Checking Out Posper202 Beta 1.6
As you may or may not have heard, Nickycakes’ good buddy Wes has (thank god) re-acquired 202. There was a bunch of really juicy drama behind it, but Nickycakes promised Wes he wouldn’t do a post about the people who bought 202 from him originally fearing a legal backlash (something they’re quite prone to). So yeah, now they’re back to developing 202 products on their own again, yay.
It is pretty common knowledge that versions of Prosper202 after 1.3.2 are complete shit, but version 1.6 is now in beta, and Cakes is curious to see how development is going now that 202 is back in good hands, so he’s giving the beta a spin. You can read more about it and give it a try yourself here.
So Nickycakes has a few questions for his readers who are familiar with 202. First, where do you think Wes should go with the company? How can they better monetize to make it a successful business? What features would you like to see?
Nicky personally would love it if they were able to put out an optimized and compiled self-hosted version of prosper that could handle tons of traffic without locking up mysql. He also has been telling wes for probably 2 years to add automated bid management functionality to the paid version of 202 which would allow him to compete with companies like Marin who make the big dollars.
What do you think?
I think they should go mobile. Have some way to get stats texted to you hourly or however you put it. Since like not everywhere has 3g and internet would be mad slow to log into 202 so if you have like 1 bar you can get stats quick. They can charge like $10-20/month for that shit and make bank, I know I would pay for it.
I would say more ads (all I see on P202 right now is the small ad in the upper left) but I don’t know how much money that would make unless they can find some branding companies.
I would imagine marketing to marketers is extremely low conversion rates and ROI.
I agree with you on making it less resource heavy (or handle data better) so it doesn’t cause problems on servers with heavy load. Nothing is worse than having your server crash, trying to get your host to fix it and them saying the script you are running isn’t well optimized and is causing the issues.
They should also make an easy way to add functionality extensions into prosper, like a wordpress style plugin system.
Make an improved version with more features, faster ways to create ads etc. and sell it for like $195.
1) Tune queries/indexes for a actual dbms like Postgresql.
2) Document backend settings in good detail, encourage community feedback on what works best.
3) Hire an MBA to synergize the business logistical patterns and leverage this actionable skillset to deminimize hosted income.
4) Prosper.
I’m taking this for a spin right now, it will be interesting to see what new features they will implement, oh and +1 for a prosper wordpress plugin, that would be sweet.
Make it easy for people to create plugins with protected source code that can be sold via your marketplace. You'll get a ton of great features you never thought of and you can take a cut from each plugin sale.
I would like to see a full-featured offer rotation system, with weighted rotation, and tracking for unique payouts on each offer. Right now if you want to do weighted rotation you have to kludge it by adding duplicate offers.
I would like to see a version that is optimized for heavy load as well. I want to see better offer rotation, too.. maybe by IP/location, weighted, and other stuff?
There are a few bugs which need to be taken care of. Time zones do not work for some locations. This has been posted in forums long back but not yet fixed. Also there are minor problems like no/wrong flags displayed, tracking for single posts/pages on WP etc. I guess step one would be to scan through all the posts in the forums and fix all those problems.
I did a test on my shitty shared hosting and they were right it didn't speed up my redirect very much but it was slightly faster.
Did you test load speeds before and after on a VPS??
i dont really know shit about benchmarking stuff, and i really wish i did because i find it interesting.
sorry guys, but prosper202 isn’t secure I can’t use for my stats server solution.
care to elaborate?
Honestly, I hope they bring back a new and improved version of Tracking202 Pro. It had to be the single best thing that helped skyrocket my PPC earnings last year but they started falling off after their tracking for yahoo and bing started going down the crapper (perhaps it was because of that other company?) and wasn’t being tracked correctly. Anyhow automated bid management and better support for paid customers would be great to say the least.
Charge for the damn thing. It is already good enough to pay for. Come out with a bulked up new features version charge a juicy one time fee and a recurring billing for updates and support. If it wasn't unreasonable im sure a huge crowd would infuse them with cash to make the product even better.
I definitely agree that it is imperative to make changes. I see good things coming
You would be wrong about that sir. Marketing to marketers AKA -B2B- marketing is pure gold.
I meant to reply to spyderman4g63
Two words: Integration and Automation.
Integration with Ad platforms, WordPress, landing pages, etc.
Automation rules for handling traffic – split testing and auto-bidding.
There should be a donate button somewhere in their site and program if it’s going to be free. Or is donations ruled out for some reason..? Other option would be one time fee or smaller monthly billing of course…
Great software glad Wes is back!
what the heck is Posper?
At the past ASW, Wes talked about supporting 3rd party plugins. I still think that is the way to go.
Take a page from the Apple app store and WordPress playbooks…
Create a good, well documented API for plugins. Allow anyone to develop a plugin. And allow them to sell it for whatever they want wherever they want.
But, also offer an official “202 market place”. Charge a percentage of each sale when it’s sold through the official 202 market place. The 202 market place will be the safest place to get plugins. They will vett all plugins to make sure they aren’t malicious and won’t break shit.
The marketplace will also advertise within 202 installs about new plugins, top plugins etc. Developers could even buy ad space inside the 202 installs to drive more traffic to their plugin pages if you wanted to take it to the next level.
It’s win win. Developers profit, and make more/better plugins to meet demand. And 202 makes a small percentage per sale in return for giving exposure.
I think doing something like that would kick ass and grow the company and the software faster than anything else.
Sawadee Kop!
Wes and his crew are rock stars. Just super genuine nice guys. Glad to see him at the wheel and driving. After hearing NickyCakes famous talk at ADs4dough and doing what I am doing, sounds like it would be a killer function to be able to obfuscate where traffic is coming from and going to as it passes through their system.