The average publisher that comes into the system will mean _____ in revenue for Poker Affiliate Solutions over the next two years.

We are currently signing up ____ new publishers per day.

If all features were finished, we would be signing up _____ new publishers per day.

If bankrolls were fully integrated, we would be adding _____ new bankroll publishers per month.

The average generating bankroll publisher will produce _____ in monthly revenue.

If traditional (our internal word for non-incentivized poker affiliate marketing) were fully integrated, we would be making _____ in monthly revenue.

Therefore, currently, we are leaving _____ in revenue, PER DAY, on the table.

In life, there are often no deadlines other than the ones you impose on yourself. I will quit smoking by December. I will go to the gym four times this week. I will send out 200 emails this week.

December, four, and 200 are completely arbitrary. Could I make it January, two, and 100? Of course, but I need to push myself.  A loose estimate is not enough.   I am not happy with myself when I don’t meet my goals.  Honest Question: How do you respond when tech doesn’t meet the “estimations”?  Is there anything that can be done by management to alleviate any negative feelings?  Can you verbalize what you need to meet the “estimations”?  Or at least turn the estimations into deadlines?

There is little that is external to push us. We are defining the product as we go. It’s currently better than anything on the market and is only getting better.

But you’re right Chad, a lack of external deadlines makes it harder. Of course, if we stop leaving the money outlined above on the table, we will all make more money, have greater job security, the ability to move on to things not yet even thought of, and so on. That said, I will continue to think about deadlines and a lack of external motivation.

As far as “Having no idea what we’re doing,” it is all of us, collectively, not knowing what we’re doing. (We all know this was an exaggeration intended to evoke emotion.) It’s not that management doesn’t know what you’re (meaning tech) doing. We know. This business was built five years ago on midnight shifts in home offices. We’re all adjusting.

I think the new incredible office space that is coming will help with this tremendously. Because it’s not just that not being in the office is a problem, it’s that working too much away from the office is also a problem.

(Technical Output x Time) has never been this company’s strongest number

(Meeting Customer Needs x Flexibility) has been and is.

[Note to the reader: those numbers above were shared with tech, but unfortunately, cannot be shared with you.]

I’m glad to see this blog getting under way. Things are pretty busy, so I’ll dive right in.

Two topics stood out to me in your post, and I’ll respond to each in turn. First, the topic of our office’s working dynamic. Second, the topic of dates.

As you mentioned, the company started with two guys who could make things work by tackling everything by themselves. Now that we’ve grown much larger, communication is especially important. Employees need to know how their work fits into the whole project, and management needs to have all the information necessary to make top-level decisions. With regard to why we don’t have everything finished yet, you said the following:

Plainly, because we have no idea what we’re doing.

If you have no idea what we’re doing, it’s probably because you spend so little time in the office. I can always give you a status update, but it’s a tall order to keep you posted on all the information you would glean by simply being present for the full work day.

Regarding dates: there are estimates, and there are deadlines. Estimates are not deadlines.

Whenever I provide an estimated release date, I make it very clear that they are ESTIMATIONS, NOT COMMITMENTS. That’s usually met with something like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know they’re only estimations, just give us the dates.”

I’m not opposed to deadlines, but I think they should be in place for the right reasons. Say we have the opportunity to provide rakeback for amazon.de, but a German law is going into effect on Jan 1 which would block any new gaming partnerships. Obviously, this is a good reason to set a deadline.

On the other hand, say we just want features to roll out more quickly. Deadlines now become dangerous. With those in the tech department hard at work (I’m proud to say they are), assigning deadlines based on imperfect information leads to buggy software and unhappy employees. We’ve already learned from this mistake once in April.

Tech did not meet your expectations for a quick rollout. We didn’t meet our own expectations. But the problem was not with our productivity, the problem lay in the expectations. Our estimations are better now than they were six months ago, but they’re still admittedly bad. Here are a few reasons our estimations will improve:

• Experience - The more we produce as a team, the better we can estimate how long it takes who to do what.
• Project Tracking - Software management tools will help predict when resources will be available.
• Subversion and Testing - Ironing out the kinks in these two practices will cut way down on integration time (time spent making all the developers’ code work together), which is difficult to estimate.

