Thread: How about this for Fastlane!?

Hey Fastlaners,

It’s been a little while since I’ve been cruising this forum “lurking” and I have finally decided to write my first post/introduction. I have read MJ’s book and am eager to start my Fastlane business. I have started and ran businesses before but they were hardly Fastlane. Essentially what I did was create myself another job instead of a self sustaining business that provided me with good passive income. Since reading MJ’s book, my whole outlook on being an entrepreneur has changed and instead of focusing on just providing value and creating income, my focus is now to do both of those thing as well as focus on my income being passive and my business being highly scalable. For the last two months, I’ve been constantly brainstorming and trying to find new Fastlane ideas to incorporate. I’ve taken a break from trying new businesses for the last two years and now I’m ready to charge full speed ahead. I’m very thankful to this forum and its participants because you guys have kept me motivated and constantly help to fuel my creativity.

There are many ways to make money but that is not my immediate goal. The plan is for any business that I create to meet all the requirements of the Fastlane principle of NECST. Because I’m not an inventor, and I’m not really focused on a particular product that I have access to well below market value, finding something to sell on the internet has been very difficult for me (any helpful ideas are much appreciated). Either way, I’m more focused on the process (of reaching target consumers) than the actual result of selling the product. I believe that once you have the attention of your target market, selling your product becomes a much simpler task. For example, look at the guys that market children’s toys. They know exactly where to go (children’s television programs) to find their target market and sell them any dumb contraption imaginable. Now this might not be the best example but its along the same idea of my Fastlane plan.

I am in the process of creating a website in a particular niche which will hopefully have a large amount of users. Once my “community” is established, I can then sell any product that caters to this particular niche from my own other websites. Of course, these products will be recommended and advertised by my original site for the community. I’m sure this has been done many times over but with the right target audience and the right product, I could potentially generate a substantial income. This model, essentially allows me to not worry about what specific product I’m selling, but own a small “market place” to sell products. If one product is unsuccessful, I can eliminate this product and find new ones to push on my “community’s” website. It will give me great flexibility with products I offer (from my own unrelated websites) and never affect the user-ship of the community website. Also, the website that I am creating has the potential to go viral and at that point, all problems solve themselves. Only time will tell. This is my very first shot at any e-business. All of my other endeavors have been traditional “brick and mortar” businesses. I’m sure I will have successes and failures but I hope to keep learning and eventually develop a winning idea. Any input is appreciated.

Hi there, and best of luck in everything you do. It would be nice to have you be more specific about what you're doing. Sounds like a standard authority site/niche/affiliate thing you got going there, which can be solid. It's the avenue I am going for as well.

Hi minkplated,

I'm trying to figure out your niche product or idea, are you an expert in this niche that could potentially help people in that particular community? If you can provide value to your audiences (consumers) and sell products to them, then your business can scale! My other question is are you solving a problem or providing a need? There are a lot of marketplaces out there that are essentially doing the same thing, granted they may have funding and an establish team, how are you trying to attract the customers and grow/scale your site?

If you could define your product, set some goals and milestones, and hit your niche market hard, you'll be able to do before copycats start mocking your site and products.

Anyhow, welcome to the community and best of luck!

Thanks to all for all the "well wishes".

Rodney:

I'm not necessarily an expert in the "niche products". What I will be doing is providing value, as in informational value that benefits the "niche" in order grow a strong comunity. The community themselves are experts on the products they want, I will just be the one selling it to them (eventually) and I could potentially be very profitable if I can sucessfully scale my business. What I am looking to do is to better fill an existing need and not solve an enirely new problem. I am planning to use as much free internet marketing available to grow my community. Social Media, blogs, anything. I'm even thinking about recuiting some folks from Fiver to help out with the Social media marketing. I'm looking to do this as cheaply as possible. If the results are looking good and I feel its worth investing in some PPC advertising, then i may experiment with that. My site is still being developed and will hopefully launch in a month or so, so for right now, I'm just weighing all my options.

Halli:

That is a great idea. TheFastLaneForum does just that. If MJ come out with a new product tomorrow, He instantly has thousands of customers! Genius!

Hi everyone. I am hoping this finds someone who is proficient with computers. I am trying to post my intro post on this site, and I am apparently not allowed. I have attached a file for you to view, showing what happens. However, I can quick reply. How does that make sense? Anyone have any ideas?

PS- Sorry to hijack your thread man I couldn't figure out any other way.

Hey Mink, I'm working on a similar model as you at the moment. I'm sure we'll run into similar problems.

What are you doing for constant content creation, encouraging returning visitors, etc?

I'll send you a PM.

Troy,

I sent you a PM. I will definately post my progress here or start a new thread once I'm 'live' and operational. I got another progress report for the site creation last night and its looking good. I dont know what the deal is but I've noticed alot of web business owners starting their "great ideas" with some shitty looking sites and I dont know why. I know money can be an issue but we are all looking to create a brand of some sort and you can loose alot of traction initially by not offering a solid product from the get go. I'm all about making constant improvement but from my experience competing in the brick and mortar business world, you can get trampled by fly-by-night competitors if you do not start withsomething solid initially. I'm curious as to what people here on this forum think?? especially on the internet where some savy developers can throw up a descent looking site in a night and crush you. Dont you believe that if you have a good idea you should take the time and launch as strong as possible versus launching quicker and risk being dominated by a competitor that just jumps on and put something just a little better up?? i'm very curious to hear the responses.

-M

Originally Posted by minkplated

I've noticed alot of web business owners starting their "great ideas" with some shitty looking sites and I dont know why ... offering a solid product from the get go ... making constant improvement ... [in brick and mortar] you can get trampled by fly-by-night competitors if you do not start with something solid initially.

I haven't suffered any major failures that I can attribute either way, but I do know that the way SEO works is almost devoid of the "how it looked originally" concept. Sure, hundreds or thousands of people will see or interact with an ugly interface, but in SEO people are counted as "daily visitors" and most of them are new. You'll never see them again, and if you hadn't launched you wouldn't have seen them anyway.

I'd say my biggest worry for my current project is "what are my competitors doing?" My field has an existing market, which means there are existing solutions. I'm more worried about being better than them, not better than others in unrelated niches or with different products. Though, like you said, making constant improvement is super important in my eyes. I love reading this forum (vs. say, wickedfire) because here I always read "offering amazing value for my users" rather than "made a million bucks before it crashed."

Even if a fly-by-nighter jumps into your market, someone competing with you doesn't mean you lose. You just have another reason to come up with newer and better stuff

-T