There have been plenty of posts about the re-acquisition of Tracking202 by Wes Mahler and Steven Truong, so I’m not going to rehash those here. All the buzz and discussion about this topic, as well as the original sale to Bloosky, have made me think quite a bit about what was the cause of all this.
Fact is, there would never have been a sale to Bloosky or a re-acquisition in the first place if Wes & Steven hadn’t poured out their sweat and their wallets to create a truly original product. Although there are competitors now, when 202 came out it was the first of its kind on the block. They were able to capture almost the entire market for the affiliate tracking software niche with little trouble or competition.
Marketers can take this to heart the next time they are getting frustrated by the arbitrage game. There is much more out there to making money online than buying traffic from someone and selling it to someone else for more money. The true innovators in the online space (and in the business world in general) are the people who offered a solution for the needs of their clients in a new (or just better) way.
When you create your own product to promote, you are in control. There are no advertisers to scrub leads or networks to withhold payment, you are the be-all and end-all of your online empire. Granted, this is much easier said than done, but the rewards are evident everywhere you look.
Just look at Marcus from Plenty of Fish. He now has Match.com demanding to know how POF gets more new users every month than they could dream of, and they’ve got huge funding behind them. Markus Frind started POF all on his own, and kept it simple, and believed in it. Now they are a force to be reckoned with in the dating industry.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: you have ideas all the time. You know, the ones that get scribbled down on a piece or paper or just mentally filed back there in your brain with all the other things that will never come to fruition. Take some time to develop these ideas. They don’t have to be perfect when you start out, they just need to exist. You can fine-tune things later.
If you create something that will be a long term asset today, you will be glad for it tomorrow when the next big affiliate industry shake up comes along. Trust me.