Do NOT Trust Prosper202!
Posted by Riley Pool | Posted in Affiliate Marketing | Posted on April 23rd, 2010
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I, for one, do not care for Bloosky nor do I care for the direction I believe they’re headed in. With that being said, I will not be upgrading my Prosper202 installation.
The main reason for my post is to say that you can’t trust your Prosper202 stats. Pixels fire inadvertently sometimes, so check your stats at the network to make sure they match what you’re earning in Prosper. I know I was checking mine a few weeks back and realized my earnings were off about $200. I don’t know why I hadn’t always checked this, but I should have considering I’m anal about everything I do.
Also, don’t forget that some networks are on EDT (AKMG, C2M), others are CDT (PKM) while others are PDT (Neverblue). So take that into effect when you’re comparing stats.
If you can’t get your conversions in your Prosper install to matchup with the network, you might want to raise it as an issue with your AM to make sure you’re being credited all the leads you’re supposed to be getting since their pixel is firing more than their stats show. You do have all kinds of information to relay back to them since Prosper tracks it all.
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I do the stat analyzing part manually.
As far as worrying about time zones, I track campaigns separately, but I just do the stats daily.
Works out nice sometimes, but other times not so great
I think you could have done a better job with this post by doing a little digging about bloosky and the 202 team as it currently stands, and would come up with some juicy stories to post. There are reasons to not support the project but they have nothing to do with the quality which is fairly solid.
Mind to elaborate more? make a post in your blog?
I knew the ‘Cakes would disapprove. The thought crossed my mind, I just don’t have repertoire with a key person to do it justice.
Post it up cakes. I’ve heard… but I just won’t post it.
Don’t be skurred Jon! If I had anything other than heresay, I’d break the info.
i didnt talk to bloosky at all at ad:tech, and not much to the t202 guys, (now looking back on it, I should have) – what’s your biggest issues with them?
I just think they’re a shady company and are up to no good.
I was hoping for something juicier based on the title… Oh well. Are you still continuing to use the ‘ol P202 1.3.2 install then? Or is there a new tracking system that you are using?
Prosper202 1.3.2 it is!
will some please have a coder take a look and post the lines of code that are “reporting” data back to bloosky.
that is the elephant in the room that no one here is wanting to mention and I would rather have a more reputable source than WF.
nice to meet you at ad:tech riley, jonathan & green
1.5 and 1.5.1 don’t report home about your stats. You can diff both 1.3.2 and 1.5.1 to see yourself. The diff is around 11,000 lines total, give or take any mods you have.
The only checking in they do is verifying the api key for the pro version, and possibly reading an RSS feed — but these are not new to 1.5.1, and the rss code is doing nothing strange.
For all the complaints of the company, p202 is a pretty good platform, and I think 1.5.1 is kosher.
I’m confused by your post- first you said not to trust Prosper as it is not tracking properly and then you say to use Prosper data to get credit from your AM if the numbers do not match. Am I the only one to who that does not make sense?
Sorry for the confusion. Do not trust all the revenue figures that Prosper202 says you’ve earned. Verify your revenue with your affiliate networks.
If the data doesn’t correspond with you have a record of every time their pixel fired, hence showing a conversion in Prosper202. So you can take the recorded data from the converted clicks and try to get credited for these clicks or, at worst, assist the network to find why their pixel is misfiring.
What do you suggest in place of prosper?
I suggest using Prosper202 Version 1.3.2. I still use it. I just don’t suggest upgrading.
There are some very promising looking tracking solutions in beta right now. Bevo Media has one in beta right now. There’s another one called TrackStatPro that’s being developed and there’s another one I saw on WickedFire the other day that shows promise, too.
Riley… I’ve been a long time reader of your blog but this bullshit post was enough to unsubscribe to your feed.
If you want to post his about Bloosky go ahead and do it. But using a linkbait title to say that Prosper occasionally reports wrong statistics (which everyone fucking knows) is just plain fucking stupid.
Just my $0.02.
dude, after reading your post, my 202 forced me to upgrade to 1.5.1. its weird how can they switch the program to force the version i have, they must have some control over my self hosted application? anyway to stop the upgrade?
it’s a trap!
great post as usual!
the new prosper doesnt have anything “shady” in it. I’ve gone through all the code, and its clean.
The only “fone home” features are:
the api
auto updates
the blog / advertising / rss feed
remote image in an iframe
rip this stuff out, and you have a quiet prosper. But it doesnt share your campaign data anyway, that’s encrypted in your own mysql database
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