Can a fast-lane business be started on WordPress?

[MJ DeMarco]

Can a fast-lane business be started on WordPress?

Yes.

But it has NOTHING to do with Wordpress. It has to do with your consistency, your content, and your value proposition.

I'm sure there are hundreds, perhaps 1000's of "Fastlane" sites that are driven on Wordpress. A lot of the gossip blogs are WP driven (TheDirty.com, for example, which made the owner pretty infamous, and probably pretty affluent as well).

This question is like asking ... can I pedal my bike from Los Angeles to Las Vegas?

Sure you can.

But you will need endurance, drive, and determination. Those without those qualities hop on the bike (downloading WP) bike 2 miles (make 2 posts) then turn around and go home, blaming the bike, when the bike wasn't the problem, it was the biker.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

You guys are discussing the medium of content delivery. The value of "Fastlane" is driven by need, or the value of the content. The method of delivery isn't the big issue. Any FL can get its start on WP, just as much as a hand written HTML site.

Entry - I don't think most people can start off your website by attacking the investment banks (including Goldman Sachs where he worked) with your INSIDERS knowledge to the point where your website is brought up by congressman.

Absolutely. "Entry" has nothing do with the medium-- it has to do with the value of the content.

To give you an example...

If I had a crystal ball and had a 99% win rate (accuracy) in beating the line on NFL Football games, and used this "inside information" to create a membership website based upon the WP platform, how hard do you think it would be for me to make a killing?? Wordpress is not the key to the success-- its the product within the platform that people want to pay for.

The issue with WP is you have people downloading it, installing it, and putting up 3 or 4 posts. They *think* that this is Fastlane when it their content is nothing new or compelling. If I give you a piece of gold bullion, that fact that it's transported in a Honda or a Ferrari is secondary to the gold itself.

 

[FastNAwesome]

As a developer I'm not in love with wordpress.

But as for your question...Yes, many successful businesses do run on wordpress, but it also depends on what you want to do.

A note about feature packed wordpress themes, with many sliders, fonts and other stuff. Theme authors do this because it sells, and it's a competition, who will bloat their theme with more features. But the thing is - many of these "theme features" normally should be plugins - a theme is meant primarily to define website's look, not functionality.

Why this matters? Because if you ever decide to change a theme - your website might lose some of the functionality as well.

 

[DennisD]

If you want to build a fastlane business, the software platform should give you Entry Barriers, Control and Scale.

First of all, the every platform you use for every part of your business doesn't have to meet every point of CENTS... just the business itself.

And even though I agree that you don't get 100% control, your barrier to entry point is silly.
It's like saying "Skype is free, and anybody who wants it can get it. Therefore I don't recommend making cold calls to prospective clients via Skype". In this particular case it doesn't really matter who else can get it for what price.

You don't need to create a new platform for every new website, the same way you don't need to develop a new social network to get 'likes'.

And your "scale" point is also silly. It's free to scale. Whether you have 10 people visiting your website or 1m, it costs the exact same amount and doesn't lose viability or functionality.

I use paypal to accept payments (no barrier to entry) which redirects them to a download page. I use ejunkie to send them their products after they purchase (straight HTML, can easily be used within wordpress, $5/mo.) Paypal processes the payments (free or % of sale) and they're automatically added to my MailCheat(Chimp) email address (free).

It might be worth it for the OP to discuss what their website will do so we can all give better incite.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Just so no one missed what I wrote 2 years ago on page 1...

Yes.

But it has NOTHING to do with Wordpress. It has to do with your consistency, your content, and your value proposition.

I'm sure there are hundreds, perhaps 1000's of "Fastlane" sites that are driven on Wordpress. A lot of the gossip blogs are WP driven (TheDirty.com, for example, which made the owner pretty infamous, and probably pretty affluent as well).

This question is like asking ... can I pedal my bike from Los Angeles to Las Vegas?

Sure you can.

But you will need endurance, drive, and determination. Those without those qualities hop on the bike (downloading WP) bike 2 miles (make 2 posts) then turn around and go home, blaming the bike, when the bike wasn't the problem, it was the biker.

 

[DennisD]

OP should start to learn coding. HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Ajax, stuff like that. If nothing else, he would learn what these languages can do for him even if someone else does the coding. And it helps him a lot with SEO.

nononono.

