PROGRESS THREAD: (Davidla)

[Davidla]

I have decided to create this thread to help me track and plan my progress, to get opinions and advice from you fellow fastlaners, and hopefully to motivate others who have not yet taken action.

My Financial Goal:

To reach 20M$ in networth, with a passive income of 1M a year, by the age of 35.

So how am I going to do that?

My initial plan was to achieve that through Real Estate, but lately I've changed direction to the internet, mainly due to the higher relative speed of the internet compared to real estate. It might end up as a combination between the two.

Recently, I thought about an idea for a web business that fits the Fastlane criteria:

1) It provides value for the buyers.
2) It can be highly profitable, and highly scaleable.
3) It can be started with little initial investment (650$).

The idea has the potential to save noticeable amounts of money on expensive products (products that cost 100$+) for price concious buyers who do research on the internet before they buy (people who read reviews and use price comparison).

I have decided I had enough of sitting on the bench watching, and that it is time to get on the court and start turning this idea into a business.

Short term goal:

Create the business based on the idea, and build a cashflow of 3000$ a month by September 2011 (10 monthes).

Sincere advice and opinions are always welcome!

 

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[Davidla]

Progress with the business so far:

1) A few days after thinking of the idea, I started looking for programmers on Elance,Guru etc.

2) Around 5 days later, I finally hired two programmers with good reviews and reasonable prices.

3) A week later I paid them what I promised for the milestones (~150$), and fired both of them because they were not preforming to my satisfaction.

4) I switched to a local company that charges just a little more than they did (200$ difference).

I thought that the website will take much less time to build.

I am about a month into the development with the company - which was the planned period for the project's completion. Because I was occupied with studying my a$$ off to get into "prestigious" universities, I didn't have enough attention to manage the project properly, so we are only about 65% done.

The new deadline to finish the initial development (keep working on tweaks afterwards)is the 13'th of november - A date i'm flying to travel in latin america until the B&P in Feb.

Things completed so far with the website:

- Domains for 2 possible business names registered
- Hosting up and running
- Website based on Joomla, already configured with 80% of the functionalities I planned for the website.
- Basic graphical designing. (website still looking very unpolished graphically).
- One product ready for testing

Things to complete until the end of the weekend:

- Set up a landing page disconnected from the main website, to test out the concept with a single product.
- Create a plan for SEO and Marketing.

One of the main things I am pondering about is when to launch the business, due to my trip.
If my concept test will prove to be very strong - I might even change the focus of the trip and concentrate on launching the business.
Otherwise, I'm debating whether to have it running without much SEO and marketing efforts, and work on it every now and then from latin america, or just to keep it offline until I get back.

So far I'm leaning towards keeping it offline, because this way the idea will not be exposed to my competitors until it is launched properly.

 

[Davidla]

Update after 3 monthes:

The Idea fell after finishing the website and testing.

The need is still there - but the business model I wanted to apply to it does not work.
Since the other business models that might work require a much bigger investment on web & software development and marketing (VC type of startup) I decided to drop the Idea for now.

"luckily" my backpacking trip in latin america has revealed another business Idea.

I decided to take a break from backpacking until the B&P, and to work on the Idea alongside learning spanish. After travelling in Mexico, Chile and Argentina I am renting an apartment with roomates in Buenos Aires for a month.

Basically the idea is a service for backpackers world wide, in the realm of collaborative consumpsion.
The service will be free for the users, and revenues will come from advertisement and lead generation.

This idea is easier to implement technologically, and following the lessons I learnt from the prior development I decided to do the developing myself at a first stage.

Right now this need is being filled inefficiently by three types of competitors:
1) Various travelling and backpacking websites who solve the need locally, inefficiently and on a small scale.
2) Online commercial companies that charge money for this service, and have an inefficient membership & action process.
3) B&M shops that are rare, and charge a premium for this service.

The power of the idea is to take the brokering process out of the equation and fill the need more efficiently and affordably.

The goal is to take over the market: offer it more effectively, free and worldwide.

