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I should have added this in the original post.

You DO need to learn tracking from the beginning. It is very important that you get into tracking from the beginning because there is a great deal to learn about trackers. you don't want to wait to learn tracking. This industry is all about data sets. Collecting and understanding data in various situations is what we all spend a great deal of time on because it is the shortest, quickest, means by which to design and launch winning campaigns, refine losing campaigns into winners, and  to develop your intuitions that will drive your predictability assets to create great campaigns.

Get a VPS! It is a small investment, and any business requires at least a modest investment. You will need it to serve up your LP's and WP Sites fast. Speed is essential and when you have 1000's of people hit your pages at the same time, you don't want them to wait 3 or 4 seconds for a page to load. I'll re-phrase,THEY WON'T WAIT! This isn't 1998 when you could sell a million ebooks on "How TO Train Your Bird", or "How To Play Guitar" (Thank You Frank and Eben) in a week. We are in an instance of marketing online that now requires investment (albeit miniscule compared to any other businesses). This industry got busy in the late 1990's and has matured considerably since then. In case you haven't noticed, the networks are screening pretty heavily these days because so many people were joining that had bought the bullshit training ebooks about "How To Make A Million Without Spending A Dime". The networks want to know that you are capable and honest. In addition, you will want to learn at least the basics of managing your server through both your CPanel and your WHM in order to tweak everything for best performance.

As for the intelligence tools, one must remember that a tracker is one of those tools. As for a spying tools, I DO NOT recommend that any Newbie plunk down that kinda cash to spy on competition until they have cash flow that will allow for it. Then, and only then, should you begin utilizing them.

So, there is a great deal about this industry that isn't seen by many. You see, when you get volume up to the top of the heap with networks, several things can happen. For example, your networks can broker private deals on your behalf with the advertisers for better and more frequent payouts as well as the removal of caps. Also, you can sometimes go direct to the advertiser to assemble the same or similar deal to cut out the network, but you have to be big in the vertical and have a very clean history of performance. As well, you could then do the same with your traffic sources for premium placement or preferred placement for your ads over others. You can also start brokering with site owners for ad placement and with enough of a financial commitment you can get preferred times and positions for your ads on those sites.

There is more, but you don't need to learn about these things immediately. You need to learn the basics and find your initial success first. This initial foundation is absolutely necessary and if you don't do it, if you think you can outsmart everyone along the way in order to find success, it will never come. NEVER!

Be good to yourself, learn the basics so they are a second nature intelligence for you. Then you can broaden yourself regularly as long as you never lose sight of the fact that you are always learning, you always are accepting your failures as learning moments while collecting data, you are running a business and you treat it as such, and you establish strong bonds with others in the industry.

T J