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.

Courtesy of macro mano, the other way around

Isn’t this photo look scary? Actually it’s cropped from a very cute photo. You can find it at the bottom of the post.

While hanging out with lovely wife at the shopping mall, I was thinking about what I have done in the past few years since I started my own businesses. There are things that went as I expected, and there are things that did not follow my plan and went with the wrong flow. I have to constantly adjust my pace and direction. I think that’s just the way life is.

However, when we look the things differently, we may get a totally different result. It’s just like the above photo. It will look so much different when you look at it from different angle.

Few days ago, I set new goals on several of my projects. One of the think I always hesitate to do is to enter into the adult life world. Well. Not exactly the adult world in terms of porn or something. It’s about help other living better and happier. I have a domain that I registered a while back and was up with a simple page and survey. Now I am getting pretty weird search engine traffic to the site. I thought I was going to sell the domain and forget about it.

After researching for months and see what other people are doing with that topic. I have a new impression that it will become a hit in the next few years. So I have to do something with it. So I take look at this site from the different angle, I find it has a great demand. A great demand means a great niche. A great niche means a marketable money making machine.

So let’s take a look at the above image from a different angle. I have to warn you that the photo shown below is very cute! When you look at the world up side down, you see a totally different world. Again, If you read my blog of sometime, you know money is important to me, but it’s not everything. By helping other with what you love to do and money will come. So if you are having some difficult about the thing you are doing now, step back for a second and look at it from a different angle. You may find a totally different solution and thing why you were so stupid. Keep a good faith and good things will come.

Image Source: If you believe in fate and destiny… (211)

I feel the need to write down something, so I can release all the stress from my shoulder and move on to the next step. It’s been 8 months since I had the idea of my last project. I have been working very hard to move the project forward. Of course, things is not always follow your plan. It’s going slow, but stable.

Few days ago, a nice neighbor asked me how do I feel about working from home for over 3 years now. My only answer is to have a good faith on whatever you are doing and keep motivating yourself to move forward.

Flickr has been a great resource for me to release my stress. I love taking photos and also love to see what other people do. Looking at other people’s photos give me a inside view from other people’s eyes. I found the above photo. I have to crop it to make it fit into the post. You can find the original photo at If you believe in fate and destiny… (211).

After reviewing some of the photo I took in San Francisco, I had a post about 40 years later. I think my priority has changed a little bid. It’s not about making hard working million dollars, but about sharing the great love for another 40 to 50 years. The shift of my priority won’t change my schedule of my project. In stead, it will make me rethink my working strategies. Release out my duty to other people will save my time and release more stress.

I have good faith that I am on the right track after seeing the following Startup School 08 video presented by the creator of Ruby on Rail - David.

This is a great video that every startup entrepreneur should take a look at it. I have no doubt that my latest project is exactly what he is talking about. If you are starting your new company or new entrepreneur adventure, this video may give you some great inspiration.

Keep a good faith! Good things will come!

Photo taken by me.

Can’t believe time goes by. Just start getting my blogging routine back, it’s already a week passed. Isn’t the above photo lovely? I took the phone in San Francisco while attending the Web 2.0 Expo. Me and my wife were walking from the hotel to the fish man market, we saw this old couple. It was a moment of silence. We smile to each other. We know we will still holding our hands and walk together 40 years later.

We just came back from the short long weekend break last week. Now we are thinking to take another longer break for the 4th of July. Work hard and play hard is always our life style, however, be able to enjoy our life with lovely other half for 40 more years is our #1 priority.

To achieve the goal, I think I need to be more aggressive on all my projects that will make substantial amount of passive income. My online store #1 and #2 are going to third and second years. They were affected by slow economy the big time. Now it’s time to get them back on track.

Now I am batting on the SLS projects that means to build the real fortune cookies. There are many tasks I have to finish for the site. In order to keep my life style, I will have to find a better way to handle my work load. Here are the things on my list that I would love to finish very soon.

• Finish payment processing integration. So I can start recurring billing.
• Hire interns to help me on the project
• Finalize marketing and budget plan
• Figure out what affiliate program to integrate
• Hire sales, editor, guest writer, intern, etc
• Find a new supplier for e-store #1
• New Ad Campaign for e-stores #1 and #2
• Start a new adult community and e-store #3
• Start a new portal for a FDA approved drug
• Find guest writer and freelancers to manage the sites
• Invest condo properties in N. Scottsdale
• Cash out and reinvest on other stocks

There is a lot of stuff to accomplish. I have to learn how to outsource myself to other people.

