From Zero To One Million Dollars A Year In Sales

I have to give a long and overdue shout out to my friends: Sean and Noah over at GetClicky.com.  Tracking202 was actually inspired to be created based off their service, and revenue model.  We currently use the servers that Sean suggested to use, there is also a bunch of other stuff that Sean and Noah has helped us out with, that I won’t mention here.  They’ve been a big help I should just say!  And I want to say thanks and give them a shout out here, they have a great product for anyone who is in the web-business.  Pretty much all of you!

It was a great product, extremely residual, and it has had steady success, and analytics was then something I was interested from there on.  I thought what a great idea, web-analytics as a product, so we decided to make a PPC-analytics.  Well everyone knows how that story went, the PPC crowd is just a “wee” bit different than the general webmaster crowd, and does not like hosted analytics that track their keywords!  And the PPC crowd is probably 1/100th, if not 1/10000 the size of the general web-master crowd.

The service is acutally called Clicky, but they had to register GetClicky.com, because the name was taken.  I still acutally call it GetClicky anyways, but the official name is Clicky! 

About the service, well I’ll keep it straight and to the point.  The best part about Clicky is it allows you to have a real-time view of all the visitors on your site, the SPY view, like the DIGG SPY, lets you see live time page actions happening on your site.  It also allows you to customize your service, and track and follow each user throughout your website.  So instead of a general: “you have 1000 visitors today” you can see, “this user, this user and this user came to the sit, and looked around at theses pages” and see what users are acutally using their software.

You might consider really just checking out their live DEMO, to see it for yourself.  I too wanted to use a live DEMO for tracking202, but um, that wouldn’t of worked because everyone would see all the KEYWORDS going through the software! But their demo works great! check it out, they have a free trial, and an upgradeable preminum account if you exceed 1,000 visitors a day.

My buddy over at Developer Hut, Jon Waraas also uses Clicky! One of his reasons is so google can’t see his stats any more.  (maybe he’s doing something he isn’t suppose to?) Just kidding, Jon like others doesn’t use Google Analytics so Google can’t track you as easily.  So they have a free trial, check it out.  I want to say thanks to Clickyfor everything they’ve helped us with, and they were the inspiration to run what we have going now.  

GetClicky.com

Ok for those who know me by now, I love quotes, because they sum-up alot of powerful information very quickly. I stumbled across an article of upcoming tech-entrepreneurs, and each successful entrepreneur got to post one lesson that they’ve learned, and I’ve included them here so you can see them for yourself.  It’s always a good idea to be surrounded by good ideas, even though may not everything is applied, it is still always good to be in a constant flow of what good ideas are, especially ideas about building business if you are an entrepreneur:

“The way you become successful is not by hiding your great idea, but by including people around you and asking for advice,” Radfar says. “And you have to believe in what you are doing.” - Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath

“When you have a position to fill, figure out who would be the best in the world at that role—somebody so good it would be unimaginable that they would take the job,” Frame says. “Once you determine who that is, figure out how to hire that person.” - Andrew Frame

“Try to figure out what the absolute coolest thing to do is, because cool as a condition brings employees and investors,” says Kopf. “Cool makes every day worthwhile.” - Jared Kopf

“Being resource-constrained to begin with focuses you on the essential things,” says Miller. “Also, London is a great place to launch a global enterprise, the way it’s plugged in to the rest of the world.” - Richard Jones and Felix Miller

“There is a very small group of people in this industry that run nearly everything, and that it’s incredibly important to know who they are and be connected with them,” - Dalton Caldwell.

