beerchief

another big week needed

Last week, i worked my socks off… undoubtedly the most productive week yet as an internet entrepreneur.

This week will have to be similar if i’m to deliver BeerChief version 2 on time. We’ve really put the skates on and hope to launch a new, improved BeerChief within a few weeks. As i’ve said before, this is the big one - this version will be make or break for BeerChief as it’ll be the version that eventually goes public.

We’re extremely confident in this version and it’s definitely going to turn heads. Our current site could well take off on it’s own with some minor changes. It may not storm to overnight success, but i believe the name, idea, design, functionality etc… is all of a decent quality - it’s not rubbish.

Having said that, we both agree (myself and Adam), as webmasters and heavy internet & social networking users, it doesn’t grab you by the throat and pull you in. There’s a real lack of something about it and i don’t know what it is - it could be a combination of 100 things.

But with this new version, our first impressions were ‘wow’. It’s rare i’ll come across a site and say that. So the thinking is, that if WE’RE both impressed with this new version - it should mean it will go down well with the masses.

The only problem we face then is getting members and traffic. It may not be a problem of course - we won’t know until we take the site out of private testing.

So far we’ve faced many hurdles and jumped them all -

• coming up with the cash
• choosing designs
• choosing a company to outsource development to
• choosing a host / server

All of those problems have been handled well… the icing on the cake will be version 2 and the majority of version 2 will be complete this week, i’ll see to it

We’re on a roll now… we launched, had good reaction, got *some sort* of a community going and from day 1 we’d already begun work on a newer version. That work must continue this week and it will mean more 13/14 hour shifts at my PC, but i can assure you it will be well worth it.

At the end of it all i can FINALLY call BeerChief a ‘world class’ social networking site and throughout BeerChief’s life - that’s what i’ve vowed to do

we will rock you!

I know usually when i say i’ve been busy it means i’ve spent a few hours doing some work online in between general surfing or on/off work…

But all this week, i’ve literally been ‘working’ morning to night… 10.30 am to 3am. Obviously i have lunch/dinner etc… and might be away in town for the odd hour, but all of this week, i’ve been working roughly 13/ 14 hours a day.

So about 65 hours in total mon-fri (now)

What the hell have i been doing then?! 99% BeerChief work. There’s far too much to mention it all but i’ll try to round it up…

• put two small sites up for sale, sold one, transferred site & domain.
• custom designed BeerChief blog and got it respectable looking for launch
• custom designed new BeerChief homepage
• added about 20 beers with descriptions and images
• send out mass emails to over 140 BeerChief subscribers
• compiled a list of 17 known bugs with screenshots and reports for our development team
• fixed 3 bugs myself, one with ‘tags’, one with non-logged in members, the other with profile icons
• responded to all feedback
• analyzed all feedback and pulled it all together in bullet points
• put together prototype template designs for BeerChief v2
• compiled a list of new/essential features we need for v2
• custom designed some new icons for BeerChief
• greeted & added most new members to our ‘featured’ members section on the site
• analyzed traffic stats and put together some early projections
• had several lengthly email conversations with adam (we’ve sent over 70 emails to each other in the past 7 days)
• uploaded several videos to BeerChief and generally tried to test everything out as much as possible
• made blog posts on this blog

Really not much time to think… i would never have predicted i’d be this busy, but then again i would never have predicted we’d have so much feedback and so many members in the first few days - i thought i’d actually have to promote the site to get members.

So the fact most of the feedback has been (a) positive (b) constructive / helpful has just spurred me on to work even harder and push not only myself, but BeerChief to it’s limits. We have some MASSIVE new changes on the way and i’d go so far as to say it’s almost a complete site revamp.

The layout/design will remain somewhat similar but the whole site will be AJAXed and more ‘cutting edge’. It could backfire horrendously - nobody likes too much flashy stuff, but i don’t think so. Myself and Adam both agree the current site is ‘good’ but we ourselves wouldn’t go telling our friends about it.

We’re both in agreement we would tell our friends about version 2. That’s how much an improvement it is. An improvement, which in many people’s eyes, isn’t necessary or indeed possible but we’re both perfectionists and demand the best.

To cap off a great week, BeerChief has been mentioned on the frontpage of Mashable - mashable is one of the few blogs i read on a daily basis and has over 180k RSS subscribers. It’s one of the biggest blogs on the net and none other than Pete Cashmore himself (founder) wrote the post

We must be doing something right if we’re being mentioned on sites of that caliber

BeerChief v2

BeerChief has only been up and running 2 days, but myself and Adam are already in the process of a major revamp.

BeerChief v2

There are plenty of things we know we can improve… layout, use of AJAX, comments section, lack of ‘groups’ section, lack of profile customization for members, better organization on the admin side of things…

BeerChief ‘v2′ will iron out all of these problems and really begin to put the ‘world class’ feel in BeerChief. We’re never going to happy - i think that’s obvious… but if we can match the big guns and keep it as simple as possible that’ll be good enough.

I haven’t spoken yet about ads yet on BeerChief… it’s too early and we’ll only be adding ads to the site when we’re completely cash strapped. For now and in to the near future, BeerChief will be ad free as we try to build up membership, content and make the site bug free.

If we keep growing though, inevitably we’ll have to put ads on the site simply to pay for the server/s and upkeep. We’ve invested $10k+ so far, expect that to rise to about $12k when v2 is launched. I’ll quite happily live on the breadline for BeerChief…

Early signs suggest it will be worth my while… at it’s current rate of growth we’re looking at 600 members per month. So by Christmas (~6 months time), we should have 4k members based on our stats so far. We are of course still in private mode and haven’t promoted the site so realistically, i’d be expecting 5-10 times that figure…. 20-40 thousand members and if we get to that stage we’re in business.

Easier said than done though…let’s drag up this post at Christmas time and i’ll see how much i got right

off to a flying start

Google Analytics have been installed less than 24 hours on BeerChief, yet they’re already showing 120 unique visitors, and over 1000 page impressions.

That’s a pretty good start considering the site has restricted access! I keep saying it, but we’ve yet to promote it. I’d say we’re at about 5% promotion throttle…. 95% left in the tank which means the site’s gonna explode once it’s opened up to the public, and that’s not even taking in to account the fact we’ve got some massive new features lined up

Day 2, and we’ve already made over a dozen changes and fixed 2 or 3 bugs. We’re also planning some huge changes - the sort of changes that will really give us a ‘world class’ edge.

If you think BeerChief is a nice site at the minute, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet I’m now extremely confident we can go on to dominate the whole Beer social network niche. If we continue to act on feedback like we’re doing, there won’t be any problems. Keeping the work ethic up is the tough part, but then again i don’t consider it work when i’m not working for anyone or taking orders or don’t have set time

BeerChief is GO!

*sigh* it’s been a busy day… I was up extra early this morning like i said i would be… that was after a late night of polishing up some BeerChief pages.

I had to send out ~150 emails (not manually - i’m not that hard a worker), update the BeerChief blog, fix some errors, send a few normal emails and try to respond to feedback whilst trying to update my own BeerChief profile and add videos, photos etc…

I can just imagine the chaos it would cause if i actually *tried* promoting the site

To access the site, go to beerchief.com/beer

• username: beer
• password: okok

In some sort of twisted / evil ‘coincidence’, my college results arrived today in the post as if to say, ‘we come first’. Repeat form etc… included… i have to repeat maths. Loads of time for that though. 6 weeks at least.

BeerChief comes first