people think that this is an easy thing to do. And I know it's not easy. There's been ever other companies that have tried to launch these stats apps and I've watched them watch and shut down right away.

[00:03:45] John Wright: I mean, we were literally one of those companies that launched and had to shut it down because it wasn't working. Uh, so there's, there's no shortage of these companies. Um, I do believe there are more that are trying to get in into the space. Um, I know so many stories and I don't want to share them cause it's kind of, it's just personal and confidential of people that have told me like that they try to build the same project and they, they stopped and said, we're not doing it, we're going to shut it down because it's just too difficult. So yeah, um, I don't know what else to say. I'd love to have more customers, uh, give us a try. Um, like I just try to use different analogies.

[00:04:23] John Wright: I mean, like you want to launch an operation and then you want to try to build a product that's as good as a my affiliates or a Raven track. I say it's probably not going to be as good as them because those companies, they've just been doing it for years. And by the time you catch up to them, even if you could catch up to them, they're adding more time and more experience on it. So, uh, yeah, focus on one thing, do it well. I think one of the biggest challenges any affiliate has in this whole

[00:04:50] John Wright: affiliation segment, whether you're in I gaming or, or something else is you have to be like a really good tech company and you also have to be very good at marketing or content or SEO or traffic. So when you have to do two things really well, that's where a lot of companies struggle, uh, they struggled to get to that next level. And if we can be a company that takes one of those things away from you, maybe we can make it easier such that you can, you know, focus on the thing that you are better at and do it well. And, uh, yeah, it's a, let us help you get better and take it to that next level.