If I give myself 10 more years to accomplish all the dream while keep a good healthy life, I have more than 30 years to enjoy life before someone taking our lovely old couple photo 40 years later.

So here I come!

OK! It’s been a long time since my last blog post months ago in January after a trip to Texas. I have to confess that the Internet Entrepreneur Journey is never easy to me. Ever since I quit my full time job, I have been on and off on many projects. The positive thing is that I am getting closer and closer to what I am looking for.

So I have to take a short break. We went to Hilton Resorts in Tucson AZ. It was a very nice short 3 days weekend. No computer, no cell phone! What a real life!

So where am I up to these days?

First of all, let’s see what I have on my hands. Since I quite my job in 2006, I took 7 months off traveling between Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. I finally settled down again and started something with a friend of mine. Now there are two dedicated ecommerce stores running. There are few other high end cookware, digital camera stores hosted on third party sites. I also host few other blogs. Finally, I started a new project last years in August 2008 to help local business and local residents saving money. If you look around, you will find what I am talking about.

How was I doing? To be honest, all of the site I am running did generate passive income, but they are few hundred dollars here or there. They are covering my cost of hosting, but they are not enough to cover my expensive long term travel plan. Yes. I did make some money, but that is not close to huge money that I can show off here.

Keep plan A going. Since economy is so slow, my ecommerce stores is going slow. Who is going to buy luxury or unnecessary items whey losing their jobs or becoming homeless? I will keep plan A going for another years.

Plan B has born. Plan B always sounds better than plan A. This time, I don’t put profit first. It’s not about making me rich quick any more. I am going to help other people first. Less has learned from the other blogs, which has nothing to do with my journey. It’s all about the readers. These kind of sites did generate better results. So plan B is all about helping other people first.

How do I do now? I have to say that plan B is already making profit even it’s not fully implemented. I have the plan B idea since August 2008. It took me almost half year to development the foundation. It’s still not completed done, but it has generate a small revenue at the moment. Again, it’s not about how to get rich quick. It’s about helping other people first. If I can help other people reach their goals, I bet they are willing to pay me for the result.

Where am I going? It’s time to take plan B out of Beta. Gotta get the payment processing module finished so I can start charging the services I offered to the customers. Without the payment process, nothing will become real.

To be continued … I promise!

Can’t believe time goes by so fast. It’s already year 2009. Many bloggers have post their 2009 resolutions. I don’t. I don’t really have new resolutions, since I have many plans in my plate since I quit my full time job in 2006.

My idea to secure my life on the Internet has not changed. My goal to fulfill dream has not changed. What have changed in the pass year are my point of views about life. If you know what happened to me few weeks ago, you know that my wife and I have experienced a lot about life. Life is short. You have to learn taking care of yourself between life and death and expecting the unexpected.

What have I learned in 2008?

• There is no perfect plan.
• Life is short – Take time off and treat yourself and your love one right.
• Social Network is the dead end of your success, if you only promote yourself.
• Internet Marketing won’t work, if you don’t know who you are targeting and what you are market for.

What will I do in 2009 to make a huge success?

• Spend more time helping poor people
• Spend more time helping other small business owners
• Get the project done, which will really help other business grow
• Enjoy life with family

What’s your plan for 2009? Have your plans changed since 2008?

After the crash, my wife and I have more appreciation about others and believe that we have been saved by the cow we killed.

I warn you that the following photo won’t be pretty!

We are driving on the highway 71 between Austin and Houston in Texas. We did not expect to meet with the cows on highway, since there is no warning and no sign whatsoever. We were driving south in the very cold and dark night on December 21st, 2008. We were under the speed limit of 65 miles per hour. It was really dark and there are not many cars on the highway. We saw bunch cows blocking the two lanes highway, it was already too late. That is the most scary moment in our life other than my wife’s life and death experience.

All I remembered was a boom!