Success in technology is now “becoming a function not of the size and resources of the company that builds it, but of the size of the community that supports it,” - Eric Ries

“Choose who you take advice from carefully, but once you’ve chosen them, listen to every word they say,” Cunningham says. “I’ve set out on a journey, and I have no map and no idea what the landscape is going to be. But there are people around me who have taken similar journeys, over similar landscapes.” - Paul Cunningham

“There are some days when it looks like everything is going to blow up and other days when things look insanely good,” says Altman. “If you let that get to you, you never actually get any work done.” - Sam Altman

“Stay open,” Dorsey says. When Twitter launched, the software required a phone number to join. Once he allowed users to sign up using their e-mail addresses, expanded the service to include IM, and added a programming interface for developers, the number of users and posts shot up. “All made Twitter more approachable by a greater number of people,” - Jack Dorsey

“Everything in life seems to be about relationships,” says Bowman. To build his company, Bowman’s had to quickly meet influential customers and investors. “The power of networks is exponential,” - Jud Bowman

“Listen to the customer before you build,” he says. “It’s very easy to construct a monument to a problem and end up with something that no one will write a check for. You need to understand what issues are business imperatives, what’s keeping someone up at night, and what management is screaming about.” - Todd Graham

Being self-funded has its advantages. “We’re not running toward some sort of exit, so we can take our time and build a proper business,” - Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar

“If you think you have a good idea that could make for a good business, surround yourself with smart people, and go for it,” - Seth Coe-Sullivan

I don’t mean to post the same stuff on my blog, as I post on the prosper202 blog. But when something fun like this comes around I’ll surely post it.  I just posted some screenshots what Tracking202 looked like 8 months ago.  You can see all the work we have invested over the time and see where it has come.  Hope you enjoy the pictures!

http://prosper202.com/blog/blast-from-the-past-what-tracking202-looked-like-8-months-ago

I’m pleased to introduce you to WorldProxy202, a proxy designed for International affiliate marketers. WorldProxy202 is an incredibly simple, yet powerful tool which provides international affiliate marketers with the ability to quickly view offers from different countries through the use of our proxy servers located around the globe.  When previously their IP address may have been blocked from viewing international campaigns, they can now easily view them by using WorldProxy202.

If your viewing a site through our US proxy, you can with a click of the mouse change the website to see it as if you were in Canada through the use our of Canadian Proxy site.  When you check it out for yourself you’ll see how easy it is to move around from country to country.  And of course we wanted to make it look good, proxy sites are normally hideously ugly.  But we have created a nice clean user interface, the kind you’ve come to expect from us.  

But wait, there’s more! We also have a downloadable Firefox WorldProxy202 toolbar. Just download the .xpi file, and open it with firefox to install it.  With this bad boy installed, anywhere, anytime you need to view a site from a proxy, simply load up the toolbar, select what country you’d like to view it from, type in your url address and go!  You must have firefox to use our toolbar, and you can download the toolbar here.  Our toolbar gives you access to proxies from around the world at your fingertips.  I hope you enjoy it.

What about my privacy? 

Well like all of the products we have created, there is always a huge concern about privacy. Our proxy sites monitor traffic like any other regular website using traffic analytics software. Although we do not intend to look at anyone’s surfing habits, as we like to keep our users information private, if there is however, any illegal or suspicious activity we will examine the logs to see what is going on. 

What about the toolbar privacy?

The toolbar does not track your browsing usage in any way shape or form.  The toolbar does not send us data every-time you visit a web-page.  We have no knowledge of what your doing on the internet by simply having our toolbar installed.  The toolbar doesn’t even ping out to check for updates currently, when we do add in the update alert feature it we will have it ping the official firefox server for updates so we remain as far away as possible from your browsing activity.

The only function our toolbar provides, is the ability to quickly select your country, type in your url address and load up the appropriate WorldProxy202 domain for you.  But we do not have any knowledge of any of your surfing activity whatsoever besides when your actually on our websites.  

Until next time.

Take a look at WorldProxy202, download our firefox toolbar, because if marketing campaigns on the web, this will come in handy.  Make sure to follow the official Prosper202 company blog to know about new toolbar releases, they won’t be posted on my personal blog most likely.  Well thats about it for now!  I look forward to hearing your comments, thanks everyone.  

Prosper202 is what everyone has been waiting for.

