Would you believe there’s actually a tool designed to simplify the life of an affiliate marketer? A program known as Nifty Stats has come to rescue, not only for iGaming affiliates but for other web based businesses. This may not be the usual casino or software interview we bring to you, but it’s proof that when LCB comes across a great find, we spread the news! Over the course of a decade and with a client list dominated by general and adult industries, the developers have made adjustments to support client needs based on feedback. Get a feel for the product in our interview with Rado of the Nifty Stats team.
Q: Nifty Stats is a breath of fresh air for affiliates. Please give readers an overview of what it does and how it was developed.
A: Nifty Stats is a desktop program which downloads statistics from many affiliate programs, advertising networks, etc. You just need to insert or import your affiliate accounts and it will do daily statistics downloading for you. Then you can see all the statistics any time, receive sales or payments notifications and other things.
Nifty Stats was developed 10 years ago, but we are constantly improving it. We are implementing not only our ideas, but also receive our users’ feedback and suggestions.
Q: Which industries do the majority of your clients work in?
A: Traditionally most of our users are from general and adult industry, but new users are coming from the gaming industry. We’ve implemented more changes into Nifty Stats this year to fit the specific needs of the gaming industry. One example is new column for registrations.
Q: In the iGaming community, Nifty Stats is compared to the Stats Remote system, which is no longer available, but is there really any comparison and how does it differ from similar products?
A: There are not many desktop programs running solely at user’s computer under his control nowadays. Mostly there are cloud services. For me, one of downsides of such services is that users have to provide access to their accounts and statistics to a 3rd party. Users have to trust their information won’t be abused, there is a risk the service can be hacked and information stolen.
Q: New users may feel intimidated at first. How would you recommend they learn the ropes? Would you consider an in-depth video tutorial on your YouTube channel?
A: Unfortunately, currently we don’t have a complete manual for all features, but there are some tutorials at the Nifty Stats blog. Tutorial posts are easier to find here. We are also glad to help at our support e-mail or form.
Q: Is it possible to import information such as login details or stats from another program? What sort of data and reports can be exported?
A: It is possible to import multiple accounts from a simple CSV file containing program name, login and password for one program at each line. We’ve implemented limited import from Stats Remote. A detailed description is too long to be explained here, but we can send instructions to users which are interested in import.
Q: Does the tool work better with certain affiliate platform providers? If so, could this affect the population of select data within the tool despite its availability in the affiliate program?
A: Some affiliate platforms won’t provide detailed stats. In some cases, you will get more detailed numbers using Nifty Stats. For example, some platforms do not provide daily stats, only monthly or summary since last payout. Nifty Stats is recording increments each day, downloads stats and will present daily stats to you as if it was provided by the affiliate program.
Q: To get the best results, a level of manual entry is required, right? For example, commission payments, associated fees etc.
A: It is true, users can insert some data manually to get better results. For many programs which provide commission payments stats we’ve implemented automatic downloading of commissions sent, so users can easily confirm the payment in new payments list when check or payment arrives. For programs which do not provide this kind of report, users can insert the commission payments manually to see received earnings.
Another kind of manual entry is custom stats – you can insert complete data (amount, hits, sales, etc.) for any day individually or you can set automatic income/expense amount to be inserted regularly. Special case is custom program. If you have your own private system, which provides CSV stats for date given in your URL, Nifty Stats can download it regularly as any other affiliate program.
There are also event notes. For any program, you can enter some notes bound to some time period. For example, you can record event named “Facebook campaign 1” with some description and start/end date. Then you will see it at bottom of graph with statistics for the appropriate program so you will know why sales are higher at that time period.
Q: We experimented with the tool and the instantaneous results were impressive. What sort of technology is required to establish such immediate connections to various programs?
A: Nifty Stats is a native compiled application, so it is able to handle many programs. Download of statistics is usually as fast as affiliate program’s web server.
Q: Your support crew is on top of their game in terms of response times. How large is your client base and how many members of support staff do you have now?
A: Thank you for the compliment. We have a small stable support team, but we keep it to be able to answer questions and solve usual problems daily. We are also fixing and adding new programs almost every day.
Q: Security is a major concern, especially when login credentials are stored in a third-party tool. Would you talk a bit about how the information is safeguarded?
A: I’ve talked a bit about that in the previous question. Nifty Stats is running solely on the user’s computer, so sensitive information is under his control and his responsibility. It means the computer needs to be secure, we recommend using supported and updated versions of Windows. In case of travelling it is recommended to use only trusted networks or VPN while downloading stats and full disk encryption which protects not only Nifty Stats data but also all other programs and documents in case the computer is stolen. We also recommend that users backup data to a safe place regularly.