I pushed the break really really hard and pull over to the center medium of the highway. Luckily, the cars behind me are aware of the accident and slow down without more troubles. I saw my SUV hood came up and block my view. I saw the smoke came out from the engine. I realized that I hit a cow, which landed about 100 feet behind my car. Luckily, my wife and I are OK with minor neck injury. I was shaking so hard that I cannot make my arm straight.

We were told that someone called police that there were cows on the highway, but the police have never came. I guess we were just lucky enough to be alive. The cow we killed and our big SUV saved our life.

Now we have to face the new challenge in our life. We need to buy a new car and find a way to get back home. This accident made us believe that we were lucky to be alive. We pray for the cow and hope the owner has learned the lesson too. Life is more than expecting the unexpected.

Has our life changed? Yes. My entrepreneur plan has changed too. I am not sure that my previous plan can make my dream come true and make me a successful entrepreneur, but I am sure that we will be much better persons. We are changing our life priority too.

After all, I would recommend all of you to drive carefully and expect the unexpected. If you are driving at night on the country side highway, please do yourself favors.

• Drive slower
• Use head light properly
• Don’t be the leading car on the dark night
• Keep great distance with the car in front of you.
• Pay attention on driving

At the moment of writing this blog post, we were staying with families and new generation of our families. We appreciate that we still have the chance to do something good to others. I wish you all a great holiday season, a happy new year and a wonderful life.

Just yesterday, I almost lost my dear wife while hiking in the Superstition Mountain, AZ. I am no kidding. I felt that we were walking on the thin line between life and death. It’s matter of seconds. I am so glad that my wife is back and we really really appreciate those who have helped her get through the tough time.

The above photo was taken a few moment before my wife collapsed. It was about 5:00PM and it’s getting darker and cold. I was on my way down to the parking lot, because she and her girl friend are so tired after 6 hour hiking under the cold weather. I was tired too, but I can still walk fast. We thought it would be a good idea for me to hike down to the parking lot and drive our car to the nearest campground to meet my wife and her girl friend.

The trail seems much longer in the dark. So I decided to walk alone!

Shortly after I called her friend and tell her that I was half way reaching the parking lot. I could hear my wife breathing really hard behind her friend on the other side of the phone. I made a choice not to head back, but head directly to the parking lot. I asked them to take a break and take it slow and wait for me to come back, but I did not know my wife just collapsed after hung up the phone. I ran like super man down hill. I had my GPS in my hand while running in the dark. I realized that I have never ran this fast and this long in my life. I now glad that I did not collapse on the way back, otherwise, no one will be able to find me and find my wife and her friend.

Just right at the moment when I reached the parking lot. I got a call from 911 telling me my wife’s friend made a call. My wife has collapsed but was still conscious. The emergency crews are on their way, but they had no idea where they were in the mountain. I hoped that I left my GPS with them. All I can tell was that they were on the trail #53, but not sure how far up.

The 911 operator asked me if I saw a fire engine. Yes. I saw them, but they are just right next to me, but not on the trail. So I jump into their fire truck and lead them back to the nearest campground. When we got to the campground and realized that there is at least a mile from the campground to the mountain on trail #53.

I lead them to the trail #53 as far as I can go before I ran out of energy. I was so tired and told the emergency crew to left me behind alone in the dark and told them how to get to my wife. Luckily they reach my wife on time with warm blanket. They finally took her down with ATV. I saw the head light coming down and heard her voice. I finally had the strength again to walk down ahead of the ATV and showed them way back to campground. That was the longest walk to me ever.

After all, my wife told me right after I called her friend, she collapsed badly. So her friend made 911 call. Suddenly a hiker came from no where handed her a warm hand and energy bars. Her friend and the hiker started warm her up. However, she still collapsed into second Hypothermia stage, which is reaching the fatal point. Again, few more hikers stopped by and give her their sleeping bags until the emergency crew came by. My many thanks to those guardian angels.

That was the longest night in the dark to me. I almost lost my wife and she was thinking how I can live without her at the moment she collapsed. I was speechless.

Now we are back to real life again. We totally believe that she were lucky! We also believe what we did in the past to help other people have helped her get through the life and death experience. We will devote ourselves more and more to help other people, because a warm hand in the dark can bring someone back from the nearly death moment.

Beside the life and death experience, the Flatiron is worth to give it a hike. It’s about 4674 feet above the sea level. It’s about 5 miles from the parking lot to the top of Flatiron. We did not expect to hike this long, so we did not prepare well. We drink enough water, but did not prepare enough foods and warm cloth. Lessons are learned.

