StatsJunky Review – Affiliate Stats Tracking Centralized

For serious affiliate marketers, the top priority is to understand how profitable your programs are.  This is very important for those leveraging pay-per-click as a traffic source.  In paying for traffic, you must know what the traffic is giving you back for your investment, and which keywords are converting, etc.  Otherwise you are, as they say, “flying blind” and won’t last.  Essentially there are two key functions in play… compiling affiliate and PPC stats, and then analyzing those affiliate and PPC stats.  The challenge is, after setting everything up, you sill need to login to all your programs (affiliate and PPC), and tally up the numbers in a complicated spreadsheet you’ve likely created, and see how you are doing.  In a word, time consuming, and now unnecessary.  This review of StatsJunky affiliate stats tracking software covers the challenges affiliate marketers have, problems the product solves, what I like about it, what I don’t like about it, and a special offer for MarketingProfessor readers.
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StatsJunky Review – Affiliate Stats Tracking Centralized

SPECIAL UPDATE: June 30th – Just completed an interview with Charles Boyle of StatsJunky, and the LIVE-Replay is below in the YouTube video.

Affiliate marketing is a very popular and intriguing business model for those who want to make legitimate money online.  One of the most common reasons affiliate marketers succeed is that they do a good job tracking their affiliate stats so they can make informed decisions about a given product, promotion, or campaign.

• How do you track all this information?
• What should you be tracking as an affiliate marketer?
• The process becomes very time consuming, is there software that can help with this?

Interview with StatsJunky VP Charles Boyle

The Challenges of an Affiliate Marketer

As thrilling as it is to get paid for promoting products that sell, those who last know what got them there, and make adjustments so they are a step ahead of the competition.  Here is a list of information successful affiliate marketers compile to track their success:

• Affiliate earnings
• Pay-Per-Click stats tracking
• Keyword profitability per PPC engine
• Keyword profitability across all PPC engines
• Knowing most profitable PPC campaigns
• Tracking IDs for PPC traffic and natural SEO traffic
• etc…

To gather all this information the affiliate marketer has to log into each of their related PPC and affiliate accounts, gather/export the data and drop it in their handy dandy (super customized) scientific spreadsheet.  Good affiliate marketers have this information tallied twice a day, so they can correct course midday if needed.

From this information they determine:

• Which campaigns are costing them the most
• Where to spend more money, and get more return
• Which keywords and adgroups are resulting in the most sales
• Which ad variations are getting the best click-thru rates
• Paid traffic conversions vs. natural SEO conversions

What is StatsJunky?

StatsJunky is a Windows-based software application that automatically downloads all your affiliate and PPC stats on a scheduled or on-demand basis, tallying all your results in one simple interface.

StatsJunky User Interface

What Problems Does StatsJunky Solve?

You can get all the details on the StatsJunky special offer sales page, but let me summarize them as I see it.

When it comes to compiling affiliate and PPC data:

• Centralization: Provides a single place to look at all your affiliate earnings and PPC stats in (near) real-time.
• Calculate: The need to create, update, and maintain your fancy spreadsheet is no longer
• Integrate: You can actually launch PPC campaigns pretty quickly, right within the interface.
• Profit Loss: You can look at total profit across all campaigns or down to the keyword (powerful)

Add or Request a Program in StatsJunky

Analyzing Affiliate and PPC data:

Winners: Quickly identify looser campaigns and dump or modify them.
Analysis: Drill down into campaigns with visibility to campaigns, and sub IDs you may have created

StatsJunky Drilldown Menu

Keyword Profitability: Once you have it setup (there’s a simple wizard and video tutorials) there’s keyword level conversion information
Data Manipulation: Sort and organize keywords by either profit $ or profit %
Custom Views: Powerful filtering available in the results screen
Integration: View ad variations without having to login to ad platform (AdWords, YPN, etc.)
Cool Charting: Pretty graphs by program or profit.

What I Like About StatsJunky

As with any software, it’s not until you try it that you understand how it really works.  Honestly, I’ve used programs that had a pretty interface, only to be compromised with poor performance, crashes, etc.  That hasn’t been my experience with StatsJunky.

StatsJunky Updates Regularly

Performance: After 8 weeks using it, there has not been one crash, or hang to mention, and no noticeable performance issues.
Subscription: I like that it is a monthly subscription, this allows them to continually improve the product, and updates did come frequently (and applied without a hitch- screenshot below) since I got started with it.  It also gives customers a way out, quit anytime.

Saves Time: That is a bit of an understatement, anyone who has really run a legitimate affiliate marketing business knows the challenges tracking brings.
*Keyword Profitability Tracking: The product allows you to track with tracking IDs and then upload those on a keyword level directly to your adwords account, revealing what keywords convert, and which don’t, this is huge.

Mobile Stats Configuration Screen

StatsJunky Mobile: While I didn’t test it out, the mobile edition of StatsJunky is included, and looks very well done (screenshot below).

What I Don’t Like About StatsJunky

Program Availability: The bottom line here is that it didn’t have all of the affiliate programs I am registered with.  So while I could enter those programs and update them manually, for me it kind of puts a speed bump in the road to automating the reporting of all my affiliate marketing activities.  That said, with over 250 most popular programs already in there, coupled with their simple “Request New Program” function (See top arrow in the Add Affiliate/PPC Program screenshot above), I’m hopeful the other ones will soon follow. Download the StatsJunky trial here

No Mac Client: There is currently no Mac client.  This isn’t a big deal for me, but might be for those Mac lovers out there.  Many Mac users who have dealt with this issue for other applications can use work around solutions like parallels or VMWare to run Windows under the Mac OS.

The Bottomline on StatsJunky

As I think of affiliate marketers, two types of people come to mind, the starters, and accomplished affiliate marketer. Starters are, well, starting out, learning the ropes, etc., and accomplished those making at least part-time income with affiliate marketing.

For Starter Affiliate Marketers: One of the biggest reasons affiliate marketers succeed is that they develop a system to track their online activities exposing the most profitable ones.  The challenge is setting up and maintaining those systems.  I believe that StatsJunky could be a product that removes much of that challenge for many who want to build a sustainable, part time or full time affiliate marketing business.  For the right person it could be a game changer.  Get the StatsJunky special offer for MarketingProfessor.com readers here

For Accomplished Affiliate Marketers: If you don’t use StatsJunky yet, get started now.  This will be a game changer, as it will allow you to see your progress in near real-time, giving you information on profitable keywords and more, so can make adjustments faster, and make more money with less effort.  As affiliate marketing changes, you need every advantage possible, this advantage may not be as great as more affiliate marketers get a hold of StatsJunky.  I think at least the trial is worth your time.  Download StatsJunky here

StatsJunky Special Offer for MarketingProfessor.com Subscribers

Under special arrangements with the offices at StatsJunky, they are making a special offer for MarketingProfessor.com readers and subscribers only.  You can read about and get access to the StatsJunky special offer here

Comments/Feedback: You use StatsJunky?  You have feedback on this review or special offer? Did you download the product?  What do you like, or not like (keep it real :-).  Chime in using the comment boxes below.

*image credit to artemfinland