We have some BIG news to announce today. As of a little over a week ago, Tracking202 has been acquired by Bloosky, another company within our space. We wanted to give you details about everything that has been going on that led up up to this point as we've always been 100% transparent with our users and want to remain so. We felt this acquisition was beneficial for everyone and there are a lot of things we wanted to disclose in this blog post to clarify why this deal makes a lot of sense for all of our users.

Tracking202 was founded a little over 2 years ago and has grown tremendously in the short time span we've been around. Many may not realize this but we're still very much a bootstrapped startup operating out of our house! Literally we have desks in the living room, bedrooms, kitchen, etc... Its not what you would have probably have imagined for the growth we've seen and support shown from all of our users around the world. We appreciate everything and all the love you've given us. But as you may have realized, we were perhaps growing too fast.

As some of you may have noticed in recent months, its been getting harder and harder to answer support around the clock the way we use to in the early days. The number of users grows larger every day and unfortunately we didn't have enough resources, staff, or funding to keep on doing support and everything else without infringing on time spent innovating on the technology everyone has grown to love. Above all else, we only have two full-time programmers on board, one of them being Wes himself who's pretty much coded 98% of everything we have today!

Having said that, we were limited on growth in several areas and with the launch of our new network, had a hard time keeping up with the sheer volume of affiliates that were getting on board with our software and network. Lately, its felt like we were in a catch-22 situation, working hard just to maintain things. Even when we gave our best efforts its been difficult to continue to grow the company and help the community the way we have wanted to.

Several months back, we had the privilege of meeting with the founders of Bloosky. At the time, we were thinking of strategic ways the two companies could work together to help each other out. Wes and I were also debating about bringing outside funding to continue growing the company. Although we were affiliates early on and for the most part, have self-funded Tracking202 with all the campaigns we've built in our early days, it got to a point very early on where we no longer had time to run any campaigns and went full steam into Tracking202. With that, the company grew based on what it was able to bring in itself for revenue in terms of software subscriptions, advertising, and of course now network revenues. However it's difficult to scale when you have limited resources, time, staff, and funding to continue to grow.

After debating long and hard about bringing on venture capital (VC) to grow the company, we realize they probably wouldn't understand our business and we decided we didn't like that option. We felt it was in Tracking202's best interest as well as the interest of our users and the community we created to keep VCs out of this. What started as just a discussion on a simple business partnership ended up becoming talks of a potential buyout. This made a lot of sense to us because Bloosky was already involved in the space and in addition to funding, they had extensive knowledge and ideals that complemented Tracking202 VERY WELL. After long talks, the deal made a lot of sense.

Before I dive into why I think this partnership is great, I wanted to give you guys a background on what Bloosky does for those unfamiliar with the name. Many companies in the space know who they are but they don't have such a strong presence among the affiliate community. Over the last couple years they have focused on working with more traditional publishers. The other thing they are known for is their advertising relationships and focus on providing advertiser services. They have call centers, creative services and a strong ad sales team. They pull in an average of 60-100 new offers per week!

Tracking202 on the other hand as many of you know, is a publisher-focused company with a strong affiliate base and technology that control several traffic sources such as search, social, contextual, media buys, etc... basically other than email. Like two halves of the same coin, the combination of the two companies made perfect sense. So what does this mean to our users?

Wes and I are staying on board to continue our vision of what we believe Tracking202 should have been since day 1. This deal gives us an equity stake in Bloosky and allows us to gain valuable resources necessary to continue doing what we do best. Above all else, Bloosky shares the same passion, values, and vision we have, which is one of the key reasons we were excited to do this. We would never compromise our values or visions for anyone, hence why we didn't want to go the VC route when we could have.

With this deal moving forward, this allows us to put more emphasis on support where it is needed. We now have more resources and funding to accelerate the growth of the technology side, building faster and bringing more tools, and helping the community as a whole to serve our affiliates better.

We saw several positives in this and Bloosky has been very supportive of everything we've done and wants to see our goals achieved. We hope with this, you're able to get a glimpse of things to come and see why this is so beneficial on so many levels. We hope to make Tracking202 an even greater company in the near future. Thanks for everything to every one of you guys out there! We couldn't have done it without the support and love you guys have shown us. The ride had been wild and it'll only get wilder from here on out =]

Kindly,

Steven and Wes

We are happy to announce our newest MeetUp202 group in Charlotte, NC. The group is headed by Fred Sexton, an Internet Marketer, Cyclist and Artist. We asked him to write a short intro to you about his Meetup202 group, which is reprinted below:

Live in the queen city? Getting tired of staring at your screen? Are pixelated webcast of your affiliate marketing team getting old?

