Automating a Weekly Marketing-Analytics Pull Across 7 Platforms (and What Broke Immediately)

Description and use

An automated script pulls weekly marketing data from four easy APIs, logs failures for Pinterest and Instagram, and outputs a markdown report for quick review.

Problem

Need a single script to pull a week’s marketing data from seven platforms and generate a markdown report, avoiding manual dashboard checks.

Outcome

Script successfully pulls data from four platforms immediately; Pinterest and Instagram require additional setup and fail initially. The report provides actionable insights, such as video content performance differences.

Workflow

• 1. Generate or retrieve API tokens for Gumroad, YouTube, Dev.to, and Hacker News.
• 2. Call each platform’s API to fetch a week’s worth of data.
• 3. Wrap each API call in a try/catch to log failures and continue.
• 4. Aggregate successful responses into a markdown report.
• 5. Output the report for review each Monday.
• 6. Monitor logs for Pinterest/Instagram failures and address credential issues separately.

Evidence

What worked with almost no friction: Gumroad's sales API, YouTube Data API v3, Dev.to's own API, and the Algolia-powered Hacker News search API.

Source

What broke immediately: Pinterest and Instagram. Pinterest's v5 API gated most useful endpoints behind an approved "Standard Access" application tier… Instagram's Graph API needs a long-lived token…

Source