"start to learn coding."
I hate this advice.

It's too much complication for somebody who's new online business to learn enough about HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Ajax, etc. If as a business owner, you don't ALREADY possess some decent working knowlege of the code, it's a LOT more efficient to just get somebody else to do it for you, rather than learning a handful of techs from scratch when you COULD be doing other things (customer feedback, lead gen, marketing, direct sales, strategy, etc)

For every hour you spend learning to do subpar coding, you could have spent that hour doing something that will benefit your company several times over. You can't afford to stick your head in programming books when you're still trying to feel out the market, network, attain some early adopters.

If you're running a biz where these things are important, you need a specialist somebody who BREATHES this stuff. Somebody who can adapt, fix things when they break, keep up with changing rules, and understand how to integrate the techs.

If you're already good at tech, go for it. Just like the people already good with numbers should keep the books, and he people already good with the law should spearhead legal. There's just not enough USE in learning to do something POORLY when you COULD spend that time doing something you're already GREAT at. It's just about appropriate leverage.

 

[decaobr]

About, Wordpress, if you are planning to build a SAAS type of website, i would advise you against Wordpress. Wordpress is great if you are building a blog, or website based on content, or even a e-commerce. But beyond that, Wordpress may compromise you ( because of performance )

 

[eqttrdr]

why not start with wordpress because its free open source and once the biz takes off you can invest money into hiring a programmer from elance, odesk, or freelancer? Make them created a custom PHP website from scratch once you are sure it will work...

thats just my .02

 

[Tom.V]

Enlighten us.

You must not believe in the power of good marketing + good copy. You could have THE most basic HTML 7 page site that receives 10k visitors per day. If it has a 20% CR and you make $10 per sale/lead, you've got a very profitable, low maintenance, low overhead business.

Ask me how I know.

 

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[rkmalo1]

Basically it's a high-end memebership website for investment institutions, some pay more than 100k/yr for our research. Our main product (our research) is presented to them daily in blog format on Wordpress.

Enlighten us.

 

[dknise]

People keep missing the point. What I said is you can't base a fastlane business on WordPress alone.

I agree that people are missing your point and I think your contributions in the thread are extremely valuable and valid. There are a lot of people here thinking "oh my god softwares I can juz downlowedz teh wordprezzes and build Amazon or Google without touching a line of code!" And for that reason, I'm glad you slapped them back to reality.

While I do believe you can build a big business on a wordpress platform, there's nearly a 100% chance you're going to need custom solutions to fulfill the NEED of your website. While cpanel is a great example of a site built on it, (thedirty.com is too), they are heavily modified as though their only purpose was a UI/backend bootstrapper like any other framework.

RussiaToday, RT.com might be built ontop of wordpress as well.




My final verdict: USE IT if you can. By the time you need all the custom stuff, you'll be well into a revenue stream that can afford it.

 

[Thriftypreneur]

( Give me a break if this is a stupid question lol) I am starting my first online business. I am going to have to learn many new things and im aware of that( Looking forward to the challenges). But this business has scale-ability in an unsaturated market. The business plan is great and is certainty fastlane but the process of executing it is going to be long and educational. I have no experience in web design/ SEO. This is all new to me. I have started business's before. But I have never started an online business. Any advice would be awesome. This thing is going to be huge and passive. I would eventually like to sell the site. But I am wondering If I could use a wordpress format or is that a bad idea? My pockets are not very deep and I feel word press would be easier and faster to grasp then actually coding a site. But I also do not want to cut corners.

It really depends on the functionality you expect your site to have. Without knowing that, it's really hard for anyone to advise you. I see you mentioned "it would be like this." If you're referring to The Fastlane Forum, I'd recommend looking into forum software specifically, or, even better, membership site software. It's just really hard to say without knowing what you're trying to accomplish. To start though, Wordpress is so versatile and easily customized that it's certainly a good recommendation to start your platform on.

As for content based sites, blogs, affiliate sites, e-commerce sites, etc... Wordpress is an easy, no-brainer for someone who lacks coding experience (especially if you intend to sell it privately later. Wordpress is so widely used that it makes private buyers much more comfortable picking up your offer, rather than grabbing something where they would have to learn any amount of coding).

