There were several. It gets confusing. At first I thought motion tracking was video stabilization.. so I could track something, but it didn't stabilize the image. Somehow I messed with it enough times to get it right. This is how I did it:

Import your video file, then right click and select "new comp from selection". You should then get the window with your video clip. Double click on the video clip to make a new layer.

Find your tracker pallet. If you don't see the tracker, go to Window on the file menu, and select it. It should pop up.

The end result should look something like this:
http://imgur.com/psaWoxw

Next, find one area that stays relatively the same throughout the clip. On the tracker pallet, click on "track motion". You'll get a white box, with a smaller box in the middle, and a little dot. If you move the entire thing, it shows a super magnified view of what the tiny dot is seeing. So the inside box is basically what you want to have whatever area in that stays the same, the box surrounding it is the search area where the program looks for anything that looks like the object in the little box. The dot in the center.. uh.. just try to keep it in the center. lol

This is what the tracker pallet and what the box look like. http://imgur.com/hwg6tCh

So now, move the white box to the area that stays pretty much the same during the clip. Here it's tracking the ending point of one of the strands hair in her bun.
http://imgur.com/I15jBnF

Now, you need to go to the motion tracker, and see where it says analyze. Some people just hit the forward arrow without the underline, but I always hit the forward arrow with the underline, so it analyzes one frame at a time. You can analyze forward or backward, but I do mine forward usually.

Here's a couple frames analyzed and manually corrected. If you look at where the box is resting on the right, you can see it's not lining up correctly with the end of the hair strand. The image below shows the white box manually corrected (I dragged the entire thing over a bit).
http://imgur.com/3cSuu2M

At this point, you can try to find a better tracking point, or just manually move it over if it doesn't center over the direct area you're tracking. I'm a control freak, so it's not surprising I like to analyze the video frame by frame.

Oh, I also forgot that if you're using a clip with more footage than is possible to track, just find the start and drag with the arrow so it doesn't show that part, also pull the bar above with the yellow end points so it starts where the clip starts. I think the bar above that one just shows how big or small you want to see the timeline. Here's a snapshot.
http://imgur.com/VlcN8bw

The end result of analyzing each frame and adjusting the tracker. It was usually decent in position but now and the it would randomly jump. Near like 3/4ths of the video, I no longer had to adjust it at all (prob cause it came to where she was stopped and the camera was no longer panning.. lol)
http://imgur.com/dYd8KSV

Now the big important thing. Once you analyze the video and move the tracker if it's off... make SURE YOU HIT APPLY. This is what the tracker should look like:
http://imgur.com/I7savdV

After hitting 'apply', it will pop up a dialog box asking if you want to apply X and Y dimensions (you could apply just one of these.. but you want BOTH). So hit okay.

Now it should have stabalized the motion for you, but if you should notice it runs off the composition border. So, you need to make the composition wider.

Here it is running off the border: http://imgur.com/lcLSR26

Also note the dots on the timeline. If I expanded the composition layer, it would show a ton of tracking data. Eh what the heck, here: I outlined the values that change in red:
http://imgur.com/z4QfbgH

So anyway back to the composition. You should also be sure that you're on the composition and not a layer. Um, i'm not sure if that's super important, but I just make sure I'm on the composition. To do all the stabilizing effects (including hitting apply to the motion tracker after you finish analyzing the frames), you need to double click to make a layer, but once you finish with that, double click on the video again and it should show it's on the composition layer. Should look like this. Also notice how the video is going off the composition board area:

http://imgur.com/0CNjNGS

To fix it so you can see the entire video, go to either the start or end of the part of the video you're using. Make sure that frame has one of the edges still on the board and not running off. Right click on any black part of the composition (that doesn't have the video click, and select 'composition settings'. Click the advanced tab and there should be a diagram with arrows. Click which arrow you want as the starting point for adding more space (so if the right edge is the last frame's ending and it's on the composition board and not running off, you'd click the right arrow). Under general setting, use the mouse to drag to a higher value, you should see the the composition border growing, starting from the right side. Keep dragging the cursor until the entire video clip is visible.

Now you should be able to see the entire video clip as it moves across the composition. You might wanna save your work now in case or something, just save it as some project name you will remember.

After that, go to the menu and under export, select add to render queue. In the render queue pallet, you can select where to save the file by clicking on the file name after 'output to'. Click on 'best settings' or whatever you have next to 'Render Settings' and put the resolution at like.. a quarter so you don't have a HUGE image after (if you're using it to show on the web, if it's for a music video or something, you can leave it at what suits you.)

So hit ok to get out of render settings, and then click on whatever filename is after 'output to' in the render queue. There you can designate the file location and name.

For me, it exports it uncompressed. I'm sure you can tell it to use a codec.. uh somewhere. That's for another day lol.

Finally, I start up photoshop, tell it to import video frames to layers, and select the clip I just exported. Once that is done, I'll hit save for web, which brings up the gif options, and then I'll save it out as a gif and upload it to imgur or whatever. That's just for the web though. If I was making a music video I would do things differently.

Hope this was able to clear a few things up! Message me if something goes horribly wrong on your end. haha.

Here's the final gif from of the project I just went through: (I'm also not a gif guru like the folks over in /r/highqualitygifs .. they probably know a lot of tricks to make awesome gifs that stay small in size.)
http://imgur.com/HhhDfZy

And I realize it looks nearly the same to the file I originally uploaded.. well that's life. lol