If so, come on out to the first official Charlotte Meetup202. We are looking to grow the online marketing industry empire in Charlotte and would to meet with YOU. New ideas and innovation are welcomed. Idea stealers and moochers please disregard. The idea of this group is an open network of business professionals

• Meet other local affiliate marketers in Charlotte
• Learn from some of the experts
• Grow your network
• Have fun in a relaxed atmosphere
• Dinner and drinks

Where: Ritz Carlton Uptown Charlotte - Lobby Lounge
When: Nov 13, 2:00 PM
Please RSVP Here

Got any questions, email me directly at bigcheese@mouseandman.com or @fredsexton

Fred

If you are close to the Charlotte, NC this is your meetup. Please join the group here:

http://www.meetup.com/Meetup202-North-Carolina-Affiliate-Marketing-Meetup-Group/

The first Charlotte MeetUp202 event has already been scheduled for tomorrow. See you there!

About Meetup202

MeetUp202 is a place for affiliate marketers to meet with other like-minded marketers locally. Get together with super affiliates in your area, grow your personal network of contacts and share tips and tricks with fellow marketers. Each MeetUp202 event is different, headed by different organizers, they are generally causal networking events at placing that sell food and provide WiFi access.

If you are interested in starting a meetup, please contact us.

You can signup to be invited to the yahoo search marketing desktop client beta here: http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/scp/viewer/index.php?event_id=21668&client_id=5467.

Thanks to Wes Moehlenbruck at masterlesssamurai.com for bringing this to our attention.

Ryan Pamplin and Ken Chen have organized a new Meetup202 NYC event on the 14th of this month. Azoogle will be sponsoring the event. You can find all of the event details here: http://www.meetup.com/meetup202nyc/calendar/11560186/

Hi Everyone, A big thank you to AZN (Azoogle Network) for sponsoring our October Meetup! It will be at http://www.latitudeba... - 783 8th Avenue (between 47th and 48th Street). We have the entire 2nd floor to ourselves. There will be open bar from 7-9 pm as well as tons of free food. Quesadilla's, Chicken Tenders, Veggies, Pizzas, Cheese Platters, etc! As AZN (Azoogle Network) is sponsoring, we're kindly asking other networks/network employees to sit this one out. - OPEN Bar and free food! So you must RSVP! :)

Hey Everyone,

Our MeetUp202 Montreal Organizer, Sam, is throwing a special event soon wanted to get the message out to you guys about what is taking place over there. Here is what he has to say:

Hey Guys,

We are putting together a special event with speakers + a party afterwards up here in Montreal - http://www.MakeMoniesOnlineMontreal.com. For the full list of speakers see the site. So here's the deal about the presenters.

VJ - a little known affiliate that knows his stuff. He is doing some very innovative things not only at the affiliate marketing level but in internet marketing in general.

We have the head SEO of ICE.com (3rd-4th largest jewellery retailer on the net) and ex-head at Bodog presenting. He used to rank for poker/gambling terms.

The speaker on e-tailing will be talking about how to setup your own e-tailer and techniques on how to break into the distribution channels of mainstream brands. If you have ever tried this, you know how not easy it can be.

My buddy who runs an outsourcing firm will be talking about effective outsourcing methods.

Basil Hatto (MediaTraffic.com) will be talking about PPV.

I will be discussing FaceBook Ads - gaming, scaling and failing.

Daniel Bakerman (COO of ShareResults.com) will be discussing trends in affiliate marketing.

Along with the presenters we are expecting to have an interesting mix of affiliate networks, ad networks, advertisers, e-tailers and a variety of people who make monies online. We will have with us a group of advertisers who literally dominate the most competitive niche on the internet - they were supposed to present but unfortunately they shied away.

It will be good... we have affs coming in from Toronto and NYC for this one. Hope to see guys here!

-Sam W.

*Just a small disclaimer about the event... although we will do our best to ensure that the event runs as smoothly as possible, we cannot be responsible for any speaker or guests not showing up. No one is getting paid and we are all doing this for fun