One word of caution, however, is that you should expect (I would go as far as to say it's required, depending on what you want to do) to learn at least basic HTML/CSS/PHP, depending on how hands-on and customized you want your site to be. As FastNAwesome said,

Theme authors do this because it sells, and it's a competition, who will bloat their theme with more features. But the thing is - many of these "theme features" normally should be plugins - a theme is meant primarily to define website's look, not functionality.

people don't always make themes/plugins that are catered to whatever is you're planning to do. In fact, if your customer acquisition is largely going to be based on SEO, and with how fast Google is transitioning to mobile-friendly rankings (read: your site better be mobile-friendly, free of errors, and load lightning-fast), a lot of the stuff out there may, in fact, hinder your progress on that front.

I guess that's a really long way of saying, "Yeah, Wordpress is all right to start with."

 

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[splok]

To be honest, any time anyone asks if they should use Wordpress, the answer is pretty much always yes. Wordpress makes it easy to start, and starting is the hard part. If someone was experienced enough to use anything more complicated than Wordpress, they would know whether or not they should use it. It's not to say that people can't learn other things, but WP's low barrier to entry just trumps the shit out of more "proper" ways of doing things. Maybe it has to be changed over later, but by then you'll have revenue that you can use to sort it out (if you don't have revenue, you don't have much of a reason to change, do you?).

 

[DeletedUser2]

wordpress.


we did 200 sites, and lots of automated stuff with it in 2008-2010.

we now do custome stuff for what we do.
but yet. you can run

blogs,
affiliate sites,
seo sites
local stuff
membershipsites
customer sites
ecommerce sites

the list is huge, and lots of plugins allow for most any kind of customization

Start someplace
Z

 

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[rkmalo1]

I have to respectively disagree. A Fastlane business can absolutely be built on basic wordpress site. I don't think it matters at all if it's built on Wordpress or not, though.

Here's an example of a what I believe is Fastlane business built entirely on Wordpress. Zero Hedge.

I'm sure most people here know, but Zero Hedge is very popular financial blog.

When ZH was first born, I think it even began by being hosted as a .wordpress site. It was horrible. It's still not the best website. Does it have customization now? I'm sure but it doesn't matter ...people love it - it can be on any platform. It makes millions for the owner (now owners). I'll run through a CENTS for ZH:

Need - Yep - I'd say it fills one. People like the INSIDERS knowledge and analysis Zero Hedge provides. It's the #536 most trafficked website in the U.S.

Entry - I don't think most people can start off their website by attacking the investment banks (including Goldman Sachs where he worked) with their INSIDERS knowledge to the point where your website is brought up by Congress.

Control - He controls everything about it - including his platform/content.

Time - He grew so fast he hired up to 40 writers who constantly pump out content. He can never write any article again and the website would run itself. I think that's controlling his time.

Scale - Went from nothing to one of the top blogs in world in less than 4 years.

 

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[DennisD]

I agree with this to an extent, but what if you are just starting out, and don't have the funds to keep paying people to build your sites for you?

No, you don't. Which is why Wordpress was put forth as the solution where:
1) You don't have to waste your valuable time learning skills you'll only be mediocre at.
2) You don't have to hire somebody to hire your sites.
3) Your time/energy can be used doing something you'll kick a$$ at that will bring in money.

 

[throttleforward]

Wordpress is fairly dynamic - you can run just about any kind of website off of it (although some platforms support certain operations much better than Wordpress). Checkout Themeforest.com for some good, cheap Wordpress themes/templates.

Full disclosure - as a non-programmer, I run all my sites through Wordpress or (when I did ecommerce) BigCommerce, so I may be biased toward Wordpress as an easy, non-technical fix.

 

[rkmalo1]

Yes. My boss runs a $6mm/yr -very low overhead content based business all on Wordpress.

 

[mayana]

So can you build a fastlane business on WordPress? I wouldn't consider it.

Well, then I guess that all of these guys are foolish for using it.

And this guy, too.

A lot of those companies are news-oriented, etc, which some will use as an excuse to counter my argument that Wordpress is great. What about this website?

http://cpanel.net/

There is no way that anyone could say that cpanel is not a Fastlane business, and they are in the website business AND they run their site on Wordpress.

