Tracking202 Goes Self-Hosted with Prosper202
Affiliate marketing can prove to be one of the most lucrative ways to make money online, but tracking all the numbers involved can be a very cumbersome and complicated process. As you may recall, I reviewed a solution earlier this year that was designed specifically for this purpose. It seemed like Tracking 202 did a wonderful job of tracking the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns, but many people voiced their concerns over privacy.
Wes Mahler heard your concerns and now he has addressed them with no fewer than two new releases. If you didn’t catch what Tracking 202 was all about the first time around, be sure to read the original review first.
Are They Stealing My Data?
In the first Tracking202 review, I noted that affiliate marketers are very protective of their keywords. The issue is that when you use the Tracking202 online service, this pertinent data is then made available to the people who run Tracking202. This invaluable information reveals which keywords perform the best and which provide the best rate of return.
Understandably, affiliate marketers had a huge concern over the privacy of this information. The data was hosted on the Tracking202 servers and there was no way for you to know that they weren’t “stealing your campaigns”, so to speak. What if Wes Mahler was stealing your keywords?
Prosper202: The Self-Hosted Solution
In the comments of the original review, people spoke out and said that they’d feel a lot better if a self-hosted version of Tracking202 was made available, because then they would have much greater control over who has access to their data and their keywords. Wes listened and Prosper202 was born.
Prosper202 was designed to do the exact same thing as Tracking202, except it is a completely self-hosted version. This eliminates the whole privacy and trust issue that was causing so much concern. There are some other upgrades to the Tracking202/Prosper202 package — like an advanced landing page feature — but these are all secondary to the new availability of a self-hosted solution.
In order to run Prosper202 on your web host, you need to ensure that it means the minimum requirements. If you run into any trouble, check out the affiliate marketing forum and affiliate marketing blog for help.
Just like Tracking202, Prosper202 is completely free and there is absolutely no charge involved in using the software package. There is a donation page where you can help to cover some of their hosting and operation costs, however, if you want to lend the development team a helping hand. The plan is to further expand the “202″ brand in the future with other offerings.
Export Ad Campaigns to Other PPC Networks
At the same time that they decided to launch Prosper202, the development team also released their second piece of software. Called Export202, this application allows you to convert and export PPC campaigns to other PPC networks. Export202 currently supports Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN Adcenter.
What this means is that if you set up an ad campaign through Google and find that it is either getting too expensive or it is performing poorly, you can quickly and easily export that PPC campaign over to Yahoo Search Marketing or MSN Adcenter to see if they do any better. In the past, you would need to manually set up new PPC campaigns on the alternative networks. Export202 effectively automates that process. They say that you can even export entire accounts to other PPC networks.
Win a Nintendo Wii
Even though both Export202 and Prosper202 can be downloaded free of charge (the former is still in alpha mode), the gracious people behind the projects are still feeling pretty generous. To help get the word out, they launched a contest a few days ago wherein they are giving away a Nintendo Wii.
To enter, you need to write a 300 word review of Prosper202 following the linking instructions in this post. The winner, assuming there are at least 50 entries, will be announced within a week of the contest’s closing date (May 31). The person who sends the most traffic to Prosper202 gets a free t-shirt too.
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- Proxies From All Over the World | John Chow dot Com - May 18, 2008 at 10:01 pm
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It sounds like a pretty good product and free download is a pretty good price.
Are you going trying to win the wii or are you going for the t-shirt?
~Terry
John already has the T-Shirt
I think I’d go for the Wii and sell it on eBay (I’m not into games), I have plenty of t-shirts.
Same here, get the Wii, sell it, buy a PS3.
That’s the way to go. Why go for a t-shirt when you have 100 of them, and when the one you might win is probably an X-L.
You have a point! Those T-shirts aren’t worth it at all.
LOL I hope you didn’t think the wii vs t-shirt comment was serious
hmmmm…tough choice there
~Terry
Thats great – I always need some customisation
Ok, I’m interested with the Wii
I’ll sell you the Wii when I win it.
Very informative.
I recently installed Prosper202 and am testing so that I can write a full review of the product. It should be noted that this is a closed source product, so the inner workings of the code are not known.
Wii is nice but I already have one. I’d like the t-shirt!!
Actually, the product looks great. I will check it out!
Looks like a great product to check out.
Oh great! its a contest!
I love contests. It seems everybody now is promoting their websites giving away free stuff.
The product seems to be very good. I’ll try that in a near future.
It must be very hard to develop a project and share it with the community for free. Donating is very important to keep the project alive.
It looks great. Much better than the previous version before the two upgrades.
This maybe a bit out of place , but how do you get a image beside the comment ? I just get a smiley
Use the name that you are using on Mybloglog.
I think if you stay logged into MyBlogLog, it should work as well.
When you’re logged to mybloglog works all the time for this blogs. But there are some blogs that doesn’t recognize avatars from different sites. for example my avatars never is shown when I place a comment at SM.
I believe SM is based on Avatars.com or is it Avatar.com, well one of those ayways, so you need to register there with your avatar too if you want it to show on SM
I still haven’t done it myself.
~Terry
Thank you all
I’m just starting to get into PPC again and the self hosted version of this looks great and at a price that you can’t beat, free.
wow, contest, and free. can’t really beat that! i am just getting my blog started right now, so i’m not really doing any affilliate marketing yet. With nothing to track, this product isn’t much good to me, but a wii i can use!
I wonder how evil it would be to put your own review of Prosper202 on your website as a case study for promoting your own reviews?
disclaimer: do not put the review for Prosper202 on your website as a case study. 
It’s certainly evil, but who cares!
I am wondering how they can offer this for free?
Unless it is really ad-supported? Either way, it looks good. I’ll have to give it a try! 
Might be like all the free hosting out there … Out for a few months tops, then goes belly up
OR
They get everyone hooked, then start charging for it.
This product is awesome, no doubt. However, it can be the best thing since sliced bread if they incorporate importing of campaigns directly from Adwords.
API tracking is going to be added down the road for accurate tracking of PPC. In addition, there is Export202 which allows you to export campaigns from various PPC networks as mentioned. That might be expanded beyond the big 3 as well. Currently Tracking202 already works with all PPC and non-PPC link networks.
Thanks, John. I have been basking in frustration trying to figure out which keyword makes me the most money
Looks great and you can’t beat free. Just a shame my PPC campaigns are always crap! Now if somebody can come up with some software that makes my PPC profitable I’d be very happy
Tracking202 and Prosper202 does that, you just need to do the testing
Sounds like they closed some of the holes in their product.
A wii huh? lol It takes a bit more for me to give away traffic. lol
You’re waiting for the Xbox 360, huh?
It sounds like the revised solutions offered by Prosper 202 will improve the situation.
MrAchievement
Stanley Bronstein
Attorney, CPA, Author, Blogger & Professional Motivational Speaker
Lots of people talking about the Wii here, doesn’t look like many people are actually entering…
Has anyone entered? I haven’t….