Prosper202 is a self-hosted PPC tracking solution, it is the same code used on Tracking202.It also comes with Export202 which allows you to duplicate PPC campaigns from network to network.This software is powerful, self-hosted and fast. All you need to do it get started is simply download the files, upload them to a dedicated domain name and run the 5 minute installation script. It’s that simple.

We originally launched T202 with the idea that we would never give away the software as a self-hosted application. But we received lots of feedback from users requesting we make a self-hosted version. So you know what, we listened, and now we are going to give the users what they wanted. Self-hosted software. I like to call this, success through customer feedback.

So how much is Prosper202? We are giving it all away for free.We have decided to make Prosper202 free for the same reason we made Tracking202 free. We are excited for the opportunity to help thousands of affiliates earn more money and make an impact on someones future. What gets me most excited is when we receive emails from users telling us how much our software has helped them make more money. It is a great feeling knowing that you have been able to help someone out, the best feeling.

PPC Affiliate Marketing will never be the same!

Check out the Prosper202 website, download your application and start installing it on your server! Join our newsletter so you can receive email alerts when we release new updates. Discuss with other Prosper202 users on our affiliate marketing forum. If you like RSS follow our new official Prosper202 company blog to stay up to date with what we are doing. And finally if your in the Bay Area, come to our Meetup202 affiliate marketing event to meet other local affiliate marketers.

I want to say thank you to Scott Weaver over at Affiliate Toolbox who helped refine some queries to make Propser202 compatible with MySQL 4. I want to also thank all of our users who have provided feedback on our applications and ultimately helped us get to where we are now. And thank you, for your interest in our services. I appreciate the opportunity you have given me to work with you, I look forward to making our relationship a profitable one. Thank You.

Oh boy, I’m excited. Something is in the air, and no it’s not a macbook.In 12 hours Tracking202 and Export202 self-hosted are going to launch. Also this Saturday we have our Meetup202 group getting together, we already have 39 members and growing! At this rate our meetup group will have over 365 members within a year, all learning, associating and growing together. Should be a blast.You’re going to like what you see in 12 hours. It’s time to see the all the seeds our team has planted now grow into trees. It’s been 8 months of long development to get to this stage, this should be good. We’re going to announce something crazy with this release, you probably won’t believe it when we tell you what it is.

Everyone needs a hacker!

We just we just started working with someone who tests the cyber-security state of a financial institution for a living. I was fortunate enough to meet them at ad:tech. (again another reason why going to the events is priceless)

I won’t disclose their name because I assume they want to remain anonymous. They are testing the security of our self hosted applications to make sure everything is secure before releasing it to you! So far everything has been secure on our applications and the code I’ve wrote, which is awesome.

How much does a hacker cost if your curious? Well I’m sure prices vary, but if your curious, our guys are about $150/hour and they’ll test whatever you need tested. It’s a great feeling to know already that most of it is secure already and no loop holes have been found yet. In 2006 I was concerned about security and began studying it, so security has always been a huge concern for me as a developer. And it should be for you too if you want to develop something big that lots of people use.

Thanks for everyones’ interest in beta testing our self-hosted applications which will be released this week. We will be shipping you a secure application that you can feel safe using. So stay tunned.

And for any programmers out there, before you release your product into the wild I’d recommend having a penetration tester run through all of your code to make sure it is secure too. Most people don’t think about security, but you will.

I check alexa quite a bit, and I noticed today that the rankings have been dramatically changed. It seems like alot of websites got hit pretty hard on the ranking. Some top 5k alexa ranking blogs have now dropped to about 20,000. Where some of the previous 20,000k alexa ranking blogs have dropped down to 70,000. However on a good note, tracking202 has benefited from the new alexa rankings and ours has risen! You can find more information here on the new april 15th alexa ranking changes here.  Below is our tracking202 alexa graphs.

One way to dramatically increase your net worth over time is by changing the words you use. A long time a go I talked about fast words, how you could simply create more wealth faster by using a faster vocabulary of wealth build terms than slow terms.

You will often find accredited investors using faster words more often. What is an accredited investor, don’t worry, I’ll explain below. That’ll be a new fast word for you to begin. But let me give you a quick example of the old fast words post if you don’t have the time to read it now.