Look, don't get caught up in not knowing how to code your own website. Wordpress is an AWESOME way to get a website up and running. Eventually, you can pay someone to help you customize it. You can almost make it into anything, if you are willing to put the time and effort into it. Don't let worrying about whether Wordpress is good or not be an excuse to not get your Fastlane business started!

Obviously, once you are making thousands of dollars a month with your business, you could explore some other options - or not. It's up to YOU!

Good luck in your venture - get started

 

[dknise]

In any business model, I would go for as many protective layers as possible. If you really have a world class product and you have market validation, you will do yourself a disservice by using standard plug in modules for marketing, billing, delivery and all kinds of business operations.

Very true. I totally get what you're saying about being dependent upon 3rd party software or a framework like WordPress.


I keep telling people not to use LAMP but they won't listen! That ties you into Linux, Apache, Mysql, and Php... you have FOUR DEPENDENCIES now. I wouldn't go with WISA either, cause then you're tied to all Microsoft. It'd be best to independently develop an operating system, web host, database system, and dynamic web language from scratch.

While all languages and frameworks offer great benefits as a starting point, that doesn't go deep enough, your still dependent on the hardware! So I think I finally get the point... if I want to build a successful online business, I need start with building a computer... or wait... I don't want to be dependent upon sources for the materials I use to build those machines... so I'll probably need to mine my own silicon and copper.

SO, if you want to start a software business, first thing first would be to start speculating for silicon and copper mines. Get right down at the base so you have zero dependencies.

Fastlane here I come!



Questions:
Why work with C# and refuse to use .NET?
Why work with Java and refuse to use the Java Framework?
Why work with Javascript and refuse to use jQuery?

 

[Kid Money]

Do answer directly. Yes.

Isn't setting up a wordpress site with products that you sell people for a profit fastlane? Make it profitable enough to automate and you make money when you sleep.

That question is like asking if a pool can have water in it. Well, yeah but you have to have the money to buy hoses, find a water source and then fill it up. Once it is full you charge people to swim in it. You have 1 lifeguard clean and manage it every day for you while you are 1000 miles away. Just make sure you charge more for them to swim then it takes to maintain and pay your 1 employee.

 

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[DaRK9]

People can correct me if they know better but I believe the likes of NASA,Vogue,Forbes,LinkedIn, sony music and UPS use wordpress for at least parts of their websites. Off course these will have some excellent developers working in the background but I think it shows that wordpress is a decent enough starter.

Nope. Not fastlane.
(lol)

As I'm re-reading this thread, I'm seeing numerous great points and examples being made that I missed the first time through, which you completely reject by just saying "Nope, not fastlane." Or, even points made by the man who wrote the book, that you just completely bypass and ignore.

Also, this kind of "It's not fastlane, don't do it" thinking is harmful to newer people. You can get stuck forever in analysis mode trying to figure out what is fastlane and what isn't. You might find ways to make the idea/business fastlane as you go along.

But you'll never start because, "nope isn't Fastlane."

 

[rogue synthetic]

It's worth looking into getting an SSL certificate in any case. Besides being a major bonus for security on the site, for anything requiring logins or dealing with payments where you don't want to be dealing with unencrypted traffic, Google seems to add some boost in rankings for sites served over HTTPS. (You can also run HTTP/2 with an SSL-ready server, but that's probably overkill/too nerdy to worry about for the time being.)

I don't know anything about GoDaddy or other shared hosting services, but on the VPS servers I run, I use the free certificates from Let's Encrypt. They offer a range of options for various hosting solutions, so you might be able to find one that works for you.

 

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[chrisbiz4444]

( Give me a break if this is a stupid question lol) I am starting my first online business. I am going to have to learn many new things and im aware of that( Looking forward to the challenges). But this business has scale-ability in an unsaturated market. The business plan is great and is certainty fastlane but the process of executing it is going to be long and educational. I have no experience in web design/ SEO. This is all new to me. I have started business's before. But I have never started an online business. Any advice would be awesome. This thing is going to be huge and passive. I would eventually like to sell the site. But I am wondering If I could use a wordpress format or is that a bad idea? My pockets are not very deep and I feel word press would be easier and faster to grasp then actually coding a site. But I also do not want to cut corners.

