I’m excited to tell everyone that we’ve just launched BEMODEL.

We’ve integrated an invite-only system this time around to ensure that we only allow photographers, models, hair stylists, makeup artists, clothing & wardrobe stylist, et cetera, into the community. It also helps keep the community highly-focused, and maintain growth at a healthy rate.

If you were one of the few who received the invite through email, you will be able to invite up to five friends, and we suggest you take advantage of that before we change our invite model next month.

We will be making some big changes to how the invite system works, so it’s the community that stimulates the requested invites.

We’re really excited over here for what’s coming, and everything has happened thus far.

Cheers,
Andrew

The campaign shots for launch are finished taken by yours truly, and you will see them in 22 hours (launch date). Right now we’re just tidying up everything and preparing, just a few very tiny template/css adjustments we’re making. The site is 99% ready. The developer is now at about 170 hours and $5,500. So that is the total cost of development, not include CSS/XHTML, design, and marketing tools.

I guess I could really say the only thing I got out of the old designer I paid nearly $20,000 was the logo. Hah. That’s the only thing I liked from the last launch. Well at least I have a $20,000 logo.

I’m going to be running a contest for everyone that is a part of the BEMODEL community. A really awesome contest. The prizes are incredible, I think all artists on the website will love them.

Well here we go. 22 hours, and counting. Feels like I’ve waited so long for this

How’s that for a developer? 154.5 hours and a fully functional pretty darn complex site 99% complete built from the ground up. Now keep in mind, this is only for the development, not the design, or CSS/HTML, servers, or marketing. Here’s a screenshot:

Just tidying up minor bugs and little CSS glitches and we’re good for launch. The site packs a lot of complex queries, and advanced functionality. Push notifications of certain triggers and events such as when you receive a new message, comment, et cetera. Advanced photo uploading, album management, photo organization, and a very slick Newsfeed. The messaging system is pretty fucking awesome too. The site packs a lot of juice for such a simple site, but all done in only 155 hours (4 weeks if he worked full-time)! Wow.

To think, the American company I hired in January 2010 charged me $50,000 fucking dollars. And this life saver of a programmer did better quality code, 1000x better at that, and faster for a tenth of the cost. A tenth of the cost…

The first company I hired for the original “beModel” cost me $16,000, an company based out of India. They actually did better than the Americans as far as delivering a working product, but the code was absolutely horrible.

This guy I found just proved to be an amazing find on my part. Third time is the charm! Also, those hours logged also include our numerous Skype conversations, at least 20 hours or so are logged in just Skype calls talking back and forth screen-sharing so I can explain how I want things to work.

I’ll give you guys a small sneak peak of what’s coming (no screenshots, you’re going to have to wait):

• Push notifications of events; messages, comments, credits, favorites, requests
• Advanced messaging system; the ability to attach photos, and send them in the middle of a conversation
• Photo management; organization, multi-photo uploader, et cetera
• AJAX in all the right places

So that’s all you get on top of a simple but gorgeous website, nothing fancy or crazy, just a modeling website to make networking easier. Those are the bells and whistles, no need to overwhelm the user. Let’s just keep it simple stupid. Networking with talented artists.

Hope everyone is looking forward the beta launch in five days.

Cheers,
Andrew

That’s right, we’re finally opening our doors on August 10th. We’re going to be an invite-only community for who knows how long, until we’re happy! So make sure you apply for your invitation, and we will be letting people in every day to check out the new BEMODEL. To get your invite, you can either click “Request Invite” above, or just go to BEMODEL.com. Looking forward to everyone checking us out! So get on it!