<song>Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us, happy birthday to 202, happy birthday to us!</song>
Tracking202 Turns One
Okay, now that we've got the song out of the way, I'd like to formally announce that it's been exactly one year since Tracking202 went live! As many of you know, Tracking202's public Beta launch was on February 2nd, 2008 at 11:06PM Pacific time (practically February 3rd). However Tracking202 officially launched on October 20th, 2007, one year ago from today's date. For months, prior to the public Beta launch, we had a private Tracking202 Alpha testing going on. There were roughly 40-50 individuals who got to use Tracking202 in it's early stages. It's been a great year and we've had thousands of people use our software in that time (and not just Tracking202). We've receive tremendous feedback from around the world and the affiliate community, and we can never thank you guys enough for your continued support. Nothing beats the feeling of being able to help others and hearing how its truly made a difference for them, both on a personal level and on a business level. I'm not just saying that, I genuinely mean it. I thought I'd take a moment to share with you guys the history behind 202 on this special occasion.
In the Beginning
Tracking202 was the first affiliate software in the line of products 202 has created since. We've then branched on to creating several other affiliate tools that many people use today. But very few truly know the story of how Tracking202 came about. As some of you may or may not know, we are affiliates ourselves long before Tracking202 and the rest of the 202 product line were created. Before we got serious into affiliate marketing, we were building other businesses both online and offline. Today, we focus our attention where it's needed to keep our businesses running while building up the 202 empire and stay true to our goal, which is to create a world class corporation!
When we decided to get into affiliate marketing and really start to build up some serious income, a few things became apparent very quickly. The first and most obvious was it became tedious to track all your cost through several PPC accounts. It was a pain to log into all of your accounts and monitor how much you spent day in and day out. It was quite inefficient. As time passed by, it became increasingly painful to constantly have to log into all our PPC accounts to track our spending, so the first solution was to create a system to track PPC costs.
You see, long before Tracking202 was created, the original idea was to create a system to track PPC costs, and nothing else. There was no Tracking202 to speak of. The original intent of the software was never to track anything but cost (not keywords, not text ads, not landing pages... nothing!). It was also intended for use as a personal tool rather than something we would give out to the community. It wasn't because we didn't want to share with the community, it was because we had no plans on making a company out of it. In all honesty, how Tracking202 came about was truly one giant accident and a chain reaction of events that would roller coaster us into creating 202 as you know it today. Not long after creating the first version of a PPC tracking tool, we decided to share this tool with fellow friends online and long story short, they became the first Alpha testers of what would later become Tracking202.
The Naming
Due to the recommendation of a friend and fellow affiliate marketer, Wes joined CPA Empire to start promoting affiliate offers off their network. We noticed that the affiliate jump links they were using was login.tracking101.com. Not being very creative, we decided to name our tracking tool (since it was a tracking tool after all), Tracking202! Brilliant isn't it! Not really -.- It took about 5 seconds, wasn't really rocket science and we really didn't care about the naming since we never intended to make Tracking202 or anything that was to follow a company. We just needed a website to host our tool since it was going to be a web base tool (we could have made a desktop tool instead but it was more convenient if every one of our friends were able to access it through a website).
The original group who jumped onto using Tracking202 then started providing massive feedback on what they needed. A tool that only tracked PPC cost wasn't much use to an affiliate marketer as useful as that was on it's own. At the time, there weren't many tools on the market that offered a solution to any tracking for that matter. The ones that did were completely inadequate and costs money. So base off nothing but feedback, tracking202 began to expand at a rapid rate! Eventually people wanted a way to track more and more features, and before you know it, Tracking202 went from a cost tracking system to a real PPC tracking system. As you can see below, this is what the original version of Tracking202 looked like after all the PPC tracking was implemented:
Tracking202 as a Company
Originally we never intended to create Tracking202 as a company. It was just a tool for friends to use as a means to profit in the world of affiliate marketing. Around that time, we started receiving feedback on making Tracking202 a public tool. While we didn't pay much attention to this, it became clear to us really quickly that people would pay for such a tool. Not long after that, we decided to turn Tracking202 into a company and had Tracking202 Inc registered. Eventually, Tracking202 version 2.0 was created right before public beta launch was announced and for the most part, is the tool you see today! In the screenshot below, I've shown the first header Tracking202 had when we first launched the initial version, and the header it carries now, with more features added over the last several months.
Giving It All Away
As everyone should know by now, we ended up not charging for the service and decided to make Tracking202 free to the community. It was honestly a last minute decision we decided the day prior to public beta launch. We found that there was more value in helping others and giving something away for free than to charge people for the service. Later on, several other tools came along and we decided to give all those away too, including the first self-hosted tracking solution.
When people provide us with feedback, we highly value it and we listen. We make it a priority to help others and respond when we can. Of course we have personal lives too but many of you have come to know our products and the level of service we expect from ourselves. This was definitely the case when Tracking202 first went live and critics argued that we were trying to steal data. To end the critism, we did what no one else would, created a self-hosted Prosper202 and gave it away for free too. Two things unheard at the time for the affiliate industry. In all honesty, similar to how we were trying to help friends when we first started out, we were trying to help others as well. Sure we want to create a world class company, but stealing data is definitely not the way to do it. Providing value and truly helping others is the true path to prosperity.
What's with "202"
As you all know, we've released several other tools after Tracking202 was created. Obviously not all of them were tracking tools and rather than spend a whole lot of time thinking of names, we decided to attach 202 to the end of everything. Yet another lazy accident. Eventually, 202 became the household name everyone knows today.
Where 202 will be headed next, that's something you'll all have to wait and see. The number one biggest question everyone has is, how do we make money?! Currently there is no monetization in place except banner advertisements on our sites and donations. We've received a few donations in the past and we greatly appreciate the support. Eventually there will come a time when we will monetize. But until that time comes, we're simply trying to help people and truly give value to what we do. After all, our ultimate goal is still to create a world class company. I'd love to believe we've done a great job thus far. Wouldn't you agree?
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