 

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[Tom.V]

C. It's impossible to have complete control over your business if you base it on somebody else's infrastructure. Whether that be the Wordpress platform itself, the themes or the plug-ins.

E. It's hard to build entry barriers into your business model based on a tool that can everyone can download.

Keep in mind that Wordpress and all of it's available "potential" configurations are nothing more than systems used for leverage. Just because anyone can download and use the CMS, does not mean anything. It is all dependent upon the application of course, but for most simple content based systems WP works just fine.

Also keep in mind that Wordpress has teams of developers working around the clock for FREE to keep the CMS safe and up to date. That alone keeps me coming back for more, one less thing I have to worry about. I can instead focus on more important matters.

It's all about leverage.

 

[H. Palmer]

For some reason, every time someone says WordPress is lacking in something, people get emotional. It doesn't just happen here.

Dennis, I get your point.
But as I read OP's post, he wants to build a fastlane online business on a WordPress format. He doesn't even mention other types of software.

O yes, you could start with WordPress. And yes, if the business gets off the ground, you can add other types of standard software.

But I maintain that if you want E, C and S built into your business model, you NEED custom made software.

Personally I can tackle every competitor's business model just with tailor made software alone. Doesn't mean it is advisable every time, but it can be done.

OP should start to learn coding. HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Ajax, stuff like that. If nothing else, he would learn what these languages can do for him even if someone else does the coding. And it helps him a lot with SEO.

 

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[Atown512]

It's too much complication for somebody who's new online business to learn enough about HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Ajax, etc. If as a business owner, you don't ALREADY possess some decent working knowlege of the code, it's a LOT more efficient to just get somebody else to do it for you, rather than learning a handful of techs from scratch when you COULD be doing other things (customer feedback, lead gen, marketing, direct sales, strategy, etc)

I agree with this to an extent, but what if you are just starting out, and don't have the funds to keep paying people to build your sites for you? I think amschel was trying to say that a little knowledge about coding is necessary to cheaply test your concept. A lot of people have never made money online, and I think a little of the basics would certainly help.

I have several ideas for websites that I would love to give a try, but they are over my head in terms of coding, and would be too expensive to hire out. The only way to succeed would be to prove the concept, then find the money to hire it out.

 

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[Genester]

I completely disagree with the people that are saying a Fastlane business can't be built with Wordpress. There are a ton of Wordpress blogs that are making A LOT of money, some of them are the top blogs in their niche and they are getting a huge amount of traffic. I guess you would have to describe what your definition of fastlane is. A blog that earns over $20k/month and is run by 1-2 people is definitely Fastlane in my opinion, and I know for a fact there are plenty of them out there.

So yes, you can start a Fastlane business using Wordpress, but again, remember that Wordpress is just a tool, it alone will not make your business successful.

 

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[H. Palmer]

I completely disagree with the people that are saying a Fastlane business can't be built with Wordpress. There are a ton of Wordpress blogs that are making A LOT of money, some of them are the top blogs in their niche and they are getting a huge amount of traffic. I guess you would have to describe what your definition of fastlane is. A blog that earns over $20k/month and is run by 1-2 people is definitely Fastlane in my opinion, and I know for a fact there are plenty of them out there.

So yes, you can start a Fastlane business using Wordpress, but again, remember that Wordpress is just a tool, it alone will not make your business successful.

Many people seem to think that a business that makes money is the same as a fastlane business. It is not.

A blog is by definition a website that depends to a large extent on the content input of the owner or owners.
It is their input that makes a blog successful.

But remove the owners, gone successful blog. That is not fastlane.

The definition of fastlane can be found in MJ's book. The T element of CENTS is Time.
It means that activity in the business can be separated from the owner(s) which is a requirement for a x million dollar liquidity event.

As to WordPress, you can start a fastlane business on anything, but you cannot build a fastlane business on standard software alone.

You need custom made proprietary technology to build E, C and to a certain extent S into your business model.

 

[H. Palmer]

People keep missing the point. What I said is you can't base a fastlane business on WordPress alone.

Or any other kind of standard software.

Probably people think that you can run large organizations like CNN, New York Times or eBay on a blog platform.

Keep dreaming. That's only the outside shell that you see. An organization is somewhat more than a front end website.

But you'll never see that, unless you start understanding software.

 

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