Estimates usually change because of something unexpected, like a bug or a power outage. These unexpected things tend to increase time requirements, so it’s no surprise that poor estimates are so frequently short rather than long.

If anyone reading this has experience in software management, I’d love to hear your thoughts. We’re writing good code already, and I hope to put some lightweight practices in place to help us continue writing it faster and with better predictability.

Here are my latest estimated release dates.

Release 2.4 - 9/5
Dashboard News
News RSS
Dashboard Widget Control
Global News Control
Publisher Payments Reporting (sortable, filterable statements)
Publisher Payment Controls (payment notes, payment search, edit cashout options)
PAS Affiliate Program

Release 2.5 - 9/22
Additions to Websites Page
Full Domain DNS Checking
Website Reporting (MGR, Sign-Ups MTD, etc.)
Website Controls (host disabling, alias editing, etc.)
Publisher Players Overview Page (manual player creation, aggregate player data/graphs, ect.)
Publisher Player Page (manual tracker creation, individual player data/graphs, helpdesk history, etc.)

Release 2.6 - 10/10
Publisher Player Referral Controls
Publisher Player Referral Reporting
Static Groups (groups of players selected by publisher)
Smart Groups (groups of players live-generated on criteria selected by publisher)
Group Controls (export, email, etc.)

Release 2.7 - 10/24
Publisher Product Pages (like product-version of dashboard)
My Account Page

Release 3.0 - 11/7
Bankrolls

Release 3.1 - 11/28
Website Grouping (by domain, product, localization)
Client Scoring
Global CRM (pending details)

Release 3.2 - 12/29
Bayesian Processing for Bankrolls

We wanted to have a system that offers turnkey rakeback sites, turnkey free bankroll sites, non-incentivized poker affiliate marketing campaigns and much more up THREE MONTHS AGO! Then we revised it to September 1st. Guess what – there’s not a chance we’re going to make that deadline either.

Why? And more importantly, why am I telling you?

I’m telling you because we want to share with our partners, friends, and the poker affiliate marketing community what we struggle with. We want to publicize our statements to each other. We want to have a record of all the effort that went into building the first true poker affiliate network.

Why isn’t it up yet? Plainly, because we have no idea what we’re doing.

Oh, we know marketing and we know software and we know code. We know how to make money online and we know how to help others make money online. We’ve been building successful online properties for years. We currently have 200 publishers and they all have working systems. Many are making real money.

What we don’t know is how to completely work together as a team to produce feature after feature and add one huge project on top of another. It’s one thing when it’s two guys building a startup out of their garage. It’s another to have 75 employees and thousands of partners. We’re somewhere in between.

So we, as management, put a ton of pressure on tech. Get it done! Do it! Why doesn’t this work? Should we just outsource this whole thing?

We pressured them into rolling out a huge upgrade three months ago. It was too early and it took weeks to weed out the bugs. After it was live. Won’t do that again.

We threw Chad into the role of project manager, responsible for the whole thing. He didn’t have any experience in project management, but we saw his potential. (Still do, most days ) Who doesn’t love a good trial by fire?

Management of this company wants it all and wants it all now! That’s what keeps us ahead of the curve. But how to get there isn’t a straight line. It’s trial and error.

To our credit, what we put out is quality. It works and it makes people money. A LOT of money. We just don’t put out enough and don’t do it quickly enough. Last Thursday, for example, the new and improved publisher dashboard was supposed to be live. Today is Tuesday. WHERE IS IT? And obviously I assume this pushes back the whole roll-out schedule?

Chad, in his response, is going to provide his perspective.

Bottom line, we will reach our goals, and we’re going to keep getting faster and more efficient as we go. We guarantee it. Hope you enjoy reading about our screw-ups along the way.

-mgmt