Professional Opinions Required... Program Owners Please Look Here
 

How long does it take to build a program and its product sites?

That depends on the cash you have on hand.

Very true. Let's suppose there is an average amount of resources.

I am gonna say $100,000.00 start up budget. Just for fun... I am not building anything I would just like to have this conversation with as many different points of view as possible :)

Define building a program -- do you mean launching sites, having working affiliate stats, etc or do you mean having a target number of new sales/rebills by a specific time?

Atleast 6 months...


Mr. Romance

Having a working system ready to accept and process business.

Exclusive content that has to be shot or purchased as existing content thats ready to use?

so many variables, but my guess with a 100k start up budget would be 6mos -year

depends on lots of things.

all exclusive content? number of people working on it?
type of affiliate backend? support and promo tools intended to offered and how many features you are intending to offer them with? how many hours a day you gonna work on it?

theres alot of variables, but i'd say to do it right you'd want to ramp up just like you would with any other type of business. i'd personally take the extra time to make sure its all right before kicking something out the door in such a competitive cutthroat market.

I think it also depends on the team you have working behind you.

Let's say you have an in house team ... things usually get done faster because it can be managed easier.

But now let's say you are a smaller company wanted to start up, one usually outsources to contract workers. Well, there is much less control over those people and it's on their time schedule. So if you don't get the work from them you are usually stuck in limbo.

There are pros and cons to both sides, but it does come down to the dedication of the team and structure of the company.

If you have honest, hard workers (contract or employees) then you can have a successful program up and running soon.

It also depends on how you are trying to launch. Are you coding the backend or using something like NATS. Having the backend customized takes more time and money whereas NATS or MPA is more time efficient and can make the launch faster. However, it may be suitable for all because everyone likes their stats and information different.

It's mostly the preferences of the owner and it's also a game of trial and error.

Oh poo ... forgot about exclusive content too...and is there a CMS being integrated? That's always time consuming as well, but beneficial in the end to making updates and members area much easier to manage.

I could do it in a week

Experience or no experience, all the money in the world can't buy you the clues to success.... you say you have everything ready, but we know this is not the case.

Every decision you make could mean the demise of your program before it even starts, There is no time frame on success. Only smart business practices, safe business practices, knowledge of the game, and hard work.

The money can increase the time you have, it won't create a successful business

Okay let's take out the content factor and say that it is miraculously all in order except for some text and marketing features that need to be put around it.

Let's say we are going to build it on existing aff software either NATS or MPA3.

100k not including payout reserves?

6-8 weeks... we'll make an announcement next week ;)

This is a hypothetical situation. So yes i can say everything is ready to be put together and laid out on the table properly. To engage in this conversation you need to accept the hypotheticals and not look at this for anything else than that.

That said I agree whole heartedly that there needs to be a lot of prep work and thought to a business model before you jump into creating it, and once you do it is safe to say that however long you thought it would take you should probably double it.

When I helped to spec out and put together Platinum Bucks 4.0 it took most definitly twice as long as we had initially thought, we had unlimited people and resources for it but they wanted it to be perfect and not just another product out there.

That said, come back to my hypothetical situation here. If all the ducks are in a row. The content (which may or may not be adult content) is set and ready to go how long to build the marketing package and functional affiliate program to go around it? In your expert opinion.

If you are starting from scratch then definately 1 year.

And that's not even that many sites.

If you have no stats and shooting all your own exclusive content.

I cant cast a vote for that. It has too many variables as already said in this thread :)

uh, it takes too long.
thats my answer. ;-)

All very good points. I totally agree with everything there. There are almost too many variables to be able to give a straight answer I know.

I will not hold anyone to their opinions. I do have an ulterior motive here though so keep the comments, feedback and questions coming ;)

Ya no payout reserves... I am talking about 100,000k to build a program and a product site that you would feel comfortable putting your name on and launching to webmasters. How much time would you need to get it to that point?

Let's be reasonable, it is a known fact that webmasters will try a product once but if it sucks no matter what you do to try and bring them back you will have for the most part already have blown it.

Like everybody says there are so many variables ,
Hmmm ... Mine took over a year in development with a
very small team with 6 exclusive paysites and
beta testing time .

hmmmmm....

what a question, loaded too. i think that if you look at the existing tools and software already on the market now compared to 10 years ago then you can cut alot of the cost as well as time in getting something launched. you could with alot of hard work and depending on your own personal skill set a program with 10 sites up and running within 2 weeks.

1. outsource design
2. buy a stats package that is widely used (nats)
3. buy content and build only one mega membership area

now with cash flow that is totally up to what business model you are going to use?

1. is it a PPJ or revshare?
2. what is the expected value per click on the front ends?

now if you are going to actually do your own exclusive sites then you are talking prolly 4 months per site alone and a lot of cash up to 3000 per episode shot unless you are shooting yourself.

again though the program itself you could have up with one site in it within 6 months depending on the content schedule.

this is just my opinion...

now if you are building everything from scratch including stats software then you are talking a mimimum 6months to a year not using your own merchant account if you have your own merchant then tac another 3 months for approvals and corp shit ...

there you go in a nutshell ... LOL ... if i am wrong oh well ..

The answer very much depends, of course, on the resources one has available to them... and also the efficiency of those resources.

Technically, you could churn out a new program with 50 niche sites in as long as it takes to get processing up and running... In reality, however, I've found that the supply chain tends to break periodically due to the fact that it consists of humanbeings.

