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My fifteen month business for 1 mill

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kurtyordy

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First off the nuts and bolts-
Product- service with lifetime subscription. Sort of like insurance actually. If a hurricane hits Colorado, I will rebuild your house. This is just a hypothetical, my real idea I am holding close to my vest for now.
Target- est. 10-20% of population would be possible client
Webbased- knowledge threshold will need to be overcome
Marketing- affiliate and otherwise, also threshhold of knowledge will need to be overcome
Budget- $3,000. spent so far $6
Pricing- est around $285. Estimating about 40% profit margin, meaning I will need about 9000 customers to hit 1mill. Which means 600 sales per month. Very aggressive. For the sake of easy tracking, we will stack from 10/1. This means I will be a millionaire by the end of 2008. Merry Christmas 2008 to me.:banana::banana::banana::banana:

My first need- Since I am selling a service, I need a website that when the purchase, they will fill out a form that will automatically populate a database for storage and sorting. Keeping my 3k budget in mind, and that I also need portions of this for my marketing, where should I turn for this form portion, and what shopping cart should I use?
 
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Satpoint

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I would recomment a sql database for collecting info and order information. I have a similar operation which and sql seems to be working great for me.
 

Andrew

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Watch out, if it falls under the category of insurance that is a heavily regulated area.
 

kurtyordy

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ok, where do i get a sql database. The big key is to tie in with a shopping cart.

steps-
1. customer purchases service
2. form comes up, thanks for purchase please complete the following info
3. info is now available for me to fullfill the service if neccessary, and to market other products.


I think the first step will be a shopping cart, but not sure. Novice on websites, so bear with.

Andrew- thanks for the tip, insurance was the best analogy I could think of without giving out my idea. A better analogy would be that my service will give you 10k if every state recieves 1 inch of snow this year. Also in my favor is that in this analogy, most weathermen are predicting snow in every state this year. Still kind of murky, I will keep working on it. There is an emotional appeal to my service as well.
 
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aptohosting

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If you need any guidance or help with your databasing (mysql/php), PM me. I think I can give you some pointers that may help!

Thanks
Tom

AptoHosting.com
 

Satpoint

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Sounds like you could use a good template which then you could alter to work for you. There are many places offering shopping cart service including paypal, ect. It depents on how complex you want to make it and keep in mind the fee rates. I only recommended sql because its straight forward and you can find pre-built DB's for free online. You can also spend around $100 and have a nice script/site which will do everything for you.
 

kurtyordy

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tom- thanks, but I would prefer to keep the conversation going out here for the benefit of the others.

Satpoint- I think you may be right about the template, get one and then pay someone to customize.

one feature I forgot I will need is the ability to limit the number of customers per state. I want to create a little prestige and demand for my product.

once I have finished my offering, I will need to build some other cool stuff into it, but at that point money will not be a problem
 
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kurtyordy

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no, no, no!!!!. For one thing, I have no idea what you are talking about, and for second, no, this is much more targeted to a specific segment of society.
 

kurtyordy

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for october:

took on partner
redirected business idea former: first in field, narrow net/ current: first in field, broader net.

researching content for better site content,

Should launch early to late next month.
 
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CRBFL

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Talk to Tom. That's all I have to say. I just got a domain and hosting though Aptohosting. Mind boggling levels of customer service and assistance. I don't think you could be disappointed.
 

aptohosting

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My first need- Since I am selling a service, I need a website that when the purchase, they will fill out a form that will automatically populate a database for storage and sorting. Keeping my 3k budget in mind, and that I also need portions of this for my marketing, where should I turn for this form portion, and what shopping cart should I use?


Well then, I can definitely have a website designed/developed/tested/launched and keep it way under your budget. If you are going to do this right, STAY AWAY FROM A TEMPLATE! Nothing screams "I am a fly-by-night business" than having some cheap $100 shiny flash template installed. It looks very bad when a client goes to your site, and then they research the competition and see the exact same layout and generic images. With a budget like that you can have a custom built website to your specs, and still enough money left for marketing/misc costs.

If you want to get started PM me with more details, and I guarantee you will have a website you will be proud to point people to.

Thanks
Tom C.

www.aptohosting.com
 

MJ DeMarco

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Well then, I can definitely have a website designed/developed/tested/launched and keep it way under your budget. If you are going to do this right, STAY AWAY FROM A TEMPLATE! Nothing screams "I am a fly-by-night business" than having some cheap $100 shiny flash template installed. It looks very bad when a client goes to your site, and then they research the competition and see the exact same layout and generic images. With a budget like that you can have a custom built website to your specs, and still enough money left for marketing/misc costs.

