Web development project completed!
I’ve just finished a major project for The Betting Guru. This website includes a full PayPal subscription service to protect the valuable private content.
The service
What is it? Well I’ve never been much of a gambler, only the odd horse race, Grand National, Melbourne Cup or Soccer matches (I am from the UK) but his predictions are simple to understand.
As a programmer (and trained as an Aero Engineer) I do know a bit about maths and constructing algorithms. It’s quite clear after spending time with the betting guru that his statistical model is extremely well developed. He has used this model to make predictions on the NRL for some time.
Almost the entire 2008 season NRL match predictions were presented on a previous website with great success. Look at the profit and results here.
Each week the Betting Guru presents a predictions on a selection of matches in the NRL or AFL. He is also investigating models for other sports 🙂
Internet marketing
The website went live mid afternoon yesterday (Friday, 20th March) and we emailed subscribers to last years free predictions. Within 3 hours, half of the recipients had already read the email, and clicked through to the website and 6% of these had actually bought memberships!
What a great start 🙂
I also helped the Betting Guru get to grips with Twitter, he’s getting there. Follow him at twitter.com/bettingguru
Visit www.bettingguru.com.au for NRL & AFL match tips
How it is built
After listening to the Betting Guru’s need for monetising this unique content I came up with a plan to provide a website environment which enables the following…
- Easy previews of content so potential customers can see what they could get access to after subscribing
- Smooth joining experience
- Secure area for members to access premium content
- Simple subscription model, weekly or annual for NRL only, AFL only or both
PayPal’s subscription system has worked very well in this instance and we already have plans in place to use this on another project.
The system is based on the latest version of WordPress (like this one). I also bought a full copy of the MemberWing premium WordPress plugin. All the PHP code is very heavily customised to enable all sorts of features.
I particularly liked the time that the MemberWing saved in terms of handling the PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN). I can happily recommend this plugin 🙂