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The secret that was left out of The Millionaire Fast Lane Book

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...
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LamboMP

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Screw internet business now. Its too saturated with people that want to GRQ. Have a website, but relying on traffic and shit now is just too hard considering other options.

This doesn't apply to just internet business. Get rich quick people are in every business. They don't last, so don't worry about it too much and just do your thing.
 
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CarrieW

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pretty much patrick... lmao! I would say to verial tho that this isnt even one of the longest discussions here and if he doesnt want to read thru posts(even on long threads he isnt going to get alot out of the forum in general lol.
 
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Venetian

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I would say to venetian tho that this isnt even one of the longest discussions here and if he doesnt want to read thru posts(even on long threads he isnt going to get alot out of the forum in general lol

Not Venetian. It was verial, not me.
 

PatrickP

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Venetian, how did you come up with your forum name?

I thought you lived in Portugal.

Thanks, just curious.
 
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CarrieW

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Venetian

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Hi PatrickP,

Yes, you're right. I'm Portuguese.

I just happen to have a fascination with Venice.
 

MJ DeMarco

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OP REALLY questions MJ about the truth that he made any money because no way he could have done it all via SEO.

Actually the OP was claiming that it was impossible for me to have 10,000 users/day by virtue of using all PPC (not SEO) and still be profitable. I rebutted that it was a combination of everything. (PPC, SEO, Affiliates, other advertising, inbound links, directory listings, etc) all of which took years to build-out.
 
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D

DeletedUser2

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venetian,

interested in doing some translations for us, or helping us find a translator for Brazil?
:)
 

Venetian

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zen*******,

(Pt-Br) or Brazilian Portuguese is significantly different from (Pt-Pt) or 'Portugal's Portuguese'

Many words are different, and the way they articulate their sentences are also different.

It's much better to hire a native, that's what I'm doing for some articles.

I'm currently hiring from oDesk.

There are a lot of En-Br translators there.
 

Jeremy

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The internet and especially social media makes word of mouth infinitely more powerful than in the past. The best advertising has been, is, and will be Word of Mouth.

10 years ago, if my wife liked a product, she might tell 2 or 3 people verbally, and they'd probably forget about it before buying it.

Today, if my wife likes a product, 400 of her Facebook friends and a bunch of people on Pinterest not only hear about it, they get a visual image of it, read text about it, and receive a link to the place where they can purchase it. Some percentage of those share it with their Facebook and Pinterest friends and you can quickly see the exponential exposure.

What does it take to generate this WOM? Excellent products, excellent service, and excellent packaging of your product and service.

For example, awesome photography of your product will result in getting it pinned in Pinterest, especially if middle aged women are your intended audience (which they should be, since they spend a TON of money....just ask any married guy!)
 
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verial

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Why all the finger-pointing? I didn't do anything :(
 

SaraK

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For me, the exponential growth is directly linked to advertising rollout.

Why?

I think you are stuck in one way of looking at the situation. Let go of assumptions and imagine that anything is possible. Look for creative, non-traditional ways to do things. Ask, how can I bust through these limitations, or go around them? Remember that creating anything explosive is a process - a desire for instant gratification will get in your way.

I suspect I know what you are going through because I was in a similar situation. I wanted to be sure that what I was going to start would be successful before I invested time and resources to it. But there are no guarantees. So pick something that you care about and want to do because of the non-monetary value it provides to yourself AND others. Stay tapped into your "why" and then consider it your duty to find a way to accomplish the impossible. The big money is in doing the impossible.
 
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gthopkins

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I am fascinated. I wonder, if every guru has been on page one on Google search results, how many spots are available per specific search criteria? I guess there must be a "page one" for each and every search word and associated combination? How many "page one" successes are possible? My guess is an infinite amount.
 

Lionhearted

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Ever hear of word of mouth? Have a great service and the word gets around.............

He spoke of this at great length in the book. If you have to buy traffic for your product as the main source of revenue for your product your product probably SUCKS as opposed to SUCS (Superior Unexpected Customer Service).
 

Lionhearted

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Products I have personally designed that have about 1000% margin:
1. Costs $27.00, Sells for $400
2. Costs $130, Sells for $1400
3. Costs $150, Sells for $900

These are just three out of close to a dozen with similar margins.

(Note: I designed these for a company, hence I am still slow lane)

You need to get out of that lane and PRONTO.
 