If you want to get started PM me with more details, and I guarantee you will have a website you will be proud to point people to.

Thanks
Tom C.

www.aptohosting.com

Not necessarily true. This forum is a template, but I modified the crap out of it.

This is the template I bought.
http://www.forummonkeys.com/forums/demo/index.php?styleid=34

Far different than how this place looks now -- same structure, but hard to tell its a template aside from the promotional footer.
 
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aptohosting

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Not necessarily true. This forum is a template, but I modified the crap out of it.

This is the template I bought.
http://www.forummonkeys.com/forums/demo/index.php?styleid=34

Far different than how this place looks now -- same structure, but hard to tell its a template aside from the promotional footer.

MJ this is a forum, most forums look the same except with the skinning. If he takes a generic flash template from templatemonster.com or some other place, it doesn't allow for much modifying and if he is going for e-commerce/e-service he needs to be distinct. Having a 100% full templated website will not help him get there.

Tom C.
www.aptohosting.com
 

Luke12321

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kuryordy, if you are planning on making 1 million in the next 15 months, get the website done right. What is a few extra thousand when we are talking a million?
 

CRBFL

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kuryordy, if you are planning on making 1 million in the next 15 months, get the website done right. What is a few extra thousand when we are talking a million?


Well played sir, sometimes you just gotta spend it to make it!
 
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kurtyordy

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Luke,
This is my answer to the 3k to 1 mill challenge. I only have 3k to work with for this.

Here are the developments-
Rather than abandon my first idea, I am going to proceed with that as well as the partner one, and 2 others. Each will get a 3k budget and I will see which is better.

Partnered site- will launch with next 2 weeks. Most of it is built, just some fine tuning- I am projecting 6 mill from this. selling info product

3rd idea site- this will launch around the same time frame. not sure about the potential of this one, but we shall see, plus it is a good support business to some of my other business. selling info product

Fourth Idea site- cementing relationship with nut dropshipper and my nut source. Will launch next month. This one has a lot of pr ability built into it. selling nuts

Original idea site- still working out some of the broader issues logisticly, I anticipate an early '08 launch. selling service
 

Luke12321

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wow, sounds like you have ALOT going on. I hope all of them do very well for you. Atleast one of them, right? I would rather focus on one project and give it 100% rather than be spread around, especially during the start up period. How do you plan on balancing all of the projects? If you get a winner in one of them....you are ahead of the game.
 

kurtyordy

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Luke,

Thanks. Starting these things is so much fun. For years I was web illiterate, now I am web first grader litterate, but I feel like shackles have been removed. I have plenty of time to focus. Other than the nut business, once the others are up and running they will be 99% automated besides the promotion, and promoting is fun. I think I will start be creating a the biggest sig ever in the old forum and post crappy posts over there just to promote my sig. :)
 
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kurtyordy

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Here are the updates from the last week. They are limited due to trying to get my passion website launched.

Partnered site info product- Will be ready to launch this week, only a few more bugs to work out.

3rd idea site info product- launched last week, I have not properly targeted in adwords yet, this is my next project.

Fourth Idea site nuts- nothing new, need to look into insurance, my insurance guy hunts, so on hold

Original idea site service- major hurdle overcome, now I will start on design, in researching some content, found some competition, one is doing as spoof other is not well done at all. We shall see.
 

kurtyordy

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Here are the updates from the last week. They are limited due to trying to get my passion website launched.

Partnered site info product- Will be ready to launch this week, only a few more bugs to work out.

3rd idea site info product- launched last week, I have not properly targeted in adwords yet, this is my next project.

Fourth Idea site nuts- nothing new, need to look into insurance, my insurance guy hunts, so on hold

Original idea site service- major hurdle overcome, now I will start on design, in researching some content, found some competition, one is doing as spoof other is not well done at all. We shall see.

Here is the update- very little since trying to launch my sig project, but we have had some developments.

1. partner site- we think we have a good source for traffic, looking into some development, no time right now, but on my list
2. info site- was doing good job generating traffic, realized one fatal flaw, no market. Keeping it up, and will do some fine tuning, but not a priority right now.
3. nut site- this tied in with the presidential election here in the u.s., my time and knowledge were behind on this, so was not able to launch before things were decided for the most part. holding the domains and contacts for 4 years from now.

4. completely on hold- trying to learn traffic generation. Once learned, this can launch.

To summarize, this past week, I have really been trying to work on my focus which is my sig project.
 
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Dennis Taylor

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I've been away for sometime, popped back on to check the status of this specifically. How'd it go? Did you make the million?
 

The-J

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I'm curious too. How's it goin?
 
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