Short term goal: To build a version 1.1 website for one target country up and running by the B&P at the end of feb.

Since I already have some familiarity with Joomla from the last project, It is my default CMS for this project.

I have been researching the technology needed, and so far it seems that a Geo ip redirect from a main domain + a different subdomain and Joomla installation per country will solve the international requirements.

Does anyone have a better Idea? Any tips from your experience with international and multi langual websites?

 

[Davidla]

Basic techonology for the website is configured and in place!

It took a lot of different try outs with different solutions, and some customization but the key requirements are filled.

The most importent part was passing a learning curve with Joomla (the CMS), the chosen component and PHP in general.
After looking for help in the component forum from other users for a few days with no luck, and reluctance to pay someone to do it, I decided to start learning php and solve it myself.
Finally, today after working through the night I finally managed to customize the component and solve the problem at 6 a.m. - I think I was one of the happiest men alive (or awake) at that time

Next phases to tackle:

- Graphic design
- SEO preperation

 

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[Davidla]

Launch day is getting closer...

It took me quite a while to get the hang of photoshop, and another nice chunk of time and energey to learn how DBs , SQL , PHP and Joomla work with one another and finally get them to do what I want.

Things done in the past few days:

- Logo and favicons created
- Basic SEO (.htaccess redirections, plugins etc)
- graphic outlook and design
- key functionalities customized
- MANY pastrami sandwiches (with mayo & tomatos :smxB and bowls of nesquick eaten.

First country targeted for the service is Argentina (that is where I am at now - easier for offline marketing + hot season for backpackers in the area).
I am thinking of Israel as the next one because I have access to a lot of backpackers there through social media. The challenge appears to be marketing in/to the new countries rather than opening the platform (the adding new countries part is already designed to be easy).

Looking forward to finally launch and recieve feedback from you guys!

Things left to take care of prior to launch:
- Adding a few more key functionalities for usability
- Minor graphic additions
- Terms of use

SEO - I am not sure what other things are very importent prior to launch. The things I have in mind are:

1) Social media connectivity - usually I am not sure if it is importent prior to launch, but a key part of my marketing plan is social media, and it seems like a few plugins and little optimization can solve it. I think it is worth the efforts.
2) Search engine friendly urls - right now the urls are not friendly (itemid&blbla.php etc insead of /argentina/buenos_aires). For some reason my template does not cooperate with the shift to search engine friendly titles, and I dont know how much work is involved to change it. Probably means changing all of the html data forwarding to post instead of get. I am thinking about leaving this for after launch.
3) Keywords analysis, targeting and inserting to website - seems pretty importent..
Right now these are the kind of descriptions that are being generated by the dynamic SEO plugin: "choose an area Add Entry 4 people, orange tent Email adress (for replies):: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots"
Should be easy to fix through filtering with unwanted word list for SEO meta-data, and some manual editing.

 

[Davidla]

Completely changed the outlook of the website, and It looks much better now.

The list of improvements I would like to see in the website is very long - but my goal is to launch it before leaving B.A.
This means I need to launch the website no later than the 21´st, so I would have enough time to walk around hostels and do some offline marketing before starting the travel to the B&P.

Main thing to deal with is graphical improvements to make the information more readable, and making the essense of the website as clear as possible to new visitors.

 

[Davidla]

UPDATE:

Version 1.0 of the website is ready - I need some critical feedback to get out of my own head for a bit. What do you think? (the website link is in the signature)

--

Of course that just as I was getting ready to start experimenting with version 1.0 yesterday, my entire graphics crashed, and right after that the Internet line here stopped working for the rest of the night.

After a few good hours of reinstalling & configuring templates and componentes today, I found out what the problem was: CSS compression.

Just got back from posting posters for offline marketing at hostels in Buenos Aires, and in a few hours I am catching a plane on my way to the B&P..

 

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[Anon3587x]

To generic.
needs more customized functions.

It was kind of hard for me to find out where to view the listings at.

Need to fix the space above and below the banner.