PublisherChallenge Launch Date Delayed
January 31, 2009 Posted by Tyler CruzI was really hoping to launch PublisherChallenge on February 1st, but unfortunately I will not be able to. The launch date was always ambitious and tight, but I really wanted to aim for it as launching on the first of the month would have been ideal.
The development on the site is progressing, but the rate of progress slowed down quite a bit this week due to the transitioning over of using dummy data to the real stuff. We have this working, but there are a number of bugs that need to be ironed out as well as a few new features and improvements that I added on at the last minute.
I could probably have kept my original launch date and had the programmers cram the most important things in at the last minute, but I don’t want to launch a site that is buggy and not complete.
In my last updated post, I mentioned that the site was around 65% done at that time. I’d now estimate that PublisherChallenge is around 80% done. I’ve set a new launch date for February 7th which gives us an extra week to work on the site, but even so, it will be close. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to delay the unveiling again until the 15th, but the 7th is definitely doable.
The programming may be finished by then, but then comes the arduous task of adding content to the entire site, which will inevitably take me some time to do.
So What About the Competitions?
Since PublisherChallenge won’t be launching for another week, I’ll be temporarily running the Affiliate Marketing Competitions on my blog again until PublisherChallenge is up.
I had originally planned on launching the site with 3 competitions from 3 different affiliate networks, but one is taking a break for a while and the other wants to see how the site does in February before hoping to run a huge one in March.
I can confirm that MarketLeverage is back, and another network I haven’t promoted very much yet really wants to run one but I need to determine and confirm the rules and prizes with him. The CEO has been very hard to get a hold of lately, so I’ll need to discuss things with him within the next 24 hours or we’ll have to wait until March.
Here are a few more screenshots to hold you guys over since I had to delay the launch of the site. I’m sorry for the delay, but a week will pass before you know it. Time sure does seem to fly by for me!
Profile Page
An updated screenshot of what the profile page looks like. Adding commas and the dollar sign to the graph numbers is in the works.
Past Competitions Page
This area will grow as more past competitions are displayed, but this is basically it.
Admin Area
I haven’t shown any screenshots of the administration area so I thought I’d provide one.
Although I’m quite new to your blog, but I’m excited to see what is PublisherChallenge is all about. Keep it up. Cheers!
Very good luck with this Tyler, i hope you suceed 🙂
-James
This is Sweet Tyler 🙂
I’m really excited about PublisherChallenge, will be looking forward for the launch on 7th Feb.
Will it be open for everyone at first, or first for the Testers?
When it launches it will be open and ready to use for everyone 🙂
Ohh.. Sad to hear that the launch date has been delayed. But still you you gave the proper reason that you don’t want any bugs or technical problems to give to the users. Take time in launching it perfectly 😉
It’s really looking good Tyler. I am still looking forward to the launch. I will be sure to write a review once it does launch on my Affiliate Manager blog and hopefully help bring some new people to your competition 🙂
Tyler, it’s been asked several times already but I haven’t seen you answer yet. Are these challenges going to be open for anyone to take part or only a private competition between only your referrals? You’ve said for “your competitions only” but I assumed that just meant only you can start up the various challenges…does it also mean only those that sign up under you are eligible?
It’s understandable why you would want it to be only your referrals but networks may be even more interested if they knew they could get more exposure than just your own referrals.
It’s for affiliates who sign up under my own referrals only. There are a number of reasons for this. Aside from obviously making it profitable for me, it would be unbelieveably difficult for contestants to win anything since they’d effectively be competiting against 10,000+ other publishers… as opposed to against the 10-170 (depending on the network) they’d be competiting against in my competitions.
It makes absolutely no sense for me to make the competitions open to anyone. I’d effectively be making other referrers money, not myself. It also wouldn’t benefit the networks much as the winners would most likely be affiliates who are already existing affiliates generating numbers with them.
For those who have already registerd to networks not under my account but still want to participate, that is why PublisherChallenge will run multiple compitions on multiple networks at once.
As mentioned, it is understandable why YOU would want to keep it referral only but then you are limited to only those you can filter through from here on the blog as new referrals. Even if you opened it up you could still have your affiliate link on the challenges so noobs, or regular affiliates that haven’t tried a specific network, can still sign up and you would get the referral. But by opening it up more you would have more chance as mass promotion and the site really getting out there.
Yes, having affiliates, or “super affiliates” already signed up able to join might make winning a lot harder for noobs but there is no reason there can’t be tiered levels like many before. So even is some guy does 500k and wins the main prize, there could still be smaller prizes for those that break 1k and such.
As for the benefit of networks, they are giving away gifts to the big money makers anyway. But the real draw for networks, as far as your site and them wanting to sponsor, is that they may be able to draw some of those heavy/super affiliates over to run offers on their network instead of a competitor and while there have a chance to try to retain that affiliate for other stuff. In that case sponsoring a challenge and giving prizes to people who are already making money from affiliate marketing could be a great investment.
Look at it this way, they know sponsoring your contest that they have a chance at getting a new super affiliate but odds are a majority of them are going to be noobs who may never push traffic. If anyone is allowed to join, they have a chance to “wine and dine” some proven affiliates who may be looking for a new “home network” and use the competition and prizes as an excuse to try out said network. Just bringing one super affiliate over to their network would be worth sponsoring the whole challenge for months!
It may not seem like you would make as much that way since you can’t guarantee every affiliate is your referrals but the more open it is the more exposure it would get and the more free advertising it would get. And in turn, the more people that might join getting you referrals anyway. Then just make sure there are lower level prize tiers that the noobs can still compete for so everyone has a reason to take part.
It would be win-win-win
The only part that would be a bit trickier is tracking the earnings for affiliates not under you but I am pretty sure the networks that want to take part could figure something out for you.
Talk to your own reps and ask them what they think ;).
Who updates the data? or is it via ‘network’ web xml?
That’s good that you’d rather launch a site that’s complete than buggy. Feb. 7th or 15th isn’t too far off, I feel like we can all wait. It’s not like you’re holding it off for a few months.
Hey no worries, when you delay things, it turns out better 😉
-Mike