PublisherChallenge’s Launch a Success
February 11, 2009 Posted by Tyler CruzPublisherChallenge launched a few days ago and the response I’ve been getting has been very good so far!
There were a number of minor design bugs upon launch, but those have all been fixed now. Some of you found a few issues and had a couple suggestions, pretty much all of which have been fixed and implemented.
I haven’t marketed or promoted the site yet. My plan is to do this closer to March so that I can also promote the new competitions at the same time. I actually don’t plan on doing much marketing or advertising for the site, preferring instead to invest more money into the functionality and features of the site, relying more on word-of-mouth instead.
A few dozen members have already registered to the site after just a few days which is nice to see. Most of them registered to claim their affiliate ID(s), but a number of people seem to have registered misunderstanding that the site cannot track their commissions if not under my referral account.
New Features and Improvements
Other than the minor design glitches being fixed, we’ve already added a number of new features and improvements to the site since the launch a few days ago:
- The actual standings and tiers for eligible contestants for each particular competition are now shown in the right column on the Standings and Full Standings pages for each network.
- The Terms of Conditions which is shown and required to be agreed to upon signup is now also linked sitewide in the footer so users can read it at any time.
- The Total Earnings is now shown for each network on their corresponding Full Standings page.
- The “1-2-3 Signup Image” is now linkable to the signup page.
- Users can now register with e-mails of different domain extensions from the main 3 (.info, .tv, .us, etc.)
- New contestants are now shown with a different background colour in the standings.
- The admin can now activate users (useful in the situation when a user doesn’t receive their activation e-mail).
- PublisherChallenge now recalculates the stats every 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes. This allows for 3 updates per hour instead of 2.
- MotiveInteractive will be coming on board in March to hold their first competition!
(Note: 7 of those contestants in AmpedMedia are actually New Referrals, this will be fixed tonight)
Upcoming Features
Apart from making PublisherChallenge compatible with MotiveInteractive for tracking, I have the following ideas and plans in mind:
- Importing and adding the past competitions (that were run on my blog). While this would take a while to do, it would add more statistical history to the site making the experience a bit more rich.
- Add a blog. I’m not sure if I want to use WordPress or a simple custom news system. WordPress would be easy to integrate, but making cross-member integration systems is always messy if a CMS needs to be upgraded in the future.
- Add a forum. I haven’t decided yet if I want to cross promote and integrate the forum with PublisherForums.com, adding a new section there for PublisherChallenge.com or not, for mainly the same reasons above.
Any Suggestions?
I’ve already implemented some of the suggestions made in the comments of the previous post, so I’m certainly interested in any ideas you guys may have. Are there any features or improvements you’d like to see?
20 Responses to “PublisherChallenge’s Launch a Success”
Tyler,
I’ve been following your PublisherChallenge.com launch for the last several weeks and just wanted to commend you on an excellent idea and a great new site.
I wish I could offer some relevant suggestions, but it seems like you have thought of almost everything.
One idea I had, though, was – would it be possible to hold competitions for JUST PPC players or JUST SEO guys, for example? Some affiliates are better at getting organic search traffic and some have huge PPC budgets. Why not hold separate challenges for the PPC and the SEO guys and maybe even have a once a year battle PPC vs. SEO, for example.
Anyway, great job!
Bill
Don’t forget about the media buying and emailing guys.
Hi Bill,
No, it wouldn’t be possible unfortunately. While I’m able to track the commissions for referrals, there’s certainly no way I can track their traffic sources.
Even if I could, it still wouldn’t work as some people do a mixture of all 3 (including media buys).
Thanks for the suggestion though. Maybe we can do a “team” match in the future… where you can team up with another member! That could be fun…
I think u should put the money into advertising the site. More features might be good down the road, right now u need users. just MHO
Congrats, I have signed up already but I am waiting on some new networks that I have not signed up with.
Looks good though 🙂
“Terms and Conditions”, Tyler, “Terms and Conditions”.
You only use “Terms of Conditions” when you carry on the sentence: “Terms of Conditions of the contract”.
But you mean the “Terms and Conditions” which the members must stick to.
Thanks, I wasn’t too sure about this when creating it. I do know that some sites call is Terms of Conditions (TOC) but it does sound a bit awkward so I’ve revised the site to reflect the former.
Hi Tyler,
I think TOC is Terms of Contract.
That’s why you probably got confused and ended up writing TOC of the contract… 😀
Cheers,
Alex
Looks good, I’m looking forward to the motive contest , hopefully I can get something up by the end of the month so I can fire on all cylinders during march with motive.
Tyler,
Glad its taking of pretty good. Just a thought on the whole forum idea. I think the publisherforums should be redone with more of an affiliate marking theme. Maybe get a skinner to skin it to be the same colors as the site skin. You could probably get this done at a relatively low cost.
I would then take a look at alot of the forums and trim most of the ones already there and create some new ones that have more to do with affiliate marketing. You can keep some of the other forums as well but just make it so the general feel is more towards affiliate marketing and match the theme with publisherchallange and I think it will be a sucess.
Just my two cents.
Barry
The site look good, Tyler.
I love the color. 🙂
I think I can not join March contest cause I’ve accepted by Motive. 🙁
Glad the site’s getting such great feedback. We’re looking forward to some great results from our first official PublisherChallenge competition. Keep up the great work!
#1 TheBehemoth $70,469.20
^^^ That’s ridiculous and absolutely awesome.
You did a great job launching this website. I think making a separate board for it on publisherforums.com should be fine. I think you should also add in the past data like you said, just to kind of give users more stats to look at.
I hate being number 3!
Well done Tyler.
Publisher Challenge – It’s Like Reality TV for Internet Marketers.
Glad to see this site of yours have launched successfully 🙂 Now you just have to gather a lot of affiliates to use it.
-Mike
All the best for your new venture Cruz , I know the idea will rock
I just signed up at Publishers Challenge, here are my suggestions:
1 – Now clear way to sign up. I see Log In, but there is no big call to action telling me to sign up.
2 – Put up a tutorial on how to find your CD #. I found it on all but Motive, where I just guessed.
3 – I signed up for all these these networks, but I doubt I signed up under you. Am I SOL?
1. I thought it was actually very clear how to sign up with the big top sitewide 1-2-3 Signup Process image that links to the sign-up page, as well as the Sign Up link in the Control Panel on the top left….
2. I give instructions on how to find the CD# in both the FAQ (http://www.publisherchallenge.com/faq.php) as well as on the second page of the sign-up process screen, but I haven’t added the description of how to for Motive yet since we just added Motive yesterday. I plan on adding documentation for Motive once we launch their first competition in March.
3. Correct, as stated numerous times throughout the site.
Thanks for the reminder regarding Motive though!