Three paths to first revenue, side-by-side. Each one is honest about what's already built, what's left, what it earns at three audience levels, and what kills it. Move the assumption sliders below to see the numbers shift in real time. When you've decided, hit the button on a path to export a one-page brief I can implement against.
Numbers in the path cards below recompute live as you move these sliders.
2 weeks of build. One SKU. Sell it manually with a Stripe Checkout link until you know it converts. No admin UI, no auto-refresh job, no display ads.
Manie's 8-week plan as written. Stripe + sponsorship admin + Featured Player auto-refresh + Banner + Sidebar inventory. Ends with a real ad business, not a manual link.
Forget display advertising. Sell scout-report bundles to D1 college coaching staffs ($499/season per program) and "Featured Program" pages to prep schools ($999/season). Higher per-deal revenue, fewer customers needed.
Path A. Featured Player only. Audience grows linearly from today's ~1.2K to your "month 6" slider over 6 months, then continues at the same rate. buyers = audience × conversion%. Assume Path A ramp is 50% slower than B because manual sales = lower funnel velocity. Revenue per month = buyers × FP price.
Path B. Same Featured Player baseline as A but with the auto-refresh + ad inventory. Add Banner ($300/mo × 1 advertiser sold from month 5) and Sidebar ($99/mo × 2 advertisers from month 6). Both held flat to keep this honest — if you sell more, great, but at 1.2-3K MAU more is unlikely without traffic growth.
Path C. No display, no Featured Player. monthly close × $999/season ÷ 6 months for prep-school programs ≈ $166/mo per close, accumulating. Plus assumed 1 college program close every 2 months at $499/season ÷ 6 = $83/mo per close.
None of this includes affiliate revenue, NIL deals, or referral commissions — all of which are upside for any of the three paths. The numbers are intentionally conservative.
Hybrid: A then B. Ship Path A in 14 days. If it doesn't sell at all, kill it before spending 6 weeks on infra you won't need. If it does sell, the infra in Path B becomes a real upgrade not a speculation. Path C as a parallel: do the outbound during the same 8 weeks — coaches' summer is when they take meetings.
The reason not to start with Path B: at 1.2K MAU, Banner and Sidebar will pay almost nothing — display ad ROI is a function of traffic, and 1.2K isn't there. The only SKU with a chance at this audience is Featured Player, and Featured Player doesn't need 6 weeks of infra to test.