My self-challenge: Build a functional MVP in 48 hours or less. Built it over the last weekend: EffTracker.com, affiliate tracking and A/B testing tool. Here is the result, and some takeaway. (x-post /r/startups)

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While working on some SaaS products recently, I've realized something: There must be a better way to test your startup product & create an MVP.

Better find a quicker way to deliver it to the market and get feedback from your potential customers fast, without spending like half an year building it just for the first market test.

Another personal problem. I have a ton of ideas of all sorts. Too many of them will simply get discarded because I have a single lifetime. Years later, some are still unresolved - I know because I keep them in files. And I'd really like to know if there's potential in any, test the ones that I can. So I had to fix this issue somehow.

On Friday, I've got this self-challenge idea: How about creating a functional MVP in 48 hours or less (over the weekend)?

Of course, this would not work for any kind of product, and it's not going to be a polished product (like after one year of fiddling...), it could be crude and rough around the edges, but it is possible, and depending on the case it might work.

Here is the result of the challenge I inflicted on myself, and how it went:

What it is: EffTracker.com is a free affiliate tracking + A/B testing tool. It works as a hop tracker and A/B landing page rotator. Basically you divert your traffic through the system, and get statistics as well as distributing the traffic to multiple offers. Unlimited urls and url groups are supported. Various tracking tags are supported (will be improved). Fast server located in UK.

You can also embed this functionality in your site, by putting the inbound link in one place and directing to multiple other pages in rotation.

Homepage: https://efftracker.com

Help & FAQ (check it out): http://ift.tt/1Tx3yDh

Demo Account:

Details of the demo account are also visible on the login page. Here they are: user:demo@demo.com, pass: demo_1234 .

Wishlist / Coming soon:

• Improved Statistics/Reporting (log count, items per hour, usage graph, custom colors... etc)
• Several servers in several regions (for minimal ping time)
• A/B tracking reports
• Meta refresh (hide referrer), 302 redirect alternatives
• Hosted landing pages & Templates(for A/B testing)
• Live traffic visualizer
• Fake traffic detection
• IP blocking
• Custom Bot Definitions & Bot blocking rules
• Tags mapping, Tags pass-through
• Automatic search keyword detection
• Traffic type detection (search ads,display,organic)
• Publisher network detection
• ... everything else our users will ask for.

Timeline:

• Friday: Registered the domain (just 5 minutes)
• Saturday & Sunday: Installing the website. Completely built the MVP as it is now (a total of 10.5 hours of coding work distributed over the two days)
• Monday: Added the docs and a couple quick screenshots + minimal fiddling to the interface (still needs more).

Current Stage:

Barebone MVP. The product works though since Sunday, and has the base functionality in. It is invitation-based, but despite this fact it already works and I'm personally using it (and will continue to use it). Even if it is so new, it is designed with scaling in mind and will function a cloud-based solution. The website and traffic module are actually 2 separate interlocked cloud apps.

Improvements next:

The improvements in my wishlist are not so difficult to add/make. I probably just need some encouragement here from our users. It could take like a couple weeks to add the biggest part if them. Whether this will be done or not depends on the feedback I'm going to receive.

Takeaway thoughts + some things I've learned (now and recently):

• We too often waste too much time and effort going too deep into details and optimizing ahead of time. You need to create something quick, deliver to the market for validation and get their frank, amazing and often brutal feedback as soon as possible.

• This approach allows me to market test those ideas that otherwise might never go live. (have several)

• Visuals are critical. It is less important if your system works at all (this one does BTW). It is far more important to sell the idea in a visually appealing way and then figure out the internals later. Especially getting people excited about your idea. You need to market before you sell, and as much as possible before even creating the product.

• Getting early to market might often result in some tomatoes been thrown at you (criticism), so be prepared (incoming), but it's the kind of battering you should be looking for.

• You should better create something in a niche you have some experience in, where you know about the user's needs, or at least partially. (I have in this case)

• If it's an exciting idea for you, it has a much better chance of being the same for others.

• Build out of enjoyment, create things that inspire you. Building for money first is probably not the way to go. If you do this right, as they say, money will follow.

The whole process has been inspiring and empowering, and I hope it inspires others.

End result: I'm going to do it again.

Please send me your feedback about the whole process and results. While the product is clearly unpolished (having barely a few days of life), any feature suggestions, marketing suggestions ARE going to be tremendously useful. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Also: If you want to become an early user, simply send me a PM and I will create the account for you.

Thank you!

P.S: If you are interested in making money on-line, there are many avenues you can explore. Click here to get my step by step guide on how to this. I break down all the details for you and give you some useful resources and tools