

Ask HN: Implementing referral codes for iPhone app. - tmpk

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.<p>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.
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gyardley
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.

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tmpk
Thanks, this helps.

