I recently got the chance to interview the founder of Tracking202. This is some great software, and in this interview it explains a few questions many people have had about the software!
What was the initial reasoning in creating Tracking202?
[Wes] Although most people might think Tracking202 (T202) was originally created to track keywords, it was actually really designed to help track PPC costs. When I got started doing PPC marketing I had several accounts, multiple Yahoo accounts, multiple MSN accounts, two adwords accounts, an ask.com account, multiple looksmart accounts, and a facebook marketing account. When you have 10+ accounts, how do you expect to login to each individual account to check your costs? You can’t. It is impossible to login to each account to check costs, that alone takes over an hour. So simply put, I needed someone that would automatically track my costs for every PPC account I had in one location. So I created one for my personal use. I was always interested in developing analytics type software by watching my friends success over at getclicky.com, so out of need to simply cost tracking over multiple accounts I created the software for my personal use, and then decided to make it publically accessible. So T202 was originally designed, not to track keywords, which it does, but mainly it was to consolidate all of your PPC accounts into one location. One spot to check your costs for every campaign over multiple PPC accounts in a second. The system is not 100% accurate yet, although we will get closer and closer to 100% accuracy as time progresses. Although even though it may not be exact cost tracking yet, it does give you a very good rough glimpse on how about everything is doing, and it is extremely helpful when you have lots of campaigns, and lots of accounts going.
I use this system on a few offers and can’t believe it is free. Why aren’t you charging people?
[Wes] Tracking202 is free, because Tracking202 is not designed to make money. Even if we charged for hosted PPC analytics software the market isn’t that big so it wouldn’t even generate significant revenue anyways. So the real reason the tracking software is free is because we want Tracking202 to simply start helping us gather a user base of active affiliate marketers who use our software. Then we can develop additional products and services towards our users that will ultimately make more money than Tracking202 ever would be itself.
For those who have to see it to believe it, you will see more Tracking202 products before the end of the year. Think Google, think of all the free applications, they attract a lot of users, and now they have hundreds of free products and a couple that generate all their revenue for them. Tracking202 is a launch pad for future products/services that we will be offering this year, and for time to come. If anyone likes to dive into it further I wrote a really long blog post on my site further explaining my philosophies on why Tracking202 is free here: http://www.wesmahler.com/why-is-tracking202-free-my-mistakes-launching-under-fire/
A large question arose during its launch and that was “aren’t you guys just going to steal my data?”. What is your answer to that?
[Wes] As of right now Tracking202 has been live for over 8 months since its development, our team, and I have personally promised over 700 individuals that we would keep their data secure. We are not interested in individuals keywords data, we ultimately want to build a company that does one million dollars a year in passive residual income from various products and services we offer to the affiliate marketers.
On a personal level, I honestly do not want to have to put up campaigns all day to earn a living, although there is a lot of money in that, it isn’t what I do. I develop applications like Kevin Rose and Max Lechin of PayPal. Web 2.0 entrepreneurs that build massive applications that millions of people can use on a daily basis that simplify their lives. We do not generate money by stealing peoples keywords, we generate wealth by developing highly web 2.0 applications that millions of people can use. If I was in someone else’s shoes I would also look at Tracking202 with the same questions, “why is it free”? So I can understand the hesitation to use the free tracking service, I can understand if I was in their shoes. Sure, absolutely. And we don’t force anyone to use our software, and some won’t and that is all right. Those who do however will benefit ultimately because no one’s data is comprised and to this date not a single persons’ data has been looked at, and I promise everyone, it isn’t going to change. And if you want to take it further, if you were put yourself in our shoes, that you had promised over 700+ people that you would keep their data secure, wouldn’t you also keep your promise? We want users 10 years down the line, and we only do that by fulfilling our client’s needs to the fullest, and being honest with them. The reason we won’t ever look at anyone’s keyword data is simply this, the relationships we have built are more valuable than keyword data. So it becomes very simple, the keyword data isn’t worth that much; the relationships are worth more than keyword data. That is why the keywords don’t matter, the relationships are more important, so that is what gets focused on, building relationships with our users. The relationships we are building, are worth more than any keyword list we could possibly buy.
A few suggestions I have seen are that you should make a version in which the user can buy it and upload it to their own server. Any plans for something like this in the future?
[Wes] We are actually planning on developing some self-hosted applications in the future related towards tracking, although we can’t say when, we are confident that we will be releasing some self-hosted tracking applications in the future now, absolutely.
Does Tracking202 have any big changes or plans in the near future?
[Wes] Yeah absolutely! Although we can’t say everything that is in store, we do have some exciting new products that help affiliate marketers that will be launching within the next couple of months. If anyone wants to keep up to date, they can check out the Tracking202 blog, or the Tracking202 newsletter where we keep everyone up to date on what’s going on.
Thanks again to Wes for taking the time out to do the interview. If you have not checked out Tracking202, you need to! It is some amazing software!
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