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Bo_

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MJ DeMarco,

Don't get me wrong. Your book is probably the best book I've ever read.

It's the only book I've ordered 3 copies of. I gave one to my brother and kept 2, and I've recommended it to a lot of people.

I think it's very good and you have a lot of merit.


I'm trying to use it as much as I can to improve my life, and there are certain things I need to understand, so that's why I'm here.

In your book, under "Potent Fastlane #1: The Internet" you suggest 7 models:

1) Subscription Based
2) Content Based
3) Lead Generation
4) Social Networks
5) Brokerage Systems
6) Advertising
7) E-commerce

I'm not saying you can't build profitable businesses on any of those categories. Sure, you can rank for a couple of keywords with SEO and get some traffic and make some money...

I'm talking about scaling... getting 10.000+ visitors a day.

Can you do it TODAY without paid traffic? Probably not...

What I'm saying is that, with the current advertising prices, you can't run most of the models you suggest in the book profitably if you are buying traffic.

And if you don't buy traffic, it's almost impossible to get to that volume today with SEO alone, with the established players already there dominating most keywords and paying a lot for SEO, and all the SEO work that has been done for years.

Only 1) and 7) can afford to pay for traffic, and 7) can only do it if it's selling it's own product, not drop-shipping/sell other people's products.

So, if all the other models can't afford to pay for traffic because they rely on intermediation, they can't scale... and if they can't scale, they aren't fast lane.

To have scale, you can't rely on commissions (unless the product is expensive enough to award a big comission, like cars or expensive websites, etc..) ... you need full margin on what you sell... you need to sell your own products. All other models that you suggest there are not fastlane with the current advertising prices.

I can't see it any other way. If you think I'm missing something, please let me know.

I really would like to clarify this.

See, the bottomline here is you need to increase your profit/visitor. When that goes up, it opens up many more possibilities for scale, such as:
- more budget for SEO
- can get higher priced clicks (PPC)
- banner ads
- JVs
- affiliates
- testing the waters of other stuff
- etc etc etc
- btw offline promotion still works.

Now how do you increase profit/visitor?
- build a damn list. this is key.
- client funnel. ($47 product -> $997 coaching -> blah blah blah)
- premium products (see your strengths/interests and build up from there)
- promote affiliate products as well at the backend
- split test. (improve all your marketing messages. try evergreen webinars, VSLs, text copy, image copy, different optin gifts, no optin gift, etc)
- know your target market extremely well. (get to know where they hang out, their worries, etc. this will help in marketing messages, getting traffic)

Personally I'd avoid 2-6. It's tougher/not as profitable to get into those models. If you wanna build the next Facebook, great. Next YouTube? great. Chances are you will fail because of your lack of experience/insight/etc etc. But also chances are also people in this forum will motivate you to go for it. After all, if you fail, it's because you didn't work hard enough at an extremely tough challenge. Does the forum care if you fail? No. They like to sound smart.

Also I dislike this forum because of the vague bashy advice that doesn't give you a freakin clue of where to look. If you know a better way, just share it??! Isn't that what's the community for. Why the guru-ish fluff that amounts to zero actionable advice. How about this: admit that you don't know the answer, give whatever you know and cut the attitude.

Just sayin'

I don't hate anyone here. I just dislike empty arrogance. MJ earned the right to give critical advice. I don't think most of you have anything close to his success. In other words, you don't know shit. Stop making yourself feel good by giving bashy, empty or even bad advice; and receiving a ton of thanks.

Also, it's possible to still win at SEO in big keywords. There are a ton of major algorithm changes. Buy an aged domain so you can start building links at a much faster rate, learn what's working and what isn't, get quality stuff out there and reach out so people with big websites will link to you (high PR, a lot of good Google authority).

And there are a lot of long tail keywords out there. There's also a lot of PPC/Ad network opportunities out there. You'll be surprised at what websites bring you the best traffic. Also, you can get deadly cheap traffic if you can connect random high traffic keywords to what you're selling. (For exmaple, celebrity traffic to your offer, figure a way. e.g. "Kim Komando" to your antivirus software)
 

Bo_

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I can't understand how can you achieve "explosive growth" with SEO, when it takes at least 6 months to rank for any given low-competition-keyword.

If someone can explain this to me, I would really appreciate it.

