First Controller and Program Advice

Right off the bat, I'm going to apologize to the mods if this is in the wrong section, I seem to be quite poor when it comes to navigating community s when I want to post.

So I'm looking into getting into controllerism. I have Technics turntables with a fairly adequate mixer, but I don't have the money to buy all of the hardware necessary for Serato Scratch or even Traktor Scratch. In addition, since I'm starting out, I don't have the fanbase to make lugging all of that hardware around worth it.

So here are my questions:
I'm looking for an inexpensive first controller that can last me for a while and allow me to see if this is really how I want to go about doing things. The only criteria I have for the controller is that it has knobs for effects and solid jog wheels. I've been looking at the Numark Mixtrack Pro, is that a good way to go?

I also would like some advice on what program to use. I greatly admire Ean Golden, and as such I am more than confident that Traktor could meet any of my needs, but I don't know how the learning curve is on it. I've also heard good things about Serato, though I haven't heard much about whether it's well-suited for controllerism. Finally, I've heard good things about Virtual DJ, though I've also heard it's a bit /too/ simplistic. So any advice in that area would be great.

Lastly, I love what I've seen done with the MIDI Fighter, but I don't have a ton of money in my budget. Besides, I only need something I can map to trigger hotcues, as the effect control should be taken care of with the controller itself.

Oh, and one last thing- I want to be able to try out that new Sugarbytes program with my setup, so... I don't know what that would entail exactly.

Sorry about all of the requests, but I'm pretty clueless about this.

tl;dr- Looking for a good first controller/program setup. Advice?