Teesed
March 12th, 2008, 01:09 AM
Tired of checking Commission Junction every hour to see if you have a sale?
Once you have a sale, are you crazed trying to track down what actually sold?
Does it cost you more in time checking to find that you've made a $2.50 commission?
Do you have any idea which of your advertisers give you the best return on your investment? Which of your pids?
MyCJReports.com (http://www.mycjreports.com) has your answers.
There are two programs available with MyCJReports.
With the basic emailReports account, MyCJReports will check your CJ sales and send you email notices at intervals you determine. The cost for this service is $19.99 for the year.
For specific advertisers such as CafePress, sales reports include the shop id, shop name, product thumbnail, title, price, commission and links to the product and shop for easy research. For other advertisers, the basic sales total and commission amount is shown along with the advertiser and website PID. I can access more information about a CafePress sale for example, because the supplied SKU can easily be accessed via the CafePress api and the information can be pulled into the report. As I get requests, I will work on adding this functionality for other advertisers where available.
The second service includes quickReports and powerReports in addition to the emailReports as a package deal. Prices vary by subscription date.
1-month $9.99
3-month $19.99
6-month $29.99
12-month $39.99
quickReports allows you to see your recent sales activity at any time using a unique url. No logging on to CJ, no logging on to MyCJReports. Bookmark it and check any date in your sales reports with the same type of visual report provided by the individual emailReports.
The powerReports option pulls your last 6 months of sales data from Commission Junction so you can view it in several powerful views by date range. Check your top selling shops, your top product types, your top SID, PID or just a straight summary of your sales by date.
A free three-day trial of the emailReports is available (and required) before completing the subscription of your choice.
More information on what you need in order to sign up and pricing is available on the site including the FAQ and the Support forums.
Now, full disclosure:
Since this program uses the CJ API and CJ does not immediately report a sale in real-time, I do have to store sales data in order to know when a reported sale is "new". Yes, this does technically give me access to your sales data. I could theoretically use it to take over the affiliate world.
My original idea after developing it for myself was to offer the code for sale, but the technology required to even serve the code is tricky. You have to have a certain flavor of PHP on your server, the ability to access secure web services through SOAP, etc. I changed hosts twice myself trying to find one that would work and I ended up at Dreamhost where I could install my own version of PHP.
So it made more sense to run it off of something that I know works where I can fix a bug once for everyone instead of releasing updates that people would have to install. After all, this is designed for marketers that don't want to mess with trying to figure out code that it took many of us monkeys months to crack ourselves.
So, with the "emailReports only" account, I download the data for 24 hours before it's automatically purged from the system. That must be done in order to check to see if the reported sales from CJ are new or not.
With the powerReports option where you can view your data in different reports, I obviously have to download it to get it to you.
So, the question goes, "doesn't this mean that you (I) will have access to our sales data and could use it yourself to your own advantage?"
The simple answer to that is "yes".
I originally offered to allow everyone to see the aggregate data for that very reason, and the overwhelming answer from my testers was a resounding "NO!". They didn't want everyone in the world to see what the top selling shops and programs are, especially if they were a big affiliate that put alot of time into finding the best converters for them.
It is a valid question and one I addressed myself early in the process. The way I access my own sales data is the same way everyone else does. I have my own account to log into and I run my reports through the site just like you would.
Any time I've had to look at someone's data to track a bug on a new type of sale, I ask for permission to do so.
So, while I "can", all I can say is that I won't. And you can decide what to do with that.
For those of you that don't know me, I am a moderator on the CafePress boards and have written several scripts for CafePress shopkeepers as well as my own affiliate sites, Teesed.com, MommiesTees.com and FindMyTee.com. If you would like references, you can see some of the replies to my post on the CP boards here (http://forums.cafepress.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/63810373/m/437101412). Feel free to ask questions, and don't forget about the free 3-day trial.
