Driver Database Updates

The advertising system that I’ve been working with on and off for what feels like a lifetime is now starting to be ready for launch. Before everything’s up and running I’m offering all users who have a Premier Profile the chance to get some free advertising. All Premier Profile drivers can now log in to their account and upload a 468×60 sized banner and display it on the site no less than 50,000 times for free.

If you don’t want to make an ad for your own website, why not take this opportunity to display a banner for your sponsor or perhaps your favourite charity? As long as the banner’s not offensive or about gambling (I can’t display gambling ads as it goes against the terms of service for Google Adsense which I also run at the site) it’s ok with me.

(and as a sidenote, the price for a Premier Profile is still 50% of the regular price)

The reasons for the Premier Profiles that were added about six months ago was so that the drivers with one of these profiles would get more exposure on the website than the normal profiles. The second reason was of course to be able to get a few Euros to be able to continue to provide the service of the Driver Database website to all the visitors, drivers, fans, teams, managers and series promoters.

If you look at the little screenshot to the left, a snapshot of today’s Most buzz list, you can see that nine of the twenty drivers are in bold and that they have a Premier Profile. 45% of the most visited driver profiles yesterday were upgraded to Premier Profiles. Not bad considering only 0.06% of the driver profiles at the website are Premier Profiles.

So it does seem to do the trick it was designed for, the drivers who have upgraded to Premier Profiles get more vitits to their pages than the drivers without one.

To see the advantages of the Premier Profiles, have a look here:
Premier Profiles – it’s not just all in the numbers anymore

The Premier Profiles are now up and running. You can have a look at Raed Raffii‘s page who’s got a few of the new features going, such as the biography, Q&A, sponsors page, YouTube page and Twitter tweets.

As you can see in “most buzz” and in the “Top 2010 race winners”, the Premier Profile drivers can turn on extra visibility and get their name in bold text on the website.

Perhaps most importantly though is that the Premier Profile drivers have extra super mega top priority when it comes to getting their submitted data (and photos) published.

Also, from now on only the drivers with Premier Profiles will get their press releases published.

There are more things planned for the PP’s, so stay tuned for that.

More reading and how to upgrade a standard profile page:
Premier Profiles

I’m putting the finishing touches on the Premier Profiles today and you might stumble across some new stuff while browsing the site today. The drivers with Premier Profiles will have some more exposure on the front page (and in the side columns on all pages, for that matter) and I just completed the first of the front page features. Nothing fancy, just a random racing related question, with not answers from up to five drivers, from the Q&A pages.

If more than five drivers have answered the specific question then five random drivers will be chosen in the list – in true Driverdb style.

More things to come.

I’ve compiled a little to-do list on a separate page on this blog. I will keep it updated with new stuff and when tasks have been completed. You are all very welcome to come with suggestions of things to improve, but try to keep it reasonable.

A lot of work, very little spare time and trying to complete the Premier Profiles (which for reasons indicated earlier in this blog is quite important for the future of the web site) has made me fall back on my emailing again. But I will get back to you all as soon as I possibly can.

A few drivers can now try out their premier profile; Michael Bilyy, Cassey Watson and Jono Lester took advantage of my free try out (2 free spots are still remaining, just read the my previous blog post for more info) and they can now try it out by logging into their account and looking at all the new goodies that are now available on their profile page under the “Submit info”-link.

Also, let’s all cheer for Jono as he makes his Porsche Supercup debut this weekend in Bahrain! Good luck!
Edit: It appears that Jono will have to wait for his Supercup debut.

Oh, and here’s the link you’ve all been waiting for:
Things to do in 2010

The long awaited premier profiles are now ready for a few days of testing. Everything is now implemented, I just need to test it out a bit before I’ll let drivers have the option of upgrading their regular boring profile into a premier profile.

With a premier profile the driver (or manager/racing mom or dad) can add their biography, presentations of their sponsors, YouTube clips,  latest tweets, links to Facebook fan-page, Q&A’s, external blog feeds, favourite links, published press releases and perhaps most importantly get top priority when it comes to updates of data and photos.

My goal with the top priority is to be able to add press releases the same business day that they are received (if they are received before 17:00 CET) and all photos and data (if they are sent in correctly) within two business days. This is just a goal however, not a guarantee, as most of the functions on Driver Database relies on me alone and I can’t guarantee that I won’t be home sick or out of the office some days of the year.

The price for a premier profile will be €40 for six months or €65 for one year (may be subject to change).

Five drivers will have the chance though to try it out right now for free though, before the proper launch (which will be a few days or so from now).

The first five drivers to comment on this blog entry with something in the likes of “Yeah! Let me try this thing out!” will get their Driver Database profile upgraded to a Premier Profile for 6 months for FREE (and there are off course no strings attached once those six months run out)!

(The drivers on Driver Database who have a nice and shiny gold medal on their profile page has already had their profiles upgraded (for one year) as a thanks for their support .)

I’ve made good progress on the Premier Profiles now (where drivers will be able to upgrade their driver profile with some more stuff). The things that are now working are:

• Add a biography
• Make comments to career entries
• Answer questions in the Q&A
• Add sponsors, logos and links
• Toggle extra visibility in lists (bold) on or off
• Add contact info
• Add links and feeds to social media and blogs

The things that are still on the to-do lists should be quick for me to get ready as they re-use most of the code from the above points.

• Add YouTube clips
• Add favourite links

Once I have those completed you’ll be able to see a demo page of a premier profile in action.

Back to work!

Edit: Got two more things done. Only two left on the to-do-list now.

It’s been a few days since the last post in this update blog. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any updates though.

The work with the Premier Profiles is making progress. At the moment I’m working on getting the tools ready on the “Submit info” page. Once those are working like they should – and easy to work with – I’ll have a go at the Payment options. First off I’m going to offer payment with PayPal as it’s in my opinion is the easiest and most well spread way of online payment available for small businesses. That it works with credit card payments without the need for a PayPal account in many countries is of course a plus as well. So, the priority is in getting to know the PayPal API so it’s easy to upgrade a regular driver profile into a shiny new Premier Profile. I’ll have a look at different payment options later on as I know PayPal isn’t the preferred choice for everyone.

I’ve now only a few driver blogs left to migrate to the new system, so most bloggers can now use their new blogs. Matt Cherrington blogged yesterday about his 2010 plans and I helped out Rory Butcher with adding his header image to his blog.

I stumbled across a few more character encoding issues and fixed them. Hopefully there’s not too many left now…

I also like to congratulate Raed Raffii and the Meezer Group team for their great results in the latest round of the Chevrolet Supercars Middle East championship. The Driver Database stickers are helping, of course!

Today it’s 2010. It’s got a nice sci-fi ring to it, hasn’t it?

2010 is going to be a very important year for Driver Database as it will really decide the direction the website will be going. I’m going to work on a lot of new features that hopefully will see the light of day during January. The goal for 2010 is for me to be able to work more on the website, and for me to be able do that I need to generate some revenue. As it is now Driver Database is a full time job that has to be done on my spare time. This was okay when I had a lot of spare time but I don’t anymore.

The things with the biggest priority right now is to get the “Premier Profiles” ready for launch. Drivers (or their managers) will then be able to extend their prescense on Driver Database a bit with biographies, presentations of their sponsors, Youtube clips, driver’s latest tweets, links to Facebook fan-pages, Q&A’s, external blog feeds, published press releases and perhaps most importantly high priority when it comes to updates of data and photos. These extended profiles will be available for a very reasonable yearly charge.

More to come on that as it progresses.

2010 has started with even more snow outside the Driver Database office window. And no, that’s not my truck.