• a slow word is saving money, a fast word is raising Capital.
• a slow word is appreciation, a fast word is Depreciation or “Phantom Cash”
• a slow word is high paying job, a fast word is Cashflow

Do you see the difference in language, that rich people generally talk with stronger, more powerful faster action words than poorer people. The rich and poor don’t talk just differently, they talk the complete opposite. And you understand this. I’m sure you already talk much differently than your friends if your already more successful. And now of course realize, there are even more successful people talking even strong and faster words than we do that were not even aware of.

I once heard that your IQ increases as your vocabulary increases. So lets increase our vocabultarys sohall we? So I will start to post one for now, and in later posts, new fast words that you might not be aware of so together we can increase our vocabulary and our IQ. But of course I’m not just going to talk about any words, were going to explore fast words that by using them will increase our income making abilities by ten folds because we are using faster money making language whichw ill affect our actions and ultimately, our income.

The first fast word today, is about “accredited investors.” I mention it earlier in this post about how accredited investors more often say fast words than non-accredited investors. Let’s first explain what is an accredited investor.

An accredited investor is actually a term defined by the IRS to describe a high-net worth individual or couple. You are either an accredited investor or not in the eyes of the IRS. Here is what describes an accredited investor as an individual.

• A personal or couple, has a net worth exceeding $1 million dollars
• A single person who has earned over $200,000 in the last 2 years in a row, and is expected to do the same next year
• A couple who has earned over $300,000 in the last 2 years and is expected to do the same or more next year.

In essence, an accredited investor is someone defined by the IRS who makes money, or either has a lot of money. But the real question here is why does the IRS have a definition for accredited investors, they didn’t just decided to say people making money were accredited investors for no reason, there is a specific reason they have defined a person as accredited and I’ll share that with you.

It can really be summed up as this, the IRS believes someone who is accredited has enough financial intelligence to take part in risky investments. Because of this, they have made it illegal for some non-accredited investors to invest in certain things. You see a non accredited investor can only invest their money into a security managed by the SEC, while the accredited investor does not.

So for instance, if you wanted to invest other peoples money into stocks for example, if you were not registered for the Securities and Exchange Commissions, it is illegal to invest peoples money if they are non-accredited investors. The SEC regulates all securities, and the reason the do this is because they are trying to protect the non-accredited people from loosing their money in a risky investment. So they make it illegal if you aren’t accredited to invest into certain things that aren’t regulated, non-regulated SEC securities.

Basically the IRS doesn’t think that if you aren’t accredited you are more likely to be scammed by someone. And if you were an accredited investor they believe you are smart enough about money that you have enough intelligence to invest into something un-regulated.

Now if again lets say you wanted to invest other peoples money in stock, and you had your business your security registered with the SEC already, the SEC has already made sure that you are doing legitimate business and now anyone can invest into your security. The SEC regulates securities and makes it illegal for you to invest the money of poorer people so you can’t take advantage of people if you are selling an registered security. But you could invest the money of an accredited investor because the SEC manages they can handle their own money and make the investment.

So on the legal side of this all, the person who would get trouble is the deal maker, and if you put together stock deals or real estate deals for instance and you weren’t registered with the SEC, you could come under serious legal attention by the SEC if you were putting deals together for non-accredited investors.

So to sum this up, the importance of this post was to tell you what an accredited investor is, and that there are investments that not all people take can in part in. If it is not regulated by the SEC you have to be an accredited investor to take part in it. So you want to be an accredited investor.

Have any questions on what an accredited investor is?

I actually had a Twitter account for over a year now, although it seems like everyone is on it, so I’m now actually using it. Follow me, and I’ll follow you. I definitely won’t be spending as much time as others on here, but it looks like an additional tool to use for networking. Already looks beneficial if used correctly. Twitter is a micro-blogging web 2.0 community that allows you to post status alerts on yourself, see what others are doing, and communicate in an almost real-time fashion. You can find my twitter here: twitter.com/wesmahler.