Progress On My Business Venture

[cashis]

Hey Fastlaners,

I've been away from the forum a while now, while I was working on my website. And after months of work, it's ready to launch!
I know shamelessly self-advertising is frowned upon, but I'm not advertising to try and sell you anything - I know you're too smart for any of that shit, I'm not ever going to try.

Instead, I'm doing it because I could use some honest feedback and suggestions from the only entrepreneurship community I know and have grown to love.

I've built it from scratch, and learned everything I needed to know about WordPress as I went along, so there might be some issues I haven't discovered yet. Also, it's pretty bare at the moment, I really need to write more articles, and I'd be indebted to anybody who could suggest some article ideas!

About the website:

It is (or will be) a collection of the best entrepreneurial resources, books, communities, as well as helpful, informative articles and knowledge that I've found as very helpful. Both The Millionaire Fastlane and The Fastlane Forum have an honorary place on the list, as they should .

So if you want to take a look, click here.

P.S. MJ, if you or another mod think this is not appropriate, I apologize, and I will take the link down. I plan on buying ad space here once I get more content up on it, but now it's in a sort of "beta" testing stage.

Thanks!

 

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[MayaMagpie]

How are you going to make money from it?

 

[tafy]

Personally the design doesnt work for me at all, you need more content it seems. Its kinda hard to match up to something like entrepreneur.com isnt it?

 

[Joe Cassandra]

As @tafy mentioned, design is pretty bland [looks early 2000s]. Also, starting a forum is mega-hard, don't do it unless you can get some traction early on. [No one wants to be 1 of 5 people at a party, it makes you look weird and uncool]. Not sure what your plan for this is, just a word of warning from someone who tried to do something similar for 2+ years.

Have a plan. Have a plan now.

Don't just loosey-goosey write an article here, guest post there, write a review here etc., you will burn out in 6 to 12 months and now you wasted a bunch of time. Write out your exact plan and goals NOW. You'll see many online people/content creators who make it look "easy" and make you think producing content and putting it out there will suddenly bring a book deal in, unlimited clients etc.

It's not like that at all.

Note: They make it sound this way so they can sell you their course.

You're going to need to spit out great content for YEARS before seeing a dime. Ramit Sethi, one of my favorites in online content biz, blogged for 4 YEARS before making a couple bucks with a cheap e-book. Took him that long to build up enough of a following, and he writes some of the best stuff out there. He started in 2004.

If you don't have a MEGA-PASSION for writing, do not go this route. Do something like this as a supplement for something else. This type of stuff is saturating the online space right now, don't become another clone.

Again, what's your plan? If your goal is to be like Pat Flynn or something like that, RUN AWAY. You're in for a hard road.

Not trying to be negative, I'm being honest that 99% of people who try and start sites like this will fail/give up as it is saturated beyond belief and/or will not make money [even if they claim to]. I know this from trying it and also from talking to many others who try it as well.

I can't give specific advice since I don't know your goals, but you need them now, or I guarantee you'll quick within a year as most will.

Good luck!

 

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[cashis]

Thanks for the replies!

How are you going to make money from it?

A few ways:
- Amazon aff. links for books, although I think the earnings will be negligible
- Premium "Gold" membership, with it the user can access exclusive content on the site and forums, and gets a few extra privileges
- A great product to advertise, directly from the producer with a high commission.

Of course, serious traffic is required before earning anything from it, so right now I'm working on targeted articles that can rank high on search engines.

Personally the design doesnt work for me at all, you need more content it seems.

Yep, content is on the way. Having a little trouble coming up with subjects to write about, will have to put the ol' noggin to work.

As @tafy mentioned, design is pretty bland [looks early 2000s].

I never really liked fancy websites with lots of effects, images everywhere etc. I do my best work designing clean, minimalistic sites.
I think the sidebar looks a little weird though. It breaks the flow of the page. Will fix.
I still have lots of tweaks, improvements etc. to do on the design, It's in the early stages, like i said.

starting a forum is mega-hard, don't do it unless you can get some traction early on.

I know what you mean. Any suggestions on how i can get traction? I can't think of anything other than posting from multiple accounts so it doesn't seem dead or barely alive.

If your goal is to be like Pat Flynn or something like that, RUN AWAY. You're in for a hard road.

We have really different opinions, I for one don't like Ramit Sethi one bit, but enjoy reading Pat Flynn's stuff. What's wrong with him? He has really great free materials, while Ramit only gives out a teaser every now and then, to promote his new program or course for only a few thousand bucks. I don't know how he was before, I found out about him like a year ago and this is the impression he left.

 

[jockinbox]

how till you compete with Fastlane Forum?

What do you have that's not here?
what makes it unique?

gotta differentiate yourself quickly

just my .02

 

[Joe Cassandra]

I never really liked fancy websites with lots of effects, images everywhere etc. I do my best work designing clean, minimalistic sites.
I think the sidebar looks a little weird though. It breaks the flow of the page. Will fix.
I still have lots of tweaks, improvements etc. to do on the design, It's in the early stages, like i said.