First of all it doesn't take 6 months to rank for a low competition keyword. Also in the book, "explosive growth" means 2-3 years. There are ways to fast track your success, I believe PPC is one of it. Also, always know your time's worth. If it's not used to 1)build systems that create products 2)build systems that market products 3)market/create products -- outsource it. I'm personally against doing SEO work all on your own. Now MJ has hustled through it successfully, hats off to him. I still think it's unnecessary.

Now that that's aside - if you've read my previous post, first step, look to increase your profit per visitor. When that's higher, it's easier to find scaling opportunities.

Next, here's how you should see SEO. You can test with buying ads, AFTER YOU KNOW it converts well, then go for SEO. PPC is renting a house, SEO is buying a house. What I'm suggesting is, fire bullets THEN cannonballs.

I totally understand where you're coming from and how moronic this place is.

I love the book and MJ's way of giving advice. But honestly this forum is more of a headwind than a tailwind.
 

Vigilante

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Boo Blizzi

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See, the bottomline here is you need to increase your profit/visitor. When that goes up, it opens up many more possibilities for scale, such as:
- more budget for SEO
- can get higher priced clicks (PPC)
- banner ads
- JVs
- affiliates
- testing the waters of other stuff
- etc etc etc
- btw offline promotion still works.

Now how do you increase profit/visitor?
- build a damn list. this is key.
- client funnel. ($47 product -> $997 coaching -> blah blah blah)
- premium products (see your strengths/interests and build up from there)
- promote affiliate products as well at the backend
- split test. (improve all your marketing messages. try evergreen webinars, VSLs, text copy, image copy, different optin gifts, no optin gift, etc)
- know your target market extremely well. (get to know where they hang out, their worries, etc. this will help in marketing messages, getting traffic)

this is about the best advice i have read in this whole thread...OP what u need is a real lesson in online marketing...there are TONS of ways to drive massive traffic to your sites...especially if u know what ur doing

So for starters heres a simple plan:
research ur target demographic and really understand who ur ideal customer is
once u understand who ur targeting...find out what they really want or what problem they are trying to find a solution for
create a squeeze page with email capture form and offer them a irresistible bribe that pertains to the problem they are trying to solve
once u get the email...send out an email sequence that pitches them on ur product and/or related/complimentary products that will solve their problem (join aff programs on amazon, clickbank, commission junction, ebay, or cpa network)...this alone will allow u to make more money from 1 customer

Now traffic sources:
adwords is cool but google makes u jump thru so many damn hoops for the privilege to pay them money soooo...

we will use alternative ppc networks and social traffic like:
facebook
plenty of fish
myspace ads
linked in
7 search
yahoo
bing

and once we have our campaign working here we move on to...ppv and media buys from sites like:
media traffic
direct cpv
lead impact
traffic vance
adblade
pulse 360
adbrite
adsonar
site scout
engage bdr
xa.net
adbuyer
tribal fusion
casale media
buy sell ads
blogads
value click
right media
and tons more


the outline i just gave to u gets repackaged and resold by the gurus 100x over for at least 1k...those traffic sources i gave u right there is enough to melt an enterprise dedicated server...and they are rarely talked about by marketers that know what they are doing because the traffic converts!
 

nico

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I'll summarize and answer this thread: how to get 10.000 visitors a day.

It's called MARKETING. Marketing isn't SEO, or PPC, or word of mouth, advertisement, copywriting, lead generation or even a great product. Marketing is all of those things, and a heck of a lot more.

There's a reason marketing is its own study, because it's a huge field. Learning and doing good marketing is a PROCESS. There's a ton of great books about it, and I suggest reading some of the classics, even if you already have a pretty successful business. For us creatively inclined folks marketing is also incredibly FUN, because it's a field where you can kick a$$ just by being smarter than the competition.
 

Venetian

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A good % was SEO, but as I remember, I had a broad mix of traffic from all sources. SEO might have been 25-33%. PPC another 25%. Affiliates 25-33%. I couldn't say that "X source" was responsible for most of my traffic - it was a bunch of stuff

MJ DeMarco,

When you say you had affiliates, how did that work?

Did they own websites related to limos and had a banner to your website with a track link, so if anyone came from their website and converted on limos.com he got a share of it?

What was it like?
 
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thomashoi

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Advertising is getting very expensive, and to pay for it you have to make enough money... I can only see 2 ways to .....

I read somewhere that says "Advertising is like sex, only losers pay for it"

Back in April 2010, I bought a domain for $10 and put a couple of blog posts and let
it stay idle.... 3 months later towards the end of July 2010.... My blog started getting
thousands of visitors a day.... the peak was over 6,000 visitors a day and this lead
to total sale of over $260,000 in 5 days.....

