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I Want To Build A Website Service But...

Scuderia

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Ok i have a business model which obeys to the foundation commandment, commandment of entry, control, scale, and time. Its a website which requires decent programming knowledge and experience to get it rolling. Example of the type of sophistication im talking about would be a website like odesk.com or even ebay.

I don't have the funds to higher full time programmers, so i need to do it myself at the beginner. And i have a plan to slowly roll it out overtime, based on my budget.

My barriers is actually programming it (i have basic html/css skills, thats it). Problem is, i don't have a clue where to start (e.g. what language, framework, etc)

Im willing to learn, and this project is long-term (2-5+ years). I don't plan on building it overnight.

Where do i start?

I would ABSOUTLEY kill for information on what i do next. Any books, forum threads, or anything i can checkout which will give me some useful information.
 
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Cavking

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Couple of options available.

Youtube has tutorials on how to learn programming.
Ebay has website clones you could buy and them adapt.
Find a partner that CAN code and ask for assistance.

PHP lessons can be easily found on youtube and would be a good start - search for PHPACADEMY.
 

wiredniko

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If you have never coded it will be a long road ahead. Another problem is you do not even know if your idea will work or not, you think it will. What if you worked on this site for three years and it was a flop?

I suggest you start small and then expand to make your idea work. What do I mean by small? Lets say you wanted to offer 5 services, instead just offer one.

I have a similar issue as you...mine is I know how to code but what I want to do is humongous, I have already logged about 200 hours of coding and I am not even 20% done.

In any case, to avoid being a negative post start with W3C PHP tutorials, they are very simple but they will give you an idea of how to do things. PHP is just one solution, another one is ASP .net stuff.

O'Reily books are always a good learning source, they are cheap and tend to go pretty in depth.
 

Scuderia

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Great Video. Yeah starting small, gradual building process. Even if it doesn't turn out to be what i want it to be (e.g. million dollar project) it will still be making money.

The idea has different scenarios
a) It will make money period, i will not lose money i will eventually see ROI and doesn't require a massive investment to get started.
b) how much it will make will be determined by my or others programming knowledge, money i can reinvest back into the website to get good leverage through paid traffic, and how dedicated i am to the project. Also market forces.
 

Scuderia

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Actually i found a couple scripts of something very similar as to what i want. They just need a bit of customization to my specific needs.
 

Talluer

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How I started A Dating Empire « Plenty of fish blog

I'm in the same boat man, zero programming knowledge but big time idea and ambition. I taught myself html and css and that was enough to get my idea off the ground in it's most basic form. I'm going to school in March to round out my programming skills.

Markus Frind didn't role out of bed one day with an idea, sit down, and pump out all the code required to make his vision work. As you can see it took him a long time to build and refine the idea, all the while growing a user base. Look at where his idea started...and look at what it is now.
 
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Pat

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Would you open a farm or any other B&M business without any experience? I guess no, then why is everyone jumping on the webservice waggon now? It takes years to get good at coding.
 

theBiz

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Websites need to be looked at like any other business. A TRUE businessman never really needs to work in their field, they are just middlemen. Infact i think not knowing how to code does give you one advantage... It makes you think about how you will profit from day one. Coders are always making things that is free for them to make, usually they are not business men and their projects dont go very far. Dont get me wrong obviously you would prefer to code BUT many coders work IN their business not ON their business.

Like pat said if you dont know how to do it, it would be crazy to just try. It would be crazy to pave your driveway too, BUT if a trusted source gave you a recommendation for a sub contractor he has used for 20 years chances are youll be ok.

So if you do not know how to code, it will all come down to who is doing the project and 99.9% of the time it wont work out they way you want or thought. I lost a lot of money in the beginning but i got good enough over time to get a decent gauge on their work and became real good at getting a good team and good at managing their work. I also ask people for help all of the time, that really helps. I recently hired someone locally who is the head IT person for a big company. That person refused until i offered a big $per hour rate as a consultant. But at the end of the day, its what i need right now and its getting the job done. May not be the most cost efficient way to do it right now but without doing things like this its naive to think i can make something big happen. Takes money to make it especially if not experienced.
 

Pat

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theBiz,
if that would be true, then why do you have to ask so many questions via pm?

I wish you all the best anyway, but as you can tell from your own experience it is not that easy to launch a website if you are not familiar with IT.
 
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Scuderia

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I've actually being doing a fair bit of research into clone scripts, etc. It can be done, with the help of a professional programmer to customize the script to my specifics.

But i've realized i don't need to set it up now, it won't work straight away (no traffic, little capital, no brand, no leverage). Because there are soo many other things i need to do before i can get the traction to successfully implement my fastlane idea e.g. traffic, customers. Like building a site (can use a simple content management system) so it self-funds it own expansion. I can start small - e.g. SEO, Contacting potential partners, building high quality content, simple lead generation (most manual labour), etc.

It won't be fastlane, from the start but the end-goal is to get it to fastlane.

In the mixergy interview, it seemed that MJ didn't start limos straight away in the fastlane, it was a simple directory and he was manually entering in businesses.
 

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