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About StatsDrone

Why did we create StatsDrone? Our brand story

There were already other stats apps on the market, so why did I think the affiliate marketing industry needed another?

Let me tell you a few stories that compelled me to say we need to build something for affiliates. 

When I left affiliate management to go into creating affiliate sites in 2010, I remember a few situations before well during my time as an affiliate manager as well as an affiliate.

Let’s start with my experience as an affiliate manager.

From 2007 to 2011, I got a chance to work with a lot of affiliates. Some of them made money but faded over time, others grew and sold their business while others skyrocketed to the top of the industry in iGaming. 

What I did notice is that not all affiliates look at their data in detail. I felt the ones that focused on the SEO data and metrics were also likely to care about their affiliate stats. 

I remember hearing some affiliates tell me that this other affiliate program was offering them 70% commissions and is why they gave that brand top positions. Sadly I don’t think this affiliate ever heard of shaving or things like EPC. You know, Earnings Per Click. 

I knew this affiliate wasn’t using any stats tools that were already on the market like Stats Remote or Nifty Stats. What I believed to be true is that affiliates should be using a stats app but I also believed these apps could have done a better job of highlighting how inefficient some of these programs were to them. 

I remember back then of noticing that this critical error on some of these affiliates would stop them from getting to the next level and truly monetizing their traffic. 

My experience as a B2B affiliate and using another stats app

I had B2C affiliate sites but also B2B which were affiliate program reviews. 

I used to use a desktop app called Stats Remote (rest in peace) and I remember a few situations all too well.

  1. Affiliate programs that would change platforms and require new tracking links
  2. Affiliate programs late paying
  3. Affiliate programs that went out of business

All of these situations I felt were good feedback loops to include in any stats app. I mentioned some of these ideas to the support of Stats Remote but never got much of a reply and this was the day I felt I’d want to build a better affiliate stats aggregator. 

Where did the name StatsDrone come from?

Now that I knew I wanted to build a stats app, it needed a name, identity and branding.

We knew we wanted a unique name that hadn’t been used before with a brand new domain that was never used. We wanted a name without any mentions on social media so we could grab the channels.

Of course we felt the name had to have at least the word ‘stats’ in it but not all keyword focused.

We went searching for domain names in bulk and typed in everything you could think of. 

At the time, us co-founders were flying drones as that was the craze at the time so we thought, why not StatsDrone?

With drones, you can fully control them but drones can also be controlled automatically on their own either remotely or perhaps with AI. 

Team Purple

We chose 2 colours which were not completely common in affiliate marketing with purple being our primary colour and orange being the secondary colour. Purple simply stands out and is a bold and brave colour to consider for a company because it isn’t common. Orange was picked because of BOB, you know, Bright Orange Button.

The same BOB that Amazon made famous. 

The bright orange button is the concept in conversion rate optimization (CRO) that studies show that orange is one of the best colours to have in a call to action to increase sales. It isn’t just that StatsDrone would be a stats tool but it would use data to improve the conversion rate so that is why we have orange paired with purple. 

However when you find us at conferences, we are some of the easiest people to spot that wear purple. 

The original desktop app 2018 to 2020

Thankfully, most people forget that we tried to launch our app as far back as 2018. The reason why I share this and don’t want to hide from our history is that I think our failure here is what led to our success today.

Every mistake that we could have made in making a stats app, well, we made them all. It was a painful experience to go through and in late 2020, we made one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make. We had to stop the app and consider a full rebuild. All of our time and money invested into this app just disappeared on the spot.

Thankfully the guys we have on our team today were the ones that helped us build our original affiliate sites so they already had some level of experience. We restarted in Nov 202 and by March 2021 we had our new app MVP on the market ready for affiliates. 

Product-Led Growth

In January 2023, Darrell and I made the decision to move away from a sales-led growth (SLG) mentality to a product-led growth one (PLG). Ever since we’ve adopted a PLG strategy, we’ve been shipping products and features ever since and haven’t looked back. 

We took the customer feedback to another level and wanted to know deeply what features were missing that they wanted to see. 

Here are some of the features we have shipped and the timelines of them.

  • Invoice generator - March 2023
  • Data API export - April 2023
  • Brands & Campaigns analysis - June 2023
  • Data notifications & alerts - July 2023
  • Deal CRM - Oct 2023
  • New app design by UserActive.io - Nov 2023
  • Mobile web version - Feb 2024
  • Seats - June 2024
  • Dynamic variables - July 2024
  • DIDO - Sept 2024

The Data notifications & alerts as well as Brand and Campaign analysis all fall under our Business Intelligence (BI) suite of tools. The Invoice generator and deal CRM fall under the affiliate CRM suite of tools. 

When I reflect back on these product updates we have made on the app, I know we have done great work to make it happen and our PLG mentality will never change. We have even more features we are working on to make this the best affiliate app in the industry.

Affiliate BI podcast

When we relaunched the app in early 2021, we thought we would post in some forums like GPWA and Affiliate Guard Dog, and the affiliates would flood our app because it was that good.

We knew we had a good app but the whole industry didn’t know.

In a desperate attempt to build product awareness, we made the decision to try making a podcast focused on affiliate marketing. 

The first podcast we did was the Affiliate Interview Series and then in August 2023, we launched Affiliate BI which was focused on Business Intelligence in affiliate marketing. 

We have had some phenomenal guests over the years and we publish a new episode once per week.

Some of my favourite guests are:

StatsDrone wins iGB Affiliate Awards Best Tech for Affiliates 2024

Our first ever award was the biggest one we could have won! Last year’s winner was Raketech for Best Tech for Affiliates so for us to take this award was a big challenge. We went up against some amazing companies like ReferOn, Intelitics and RavenTrack. You can read about the news on the Times of Malta site here. 

StatsDrone wins AffPapa Awards Affiliate Intelligence of the Year 2024

Our 2nd ever award win came at the AffPapa Awards 2024 at the iGaming Club Malaga event. This was for the Affiliate Intelligence of the Year award. 

This one had some tough competition including Routy, Voonix and DeepCI. 

StatsDrone shortlisted

Over the years, we have been shortlisted for a few awards.

  • SBC Summit Awards 2024 - Affiliate Product Innovation
  • SiGMA Europe Awards 2024 - Best Affiliate Software

The future of affiliate marketing

We want to be part of the discussion to improve affiliate marketing. It is one of our mission statements to see that affiliate marketing is gets better. 

We are trying to be a part of that conversation by having our podcast and bringing people and companies together to make more advancements. We want this to be part of our future and our identity. 

You can follow us on our Affiliate BI LinkedIn newsletter which is also here on Beehiiv. You can listen to the Affiliate BI podcast and you can follow me on LinkedIn as well.


John Wright
By John Wright
, October 20, 2024