Good job then not making it "perfect" and just shipping.

I know what you mean. Any suggestions on how i can get traction? I can't think of anything other than posting from multiple accounts so it doesn't seem dead or barely alive.

I'm sure MJ would have some tips. Forums, like apps/social startups etc., need a major influx of users on the outset and another major thing...TIME / PATIENCE. You need to provide awesome content when there's only a couple users so they'll tell others. As mentioned before, if you aren't a hard-core lover of producing content, it'll die out in 6-12 months. Most blogs take years to hit it big [http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/10/17/top-100-blogs-have-an-average-age-of-338-months/]. With a forum it's probably the same way. many years of little to 0 return on investment. MJ had an advantage because he'd already been successful in business so people would want to come listen to him. If you don't have that experience, it'll take a long time. Meetup was started in 2002 and took years to finally get off the ground.

This isn't to deter you, but just to let you know that it'll take a while and ALOT of time to build up a forum.

We have really different opinions, I for one don't like Ramit Sethi one bit, but enjoy reading Pat Flynn's stuff. What's wrong with him? He has really great free materials, while Ramit only gives out a teaser every now and then, to promote his new program or course for only a few thousand bucks. I don't know how he was before, I found out about him like a year ago and this is the impression he left.

Oh, I like both Pat and Ramit. I've met Pat, great guy [his podcast with MJ introduced me to MJ's book]. Ramit has loads of great free material, you got to dig for it and sign up for his email list. Yes, recently , a lot of his emails have been to promote his new course, but his blog posts are always well done.

I'm saying trying to be like Pat is a major uphill battle. He started a site about passive income which was new at the time [2008 and when people were getting laid off and looking for new avenues for revenue]. Truth is, because he posts it [and I'm happy for his success as again he is very giving of his time and open], he makes most of his money from affiliate sales to bluehost. Not as much blogging and such. Again, with him it took years to gain traction and his site was based on small passive income numbers which translated into him starting SPI which makes most of his money [through affiliates].

He has niche site projects that don't make much money, but he can do those projects because he's making passive income from affiliate sales. If you don't have that time yet to wait years to make money from blogging/affiliates, there are other avenues.

I just realized this stuff a couple months ago as I spent 2+ years trying to "build a blog/podcast" and sell info products. It's saturated, overdone and somewhat a mirage [people aren't as wealthy as you think]. Use great content to supplement a business [Leadpages does a great job of this]; not try and become an entrepreneur from it.

I just don't want other people to waste time like I did "chasing the passive income dream".

 

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[cashis]

how till you compete with Fastlane Forum?
What do you have that's not here?
what makes it unique?

I don't plan to compete with TFF, it's in a whole other league. I simply want members to be able to discuss the articles and newsletters I post, and give them a place to hang out.

Good job then not making it "perfect" and just shipping.

I spent a couple month trying to make it perfect, but recently had enough and just wanted it launched already. Plus, until now I had a coming soon page displayed and the site was in "maintenance mode", and that didn't allow search engines to index it and start ranking the content.

Thanks for looking out, I also know what it's like to put a lot of time into something and then have to give up on it. No worse feeling than when realizing you wasted X months for nothing.

I realize it will take a lot of time to get the ball rolling, and even more to see the first earnings, but I actually enjoy working on it and will do what I have to to make it work.

 

[BGLefty]

I applaud you for taking action, it's the only way to learn.

I never really liked fancy websites with lots of effects, images everywhere etc. I do my best work designing clean, minimalistic sites.

I think you're forgetting that it's not about what you like, it's about what your audience likes. I hate to disparage your hard work but as someone said above, the site colours & layout look old and boring. If you really want people to stay, you need to make it more appealing. You need to find a good appealing Wordpress template and spend some money on it. The major reason this forum is so good are the people in it and the content...what puts it over the top is that MJ spent some money on some great software for this forum...Xenforo...it's what makes this place awesome.

Also, video is the way to go nowadays . At least have some video somewhere on some subject and people might stick around to at least see what the site is about.

It's about content and standing out from the crowd...what makes your site worth spending time on as opposed to other sites?

Hope that helps...good luck with it.

 

[cashis]

I applaud you for taking action, it's the only way to learn.

Indeed it is

You need to find a good appealing Wordpress template and spend some money on it.

I made and sold my share of website templates, but for this I'd much rather have a one of a kind theme that I designed myself and know its code is solid.

Xenforo doesn't make this place awesome, the members and content do. If this forum was nothing but text on a white background I'd still read every single thread i found interesting.

I do plan to make videos as well, but first I've got to put some more text content up, for SEO purposes.

Thank you, and good luck in your endeavors as well!

 

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