How to track affiliate installations for mobile app in transparency ?
Hi !
I'm the creator of a mobile application and I need to share a link with a partner.
I would like to pay my partner for each android and ios installation by each user who will install the application from a link that my partner will share on his blog.
For that, I know it exists some solutions (branch.io, google analytics ...) but the problem is that it's not transparency.
I mean, we both need to see in a plateform how many installations will be generated by the link, in a transparent manner. This kind of partnership cannot to be only based on trust.
For example :
If my partner generate 150 installations, I can't tell him that he has generated 100 installations, because we would see the same information in the plateform : 150 installations.
Is an application like that already exists ?
Thanks !
Check out the Google Play Install Referrer Library from Google: https://developer.android.com/google/play/installreferrer/library
What is awesome about it is that it's not an analytics platform. It's a library that you install into your mobile app that allows you to parse the URL that was used to install the mobile app and then you can take that data and do whatever you want with it.
I send my data to Firebase App Analytics but you can send it to your own server, push it to Google Sheets, email it, whatever. It's just data in your mobile app you can do whatever you want with.
As far as iOS for the App Store, I don't know the equivalent at this time to the Play Install Referrer Library.
Oh, if you want an example app that uses this library: https://github.com/levibostian/AndroidBlanky
Hi @levibostian !
But that means to code a system to get the data and display it to my partner ? I mean, I need to code some stuff in order to be transparency, alright ?
My suggestion requires a developer to implement. From your post, you said that you are the creator of a mobile app so that means that you are a developer who is comfortable with code, right?
You do not need to code a system to display information to your partner. You can use an existing system for that. You can use Google Sheets, Airtable, some sort of Analytics platform, whatever you want to display the information.
It does require you to write some code to send the information to a system that displays the data (such as Google Sheets, Airtable, some sort of Analytics platform, etc).
One simple way is to use Zapier. You can create a Zapier incoming webhook and from that as a trigger, you can send the data to anything that Zapier supports as the action. So in your app, you would write some code to perform a POST network call to an endpoint with the parsed analytics parameters you parsed from the Play Referral library, and send that data to whatever system you chose to display the information and done.
Yes, you need to write code to send the data to a database to store the information. However, you can use an existing system to display that information between you and your partner.
Ok @levibostian
In fact, If I'm asking the question, it's more to know if a solution already exists without code anything to report the data.
Yes, I could do it myself because I'm a software engineer.
But I want to know if there is a solution with a minimum of coding, because may be I could make a plateform Saas to handle this transparency.
These solutions (report in Google Sheets, Airtable ...) are not transparency. Where is the proof that the data are not altered ? It's just a Google Sheet. I could update it manually and say to my partner : look the google sheet, you have generated 100 installations (but in fact, he has generated 150).
Do you understand my point of view ?
:)
Ah, I understand. I would stick with an Analytics platform then.
Here is a good overview of how to do so with MixPanel: https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004600723-Track-Campaign-Source-For-App-Install-Events
Yes @levibostian.
However, it's not transparency. Even with MixPanel : how my partner could check the installations generated by him ?
I don't understand how using an analytics platform such as Mixpanel would not be transparent? Mixpanel is not editable like a Google Sheets or Airtable would be. It can only be updated by pushing data to it via the API.
Your partner would be able to log into the Mixpanel dashboard and view the number of install events occurred for them. They would be able to quickly and easily be able to view that number over time.
Thanks @levibostian for your participation !
Ask questions anytime. Happy to help.
Keep building awesome apps!
So in MixPanel, we can share a dashboard with any other user ?
Yes you can: https://mixpanel.com/blog/2017/03/07/mixpanel-dashboards-launch/