Golf Trac Status Update

It is almost to the point of embarrassment how long I’ve let this project drag on. I first mentioned it a few years ago, but I didn’t really take it seriously until these past 12-16 months. And once I decided to take it seriously, a whole slew of hiccups came into play. Some were decisions, some where logistics, and some were technical challenges. But I’m happy to say I’m past all of that now, and it’s a couple of days away from launch.

Deciding to Charge

This was a really difficult decision. The original plan all along was to build this tool and release it for free. But that doesn’t scale, for obvious reasons. Servers aren’t free. It costs money to host things, and even more so when you get a lot of people using something. That’s not to say that will happen, but if it did, the expense would have been on me to keep it running. In today’s world, some people might expect that, but it didn’t sound all that appealing to me. Plus, this is my blood sweat and tears poured into this thing, it’s a little less rewarding to just hand it over for nothing.

But as you might expect, the main deterrent was dealing with credit cards. That was not in my comfort zone. Luckily, SaaS companies have options now. There are things like Spreedly and CheddarGetter that ease the pain that is recurring billing. I chose to go with Chargify – they seemed to have the most of what I was looking for and their support was/is outstanding. Plus, they have a great API so it was relatively easy to integrate.

Merchant Account & Business Crapola

Getting a merchant account for someone who has done it before is probably not a big deal. But when you first dive into all of the options and fine print, it’s a bit overwhelming. There are transaction fees, monthly minimums, credibility, and on and on. And with any merchant account comes a payment gateway. That’s another area where confusion is the norm. Luckily it’s all behind me now, but that was a rather large wall I had to bust through. That alone pushed the launch date back a couple of months.

Giving it a Shot

After a four month private beta period and about 400 passing tests, the application itself is stable and ready to go. And now that I have all of the logistics ironed out, it’s just a matter of flipping the switch. There are a few more things that I’m waiting to hear back on and then it will be live. I would say the end of this week, but who launches an application at the end of the week? Who knows, maybe me :-)

For those that don’t know, check it out at http://www.golftracapp.com.

Stay tuned! The public launch really is a day or two away.