How much did I pay for advertising? $10 for the domain and a few hours of hard work
a day to write the blog posts.

An essential skill for entrepreneur is to be creative... If your product or offer can really
help people solve problems that they are willing to pay for, then write an article and submit
to the newspapers / magazines with a link to your website. This type of editorial content is
much more powerful than advertising simply because people trust editorial content.

If you don't know how to find reporters who are interested to publish your article, then
go to this website HARO - Help a Reporter Out ™ and sign up for an account.

There are many reporters looking for good content to be published in The New York Times, ABC News, HuffingtonPost.com, CNN, FOX..... you name it, they got it!

But before you get excited and go and submit crap, please make sure your solution
does really solve a NEED!
 
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Venetian

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Congratulations thomasoi,

That's incredible!

What kind of product or service where you selling in your blog?
 

ITA

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As someone with experience in both SEO and paid traffic, I'd say, stay away from SEO at this point.

It's crowded and any update from Google can destroy your efforts overnight. You're building on a foundation of sand.

Master paid traffic, on the other hand, and nobody can take that away from you.

Listen to the advice you've been given on building a list, a back-end funnel, etc.
 
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cilaes

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I just wanted to chime in and thank everyone for such an amazing thread. I think the main points to take away from this are really being "nuked" (made more difficult than they really are), and can be summarized with:

- Don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
- Find out what works for YOUR niche, and wear it out.
- Constantly test and shoot for other avenues of traffic and conversion tuning. Once what used to work well starts to slow down, discover what's next. You must get to the bridge FIRST before crossing, using what you've learned, examined, and accomplished on the way may prepare you to cross that bridge faster and in a more efficient way than your competition.
- There is not just one key formula to success. If there was, it would have already been tapped out, rehashed as an e-book, and squeezed completely dry. (All while building a new list for the next venture)

By the way, I came to this thread through MJ's e-mail. All he did was drop me a link. No huge secret there, aside from the age old Ethos, Pathos, and Logos - Through MJ's credibility, I felt that what he had sent me included some kind of value, and it did!

Ethos (Credibility), or ethical appeal, means convincing by the character of the author. We tend to believe people whom we respect. One of the central problems of argumentation is to project an impression to the reader that you are someone worth listening to, in other words making yourself as author into an authority on the subject of the paper, as well as someone who is likable and worthy of respect.
Source: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
 

thomashoi

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Congratulations thomasoi,

That's incredible!

What kind of product or service where you selling in your blog?

I'm selling the Apple iPad which was first launched in Singapore in July 2010,
but without the inventory, billing or shipping headaches. All I did was to put a
link which directs to Apple Store Singapore.....

At that time, my blog was ranked above Apple Store Singapore in Google....

In a way, I was "stealing" their traffic and get paid for it!
 
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Venetian

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Well done thomashoi

Way to go.

How did you get the top ranking and massive traffic with the blog being so new?
 
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andviv

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Back in April 2010, I bought a domain for $10 and put a couple of blog posts and let
it stay idle.... 3 months later towards the end of July 2010.... My blog started getting
thousands of visitors a day.... the peak was over 6,000 visitors a day and this lead
to total sale of over $260,000 in 5 days.....
Very clever!


But wait a minute... Apple sold $260K in 5 days, but what was your profit? Or is this the amount you made?

I'm selling the Apple iPad which was first launched in Singapore in July 2010,
but without the inventory, billing or shipping headaches. All I did was to put a
link which directs to Apple Store Singapore.....

Impressive, and super smart.

What happened after the first 5 days?

And how did you make money? Obviously you did not mark up the product.

Did you charge for shipping and handling?

--sorry, too many question, but it is not clear to me what was your business model... how did you get paid?
 

Pinnacle

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Did I advocate starting a lead generation business recently? I don't recall doing so. I think its sad that all these people are rushing out and examining the "lead gen" business simply because it was something I did.


People did the same thing with Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Somehow the only message many people saw in that series was "Invest in Real Estate". They did not seem to understand he talks about RE so much because he loves it and it is an effective wealth preservation (and sometimes wealth-building) tool. This did not mean that RE is the only way or the surest way to wealth. It's weird that when someone is laying the full picture out to you, there will always be someone who can't see the forest for the trees.
 
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