If you are interested in knowing more about our hike to Flatiron on Superstition Mountain, please take time to see the photos on Flickr - 2008 Superstition Mountain - Flatiron - Hiking!

Here is the 360 degree view on top of the Flatiron. You can click to see the larger photo.

I am so glad that I was able to make a guest post about my cruise trip to Mexico on Debo Hobo dot Com - Travel Entrepreneur. It is about how you can take a short cruise trip to Mexico while saving some money and enjoy your life. We often have so many excuses not to fairly treat ourselves, but we also forgot that we should give a fair treat to our families. Taking families on to a fun cruise trip to Mexico is one of the best way to get your family spirit together. It helps put yourself back together and move forward on your life, journey and make your own destiny.

Not a while ago, I post my cruise journey to Mexico, where my Internet Entrepreneur Journey continues.

That was a follow up post about my cruise journey to Mexico in 2006 before quitting my job, where my Internet Entrepreneur Journey Begins.

It has been an up and down journey in the past two years. I would not say that I am very successful in what I am doing for the past two years, but I admit that I have done a lot of good things and have made many mistakes. I don’t feel like sailing alone, since I have my wife’s support. I, however, need to adjust my paces frequently and make sure I don’t get lazy and lost my focus on goals.

Life is not just about making a good living online. It also involves taking good care of your families mentally and physically. I often forgot the reasons, the causes and the facts that I can start my entrepreneur journey without any financial concerns. The hard working and dedication on making our life easier in the past 10 - 20 years have made who we are today. Making our life easier for the next 40 years is the challenge and the goals.

I am so glad that I worked so hard in the past, so I can enjoy my life, start my own journey and define my destiny. Now it’s time to continue my own legend and make a new milestone.

If you are someone like me, who wants to make their life easier, you should take time to give yourself and mostly your families a fairly treat. Take them somewhere nice. Have your happy life, start your journey and define your own destiny.

Do you like the photos I took? One way to remind my progress on my journey is to review my photos from time to time. It helps me to remember my goals and what I have missed in my life.

There are few things that you can do to share your journey with me.

• Social Networking with me on Facebook
• Follow me on Twitter
• See what I see on Flickr

This is one of the very nice restored antique car photo I took this morning at the 25th annual Toys for Tot’s event at Wickenburg, Arizona. It was a cloudy and cool day to hang out with car fans. I have to admit that I am not a big antique car fan, but my wife and I had good time to take photos of them with my digital camera.

I got an email just at the last moment after we got back from hiking at Lost Dutchman Trail. My friend told me to drop by with unwrapped new toys to give out to other poor kids as part of the event. I dropped the toys at the places that many other car fans or antique car owners meet. We all head out to Wickenburg at about 9.00AM.

The above photo shows 3 cars in front of me, which are part of the event. My wife took the photo.

I was told by my friend that there are about 566 cars there to compete for the grand prize. My friend is one of the top reputable automobile appraisal in Arizona. He is one of the four judges for the contest. I took many car photos and meet some cool friends.

The oldest car at the event is 1922. I could not even name the car myself. However, there are many cool cars stored by the talented owners with very interesting creative mind.

One really funny one is the Jack In The Box Head in the car. No matter where I move, it is always looking at me. That is funny.

As much as I love taking photos of cars, I was there for good cause. To give away gift to poor kids for the great holiday and take the enjoyment in. I was really exciting that how many people showing up and fulling up the gift truck. I even saw some little girls handing the gift to the toy collector. That is what this event is all about - To educate our off-springs to help the people who needs help.

I left the event before they pick the contest winner. I was told that the 30 foot long trailer are filled up with toys to the roof. It was filling up very quickly in just few hours. The guy who collects the toys did awesome job. I appreciate what he has done to help making this event a successful one. He has done that again since 1990.

More toys are collected and filled up on the pretty Ford Truck.

While driving back to home, I realize what we have done today is exactly what other successful entrepreneurs did. They give out something good to others before taking in something meaningful for themselves. I would love to do something like that again.

If you would like to see more photos of cars I took. Feel free to visit the following link on Flickr.

Wickenburg AZ - Toys for Tot’s - Auto Show