202 Ways To Make More Money
Alright yeah yeah it’s a little play on words, but 202 is the place to be in you’re an affiliate marketer. If you remember a while ago I posted about the launch of Tracking202.
Tracking202 is 100% FREE affiliate marketing tracking software. If you read my post there’s a ton of useful features for us affiliate marketers…keyword tracking, EPC monitoring, graphs, gizmos, and tons more. The one thing that was bad about it was that T202 hosted everything themselves, meaning that if they were really shady (which they’re not, but I myself go with the trust nobody philosophy), they have access to your data. I told Wes that he should make it self hosted and sell it for like $500+/copy.
Well Wes has taken my advice…almost. He made Tracking202 self-hosted, but the fool made it free! He calls it Prosper 202. It has everything Tracking202 has, but you host it privately on your own servers…and it’s free…crazy! Prosper202 also comes with a self-hosted Export202, which will convert your Adwords campaigns into Yahoo campaigns and vice versa, instantly. The dude is insane, I have no idea why he’s making it all free.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t stop here either. Wes has recently created WorldProxy202, which isn’t a revolutionary tool but it is a time-saving one that I use myself. Say I want to run a UK offer and I want to test out the affiliate link. If I just go and enter it in the address bar, it’ll say “Offer not available in your area” and redirect me. To be able to see the offer, you need to go through a UK proxy. Usually I’d just use proxy.org and search through to try and find a working UK proxy, but now I have WP202. I just go there, plug in the link, and bing bang boom.
So pretty much, you’re a fool if you’re not taking advantage of all these FREE products. No this isn’t a paid review either, Wes is an awesome guy and he works hard as hell.
Wes and Steven are awesome guys so for those that do not currently not tracking, get on it. They are real quick in responding to your issues as well so no worries if you are not that technical in getting this setup.
I was reluctant to try tracking202 in the past because of that, I guess Im out of reasons now that you can self-host it… free-lunch? I guess for the time being
Worldproxy I can see will be useful :)
Yeah I heard about this, didn’t try it yet though. After reading your review I think I’ll give it a look
haha I asked him the same thing and I told him he was crazy for doing it! such a powerful tool and its free – it will definitely be abused and helping users that may not even be serious with PPC. I was asking him about it so many times I even interviewed steven and asked why! but they ahve a couple tricks up their sleeves so lets see what they will be doing – but again p202 t202 e202 wp202 are all powerful at least a memeber ship fee or setup up fee or something!
great guys with great ideas! and they have a couple more things for the future – they say all this is baby food :)
Wes is a real stand up guy .
It’s awesome software, but even though you host it, doesn’t mean they can’t have off-site databases that capture your data, it’s all encrypted.
Yes, I don’t really trust it either. Obviously they’re not going to be making any money by giving away software for free so there must be some kind of incentive for them to do this. The code is all obfuscated so there is no way of telling what is happening to your data. If it’s not being transmitted back to their servers it could also be that they have installed backdoors so they can simply log into the application on your server.
It is encrypted and the tracking202 guys could potentially be looking at your keywords. Personally, I don’t feel like there is enough information on there for someone to “steal” one of my campaigns.
Yes, prosper202 is a great product– BUT.. It has a HUGE flaw. You must manually ‘estimate’ your CPC data. That means that all ROI, Gross Income, and Any other statistic is just an ESTIMATION.
This could easily be solved by having an import CPC feature, but they say it’s going to take another few MONTHS to implement.
I think that accurate tracking is KEY to successful affiliate marketing. I’ve spoken to Wes about it, and I think he understands the importance. I just wish we could get community support to integrate this necessary component.
This is awesome. It could be a marketing strategy to offer it free, get hype out there and make people want it. Then 6 months later come out with a new version for $500. People would then have already known and trusted the software, and would then easily convert.
Old news playboYYYYYYYYYY!
As said.. if the code is encrypted you have no bloody idea if they use all your stats for themselves. I would never use this unless i was 100% sure what the script actually did.