Jim
Teesed.com
MyCJReports.com - bring your affiliate sales to your inbox! (http://www.mycjreports.com)
Once you have a sale, are you crazed trying to track down what actually sold?
Does it cost you more in time checking to find that you've made a $2.50 commission?
Do you have any idea which of your advertisers give you the best return on your investment? Which of your pids?
MyCJReports.com (http://www.mycjreports.com) has your answers.
There are two programs available with MyCJReports.
With the basic emailReports account, MyCJReports will check your CJ sales and send you email notices at intervals you determine. The cost for this service is $19.99 for the year.
For specific advertisers such as CafePress, sales reports include the shop id, shop name, product thumbnail, title, price, commission and links to the product and shop for easy research. For other advertisers, the basic sales total and commission amount is shown along with the advertiser and website PID. I can access more information about a CafePress sale for example, because the supplied SKU can easily be accessed via the CafePress api and the information can be pulled into the report. As I get requests, I will work on adding this functionality for other advertisers where available.
The second service includes quickReports and powerReports in addition to the emailReports as a package deal. Prices vary by subscription date.
1-month $9.99
3-month $19.99
6-month $29.99
12-month $39.99
quickReports allows you to see your recent sales activity at any time using a unique url. No logging on to CJ, no logging on to MyCJReports. Bookmark it and check any date in your sales reports with the same type of visual report provided by the individual emailReports.
The powerReports option pulls your last 6 months of sales data from Commission Junction so you can view it in several powerful views by date range. Check your top selling shops, your top product types, your top SID, PID or just a straight summary of your sales by date.
A free three-day trial of the emailReports is available (and required) before completing the subscription of your choice.
More information on what you need in order to sign up and pricing is available on the site including the FAQ and the Support forums.
Now, full disclosure:
Since this program uses the CJ API and CJ does not immediately report a sale in real-time, I do have to store sales data in order to know when a reported sale is "new". Yes, this does technically give me access to your sales data. I could theoretically use it to take over the affiliate world.
My original idea after developing it for myself was to offer the code for sale, but the technology required to even serve the code is tricky. You have to have a certain flavor of PHP on your server, the ability to access secure web services through SOAP, etc. I changed hosts twice myself trying to find one that would work and I ended up at Dreamhost where I could install my own version of PHP.
So it made more sense to run it off of something that I know works where I can fix a bug once for everyone instead of releasing updates that people would have to install. After all, this is designed for marketers that don't want to mess with trying to figure out code that it took many of us monkeys months to crack ourselves.
So, with the "emailReports only" account, I download the data for 24 hours before it's automatically purged from the system. That must be done in order to check to see if the reported sales from CJ are new or not.
With the powerReports option where you can view your data in different reports, I obviously have to download it to get it to you.
So, the question goes, "doesn't this mean that you (I) will have access to our sales data and could use it yourself to your own advantage?"
The simple answer to that is "yes".
I originally offered to allow everyone to see the aggregate data for that very reason, and the overwhelming answer from my testers was a resounding "NO!". They didn't want everyone in the world to see what the top selling shops and programs are, especially if they were a big affiliate that put alot of time into finding the best converters for them.
It is a valid question and one I addressed myself early in the process. The way I access my own sales data is the same way everyone else does. I have my own account to log into and I run my reports through the site just like you would.
Any time I've had to look at someone's data to track a bug on a new type of sale, I ask for permission to do so.
So, while I "can", all I can say is that I won't. And you can decide what to do with that.
For those of you that don't know me, I am a moderator on the CafePress boards and have written several scripts for CafePress shopkeepers as well as my own affiliate sites, Teesed.com, MommiesTees.com and FindMyTee.com. If you would like references, you can see some of the replies to my post on the CP boards here (http://forums.cafepress.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/63810373/m/437101412). Feel free to ask questions, and don't forget about the free 3-day trial.
Jim
Teesed.com
MyCJReports.com - bring your affiliate sales to your inbox! (http://www.mycjreports.com)