We're all flawed, and it'll pretty much always take longer than planned, but whenever necessary I simply can't stop myself from saying: "You are the weakest link... Goodbye!"

Not sure why that is... :winkwink:

duplicate post.

This is an open ended question with too many possibles.

We've seen people open up new small programs with a minimum amount of effort, minimum amount of content; Basically cookie cutter programs with new content using NATS or MAS.

On the other hand, I'm working on a full scale project right now for ICS that will take much longer - and be much bigger.

It depends on the scale of the program, the amount of people working on it, the amount of content involved, and how much money you have to burn.

I don't see how I am going to possibly cover more ground than anyone else that has posted in this thread...HOWEVER...

Planning is the one point nobody has mentioned yet. Doing your homework and planning goes a long way to overcoming the inevitable obstacles you will come up against.

Writing a good business plan before you start "building" your program and sites is a neccesity. "plan your work and work your plan" is an axiom that defintely applies to our industry now more than ever.

:2 cents:

Unless those who need know that are not aware of it. Way too many cowboys winging it in this industry.

Sure. I agree... BUT... it's also indescribably important to have realistic expectations around said plan... The damn thing will almost always start shape-shifting relative to the incompetencies of the weakest links...

:upsidedow

agreed.

twice in one day.

took me 2 months alone to set up NATS properly with my sites

and the 100k, does that include the advil purchases for the headaches?

This is a very key pointing, planning and writing a solid business plan before starting a project of any size makes a huge difference, but Aly is right too if your weakest link infects your project and the best laid plans of mice and men could certainly fall asunder.

I think I am going to have to crate a different hypothetical situation to get more responses to feed my ulterior motive here lol

Part of the plan is to remain flexible an open to change. No business plan is set in stone.

As you mentioned in your first post in this thread your entire business is only as strong as the weakest link. In some cases you can minimize the exposure and limit the involvement the weakest link has to the business. Or just get rid of the weakest link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weakestlink/ima...nner_right.gif

LOL that is true I will allow a medical budget equal to that of the entire project to be sure that the hypothetical crew of people are well looked after ;)

dont forget executive stats, seems everyone always forgets to mention them, but then again only 2 affil programs use it

Depends the cash, the size of the project, if it's exclusive or non exclusive etc etc... takes at least a couple months.

100k is a little low for all exclusive content, for at least a portfolio of sites. needing regular updates etc

100k is a little low for all exclusive content, for at least a portfolio of sites. needing regular updates etc

Don't make the assumption that you are building adult sites, just that you have a budget to work within ... the question is not how long would it take you to build your DREAM program, but how long would it take to build a program with that budget.

i dunno dude even the best business plans that i have had in the past fail cause of the excessive compulsive planning... the planner is not the dreamer and the dreamer is not the planner ... so there is a crux in that ... at some point you have to go with your guts on something if it is going to work and yes flexibility is the key to it all .... and aly you are right the weakest link is always the problem but what if you find that you are the weakest link .. hahahah.... kick yourslelf off??

it takes 3 months to shoot 3 sites worth exclusive content for a content provider.

Meanwhile you can purchase/offer the software for member/affilate zone and stats / 1 month for testing and stuff. Add 1 month extra for any force-majeur case. 3+1 = 4 months

I hate writing business plans with a passion. 90% of them are nothing but bullshit and fluff. What they do provide is a way of solidifying your ideas on paper and allow you to schedule and prioritize each "event" in the chain.

if you're the weakest link hire someone to do your job and step off homie.

:winkwink:

It could probably vary anywhere between 4 months and 1 year, but if you know what you're doing, and do it right, probably around 6 months.

Shooting content: 4-6 months
Building sites: 2 months
Promoting new program: 2 months minimum

Of course some of the above can be done simultaneously.

we opened with one site....

Duke

haha exactly :thumbsup business plans for an affiliate programs might
help somewhat but in reality i think most importantly is getting your own traffic sources and
bonus if you been around for long time and have a good
knowledge yourself on how affiliate programs operate .
Even hiring someone that may know alot about the industry could and has a phat chance of failure .
In the end as the program owner you should never depend on anyone else
to run your bizz , unless its already established of course :2 cents:

I know few guys that "winged" it and are very sucessful .
As well with some companies that made a detailed
business plan that totally flopped like a dead fish.
Then there's the people that flukes out who know nothing and don't know what they're doing but has access to
incredible content and make tons of cash with half ass marketing
skills ... That just goes to say content does wonders .

My take on this is your building the wrong way...instead of building a "program" .. build the hard part first.... the main website you will be wanting to promote. The affiliate program part is easy... the hard part is getting a site up and running and everything working correctly and getting traffic flowing to it... now someone is going to say... you cant have traffic without a program... thats not correct... you can start getting traffic yourself..learn about traffic...if you cant get traffic to your site then how can you help others do it....

Building a website takes lots of tweaking untill you get it the way YOU want it. build it, then when its working the way you want, work on an affiliate program.

True say an ass load of content will help any adult paysite program, and a solid business plan will not hurt but in many cases be totally disregarded as the adult Internet (Internet in general) grows and changes really quickly.

Sometimes it is hard not to over organize things, so many ideas so lil' time! I have learned that it is sometimes best to jump in and get dirty LOL

double post.

Way too many unknowns and undefined variables to give an exact viable answer. However, starting with $100k in seed money, if you know what you are doing you should have no problems with a 3-month timeframe. :2 cents: