168 Billion reasons to stop using Google Analytics | Hacker News Reader

168 Billion reasons to stop using Google Analytics

diorex.com

21 pointssteelydaniel23 comments

"Think Google will not do it? The last time I read their terms and conditions, there is nowhere that it says they cant do this. They will make oral statements saying things like “If we did that we would lose the trust of our advertisers and go out of business”, but they have refused to put that in writing in any way, shape or form. In other words, they can do it."

Except that they won't, because what they say is actually true. For Google the money is in large numbers of advertisers, not in small numbers of affiliate clicks. This post makes no sense at all.

I agree for now. Google needs to protect their bread and butter, paid search, which requires advertisers to have a lot of trust that Google does not act in any way creating a conflict of interest.

However, right now is the good times for Google. The true test is to see how a company (or real people) acts during the tough times. Google's time as king of the mountain will only last so long, and it will be interesting to see how they handle their descent when the time comes.

Good point. However, even if times get tough for Google, the basic principle (a large number of advertisers that trust them are worth more than a smaller number of referrals) still stands. For Google to start screwing their advertisers, times would have to get so tough they'd want to throw their entire business model overboard. Somehow I doubt that will happen.

(and I say this as someone who's not particularly fond of Google to boot)

While that may be true at this point in time, there is no telling how long Google's corporate leaders will be in place and no guarantee that their current philosophy and ideals will remain constant.

Once they have your data, they can mine it forever...

I agree! Clicky [http://getclicky.com] FTW. Live traffic trumps delayed data anyday!

That looks nice, but $17/month for a max of 50,000 pageviews/day is a bit of sticker shock when coming from Google Analytics (and they obviously realize that, since they have a "Why would I pay for Clicky when Google Analytics offers the same thing for free?" section).

We'd offer it for free if we had a way to. But we have to pay the bills and buy new hardware somehow...

Don't get me wrong, I didn't say the pricing is unreasonable, and you are providing features Analytics doesn't have. I'm just saying that it's hard to compete with free, which I'm sure you're already aware of ;)

I'm just one guy, but I think the GetClicky pricing is pretty fair.

We've got some web analytics functionality as part of our marketing software suite and it is one of the more expensive things to support.

Nice! I'd like to diversify the providers of the various web services I use as to not place all my eggs in one basket so to speak. I'll give this analytics solution a try.

So has anyone here had success with or even tried affiliate marketing? I didn't think this was the place where that would get mentioned, but that seems to be who the blogger is most concerned with.

I've been doing affiliate marketing for about 2 years now. So far my best months have been five figures of profit (my best day was four figures of profit). But I know of other folks that are doing much more than that..

Wow. Um. wow.

I guess someone could say "You're doing it wrong" to me here. I've tried integrating affiliate adds with blogs and another site that did rental listings. I've made 18 dollars after tens of thousands of impressions.

I've come across so many affiliate marketing "seminars" and eBooks, but they all smell of "get rich quick" scams to me.

Anyone care to share what works vs what doesn't? I'm really confused on the topic.

It really depends on the site and the niche and what you are trying to do etc.

I'm not sure if a discussion of affiliate marketing is really relevant to "Hacker News".

There are a couple of eBooks I would recommend, but you can get most of that info for free if you read some blogs and forums. Just search for "super affiliate blog" and start your research there.. :)

I think this is relevant, and would love to hear more about it.

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=236211

I second http://www.wickedfire.com

Try hanging out at warriorforum or forums.digitalpoint.com. As for the get rich quick aspect--that's just how you go about selling that kind of information. I'm sure it beats getting rich 10 years later.

Affiliate marketing isn't really a "get rich quick" thing. It takes a lot of time and a lot of trial and error. But if you can hack and you are creative and you aren't too uptight you can make some great cash doing it.

Okay. I went through some of my favorite sites and tried to make a good list of decent affiliate marketing resources.

Notice: feel free to check out all of the links, or ignore them all. I have nothing to gain either way. :)

Recommended forums:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

http://www.wickedfire.com/ (not for the easily offended)

http://www.quityourdayjob.com/forum/

http://forum.abestweb.com/

Recommended blogs:

http://www.shoemoney.com

http://www.superaffiliatemindset.com/

http://www.quityourdayjob.com/

http://zacjohnson.com