Man, I really start to track my freakin’ campaigns. I just let them go and run with what works.
@John @Jason @Dave
I promise you we are not exporting out an keyword data from the self-hosted software. Even though it is coming from me, there are others who have asked the same question and tested it themselves to verify that there is nothing fishy going on. I can assure you if this were true and we were doing this, we would have been caught already.
“If it’s not being transmitted back to their servers it could also be that they have installed backdoors so they can simply log into the application on your server.”
Your more than welcome to test yourself to see if this is happening using software, there have been others talking about it on the forum. You can do the test yourself to verify that nothing is being sent out.
We aren’t logging into anyones application, nor could we, we have secured the application down so it can’t be easily broken into, even paid a professional to try to crack the login, but he was successful. You would also be able to see this by checking the server logs if anyone from an ip address was surfing around each of your pages and loading up data.
There are 2 things that pull data from on Prosper202, that is the Prosper202 RSS Blog Feed, and the Prosper202 update, which is also just another RSS feed. Those only occur on the main screen mydomain.com/202-account/, other than that there is nothing.
Please check it yourself, and you will see there isn’t anything going on.
Thanks Josh, absolutely I apologize its taking so long but it is definitely on the list, hope to have it done potentially by major release 1.2
The whole 202 series is pretty awesome. :)
The code has been dezended and analysed (disclaimer: not by me) – there are no call backs to a central server. The super paranoid tin foil hat wearing douchebags amongst us could always set up a packet sniffer to be super extra duper sure, but your time might be better spent on 9/11 conspiracy theories and taking bong hits.
why free? why did youtube launch for free? why did MySpace lauinch for free? And where are my keys? I’ve looked everywhere.
I agree this is a very good tool for tracking. I used it myself and its great. Wes also has videos on how to use it and its simple to use. Anyways all i want to say is , it has helped me a lot.
Hi Paul,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience! I’m always looking for ways to improve myself and I’m glad to have found your blog. Thank you for sharing with us.
Cheers,
Roy
Seems like the software I am looking for
Thanks
If you actually used the product you would notice that it is not ready to be monetized. Yes it is a great tool but it still has lots of minor bugs that need t o be fixed and you must update all your data manually.
I am a fool for not using this sooner. I tinkered with it, for a bit and then stopped. These tools are awsome, it’s insane that these guys offer it free.
I know Wes and some of the Tracking202 boys personally, and I can say with 100% certainty that I am sure that they would never do anything Shady. I had originally asked Wes myself to make a standalone version simply for the fact that people thought T202 would be looking at their data. He did everything he could to have a speedy release of the self hosted T202 software. Not only do I trust T202, but I would trust Wes with my root password to install a module on my servers. It doesn’t get any better than this. People will always criticize free software and say there must be a catch, and then once the software has a price tag on it, they have something new to complain about. Even though you may live by the “better safe than sorry” attitude, I have no doubt that you’ve read all around about Wes from people who met him and know him personally, and this guy put himself completely out there to improve our industry and help us all have the tools we need to be as efficient as possible. Stop whining, start testing. I hope all affiliate marketing blogs pick up this post and start writing about T202 to give them the credit they deserve. You guys have my complete appreciation.
*even paid a professional to try to crack the login, but he was unsuccessful. – typo
This is a great system. I personally use it and love it. I agree that they should sell it, but I think they should just sell the self hosted one (evil grin). That would make more sense to me…
I have a feeling that something like this could easily become a paid service, so everyone better get in quickly before it goes paid!
Wow, that is an awesome testimonial! He should include that on his web site it’s so good!!! haha :)
Yeah I’m thinking about getting it as it does seem some powerful stuff, especially for free software.
Thanks
I uploaded it and it’s pretty darn sweet. Now I need to use it when I actually get something going.
I think I’ll actually check this out now it’s self hosted!
I found your topic when I was looking for some ways to make money online.
I’ve wondering about it for a long time, so thank for writing.