Image Source: Sepia Porsche #1 Courtesy Of: DavidHT

Does this image seem familiar to you? I have a post about my fastLane plan on August 6th, 2008. It’s almost a year since I had such idea. I have to admit that my fastlane plan isn’t going very fast.

On September 8th, 2008, I post what I have learned for the first 30 days after I had a plan. What about 300 days later now?

Forget about other projects I am working on, and let me just focus on the fastlane plan. I was going to make a million net profit in matter of one year. Looks like I only have 2 more months to reach the goal. So you may ask me how much I have made so far on this project?

My answer will be a negative number. After all the expenses (not including the time and effort), I have made nothing in my pocket. What a shame!

Let me review what I have done in the past 10 months and I will show you why I haven’t reached my goal yet.

What’s right?

Ever since I had the plan on day one, my head could not stop spinning. I started planning the core business rule for the project. I got so exciting about the potential outcome and profit the project can bring. So I did many right things to get this project going.

• Take action - This is the first step to move my ass forward on the fastlane. I started taking action since day one and I was moving very fast. I picked the programming platform and started design the database structure and implement the business rules and requirements into the system. FACT: The database structure and business rules is defined in matter of a week.
• Pick the right platform – I am so glad that I am the developer myself. I don’t need to go over the hassle to hire developers and project manager to handle all the spec and timeline of the project. I control my schedule and create my own program. I know it’s not going to be the perfect solution, but I pick Apache + MySQL 5 + PHP4 + CodeIgniter as the system platform to start with. It costs nothing to start with. And it will be scalable in the future. FACT: It took me about 2 months to fully familiar with the CodeIgniter PHP framework.
• Think big! Start Small! – I started the project from scratch since day one. The biggest motivation to me is the potential outcome of the project. The project itself isn’t that big and difficult, but it has the potential to bring more than what I expect and the project itself is expendable to other countries. FACT: There are article and blog talking about the same idea and have shown the trend of the similar projects.
• SEO the right way – SEO is one of the most important pieces of the project. Without the right SEO practice, the result won’t be good. I spent two days to nail down the domain and get hosting site with temporary home page up and running. I start building back links and creating the blog for the project. In fact, the site is ranked PR3 in matter of 2 months. FACT: It turns out the site is on top 5 spot of many high price keywords on Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Google is the #1 organic traffic source.
• Outsource – Even I had computer graphic master degree and are very good at Photoshop, I don’t think I will be able to create the best logo design. FACT: I got the logo from 99designs.com for about $210.
• Social Branding – This is one of the most interesting and fun thing to do for the project. You can easily find the foot print of this project on Facebook fan page, Twitter account, blog network, friendfeed, business directory and many other sites. FACT: Twitter is the #3 traffic resources.

What’s wrong?

It looks like I am doing all the right things and moving forward at fast paces. When I turn around and evaluate the progress 8 months after the day one, I believe that I am driving the school bus on the fastlane. It’s too heavy and too slow. I am not saying all the things I’ve done above are wrong. I am saying that I may need a different vehicle, which is smaller and more flexible.

• Research – My guts told me that I pick the right market and niche to begin with. After 8 months development and research, I realized that I am in the crowded market place. There are so many web sites built since 1998 with even better team and much more budget. Don’t get me wrong, it did not upset me because of the crowded niche. FACT: What upset me is the technology and features used in my project. I can do even better if I know what other company are doing.
• Budget Planning – One of the biggest barrier for this project is that I have no clue on how to plan the budget, expense and profit. Leaning to be a really entrepreneur requires a lot of skills in planning the expenses and profits. I want every thing done cheap but in good quality. FACT: I end up spending too much time doing something to save few hundreds here and there, but slow down the progress that can potential bring me thousands. I need to learn how to spend few hundreds and make few thousands without doing all the work myself.
• Vision of Profit – This is one of the biggest mistake when I started the project. I thought my plan is so perfect that I can easily make 1 million net profit in matter of one year. It’s actually more complicate than I expect. FACT: I was looking at the wrong way to calculate the profit. I need to include the current economy, the competition, and the reality into my vision of profit.
• Efficiency – I know from my heart that I can code faster than anyone I know. So my project can move much faster than hiring the programmers. However, I have been working very hard day and night since day one. I forgot that my goal of this project is to give myself financial freedom and a much enjoyable life style. I need to balance my life while still achieve my goal. FACT: I end up getting very exhausted and did not code anything and making any progress for 3 months. Now I am far behind my schedule.
• Get Ready – I can’t believe that I have the guts to outsource my logo design, but don’t have the guts to outsource my marketing and advertising campaign. I have the fear that if I did not finish the billing features, I won’t be able to make real profit. I will end up lose money. FACT: I end up having no advertisement, no marketing and making no profit at all. Nothing will be ready! However, if you don’t do anything, nothing will be done either.

Getting There!

I feel great while writing this post, because I can clearly see why I have not reach my goal on my fastlane. My project is few months behind my original plan, but there are some evidences that I will do very well if I get rid of those wrong doings.

• Copy cats – I have seem many copy cats visiting my site. They visited every single pages, signed up fake account, play with all the features and even clone my idea. It means I am on the right track.
• Competition – Ever since I started my fastlane project, there are over 30 new sites up and running in the same niches. There are tons of new economy reports and articles showing the trend. Competition is good for me, because I know I can do better and faster than other competitors.
• Organic Traffic - Since my SEO is working, more and more organic search engine traffic are on their way to my site. It’s a good sign that I can out perform other very big sites without paying a penny on PPC.
• Real customers – Even though I have not fully implement the billing features, I have received many real customers that are very happy enjoying the free services. People are actually using my site to make their life easier and happier.
• Passive Income – Even though I am making no profit at the moment, the hosting cost is already even out. The AdSense have since generating a small passive income every month.

Are you on your fastlane? What vehicle are you driving? Are you driving the school bus like I did? List your wrong doings will help you improve your pace and move forward. Share that with me, so I can learn from you too.