Newbie here...Question For You Guys... :)

[MiamiPPCPro]

I apologize if I didn't post this in the right forum, but I did a search on this site and couldn't find anything on this topic...

So, here is the deal...I am not at all a programmer, and have no knowledge of it whatsoever...As such, I am working on a project for my business, and need to learn some basic peramaters...I really appreciate you guys taking a minute to look at this...

I own a company that focuses on managing search engine marketing campaigns for local businesses...

As such, I am currently licensing several applications to manage my client campaigns...

I am wondering what would be involved in creating an application that would rely heavily on receiving, aggregating, manipulating, and calculating data that we receive from the search engines to use in automated campaign optimization including things like bid management, keyword development/selection tools, ranking tools, analytical tools, conversion tracking, etc...Of course, this is driven by API's...

We would also like to integrate things like an automated landing page creator, provisioning tools, ad copy generators (that would pull data from other campaigns in our system and recommend ad copy that is working well, etc...), and aggregating all of this data into easy to read reporting portals, etc...

I put this in the Java forum because I believe that most of these things can be built in Java...

Here are my questions:

1.) Is it in fact correct that Java is the right language to code this in?

2.) realizing that this could be a tough question to give a general answer to, is it reasonable to think that a handful (4-5) really talented guys could create this type of very comprehensive application, with all of these different modules in 3-4 months?

3.) If not, what is more realistic?

Guys (&gals...), again, I really, really appreciate your help on this... :-)

[moutanna]

The language is not the most important thing in doing things. it is more appropriate to thing analysis first.
The chose can be maded on serval Object oriented programing language, or it could be more "realistic " ,some times, to opte for an agent programming framework.
But java is a good language to do things.

[BestJewSinceJC]

Your explanation is over my head since I have no experience in those areas, but out of curiosity, is meeting with some companies and getting estimates out of the question for some reason?

But what I do know is that you're unlikely to get an accurate estimate of how much time the project will take unless you go into a lot more detail about what the project will need to do. What are the requirements of the project -- what information do you expect to be produced by the program, what are your sources of data from which it pulls, etc. For example, what kind of provisioning tools are you looking for, what do you want them to do? I don't even know what provisioning tools are, but if they vary in either type or amount, how could someone possibly provide a time estimate without you describing the type and amount that you are looking for?

[MiamiPPCPro]

Your explanation is over my head since I have no experience in those areas, but out of curiosity, is meeting with some companies and getting estimates out of the question for some reason?

But what I do know is that you're unlikely to get an accurate estimate of how much time the project will take unless you go into a lot more detail about what the project will need to do. What are the requirements of the project -- what information do you expect to be produced by the program, what are your sources of data from which it pulls, etc. For example, what kind of provisioning tools are you looking for, what do you want them to do? I don't even know what provisioning tools are, but if they vary in either type or amount, how could someone possibly provide a time estimate without you describing the type and amount that you are looking for?

First of all, thanks for the reply!

To be more specific, the application that we would like to develop would be very similar to WebVisible, ReachLocal, ClickFuel, & Yodle...

If you have a second to take a quick peek at those, that will define exactly what we are looking for...We just want to do it better!

I'm not sure that I want to hire a company to develop this...I think I'd rather go in the direction of hiring the programmers & developers that would create this on a full-time basis, because for one, once this is done, there are several other projects that I want to create, so there is certainly long term work available at that point...

With respect to where the program pulls data from - It will primarily pull from API's into Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing, Ask.com, and many other search engines & ad networks...

Ultimately, the program needs to take all of this data and use it to manage ad positions, keywords, keyword bid management, text ad analytics, etc...It also needs to utilize this data to calculate & adjust the keyword bids based on historical data from previous keyword performance, etc...It also needs to aggregate this data into a reporting module, automated emails for good/bad event flags, etc...An example of this type of application would be something like BidRank, BidMax, etc...Additionally, we would add similar applications like KeywordSpy, etc...

Another major element to this application would be a call tracking application...In lehman's terms, we would want the application to provision a local phone number, that is simply a remote call forwarding number, but that we can track data about based on the search engine that the click came from, the keyword that was used, etc...This data also needs to be aggregated into the reporting module, as well...An example of this application can be seen at ifbyphone.com..

[MiamiPPCPro]

ttt

[music_est_vie]

I am new to programming but I think I can help you a bit with this.

I would say that to help you decide between hiring a company or just a few programmers, you would need to 'deconstruct' your project. What I mean is look at it on an extremely basic level and see what 'mini projects (eg: input, searching, sorting, layout, etc.) you need to have built for this project. Depending on how many different projects and the size of the mini projects would determine how many programmers you will need. Also as stated by BestJewSinceJC:

But what I do know is that you're unlikely to get an accurate estimate of how much time the project will take unless you go into a lot more detail about what the project will need to do.

the project will need these mini projects to help get a better understanding on a timeline.

Just from your description of what you want to accomplish I would say you would need about 2-3 programmers working on pulling data from Google, Yahoo, etc. I would say 2-3 programmers to do the keywords/keyword bids. 1-2 programmers for the reporting module and ad position; and probably another 1-2 programmers for bidMin/bidMax/bidRank etc. so you would be looking at a team of around 6-8 programmers. NOTE: this is just my estimate. After all the required components are built then use the same programmers to build your fun features.

Also is this going to be integrated into a website? If so I would recommend looking into javascript. It’s used for java applications/ features built into a website.

Hope this helps.