TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

Project V Updates: More Investors, Domain Acquired, and World Class Programmers

So my focus over the past week has continued to be working on my corporate taxes (about 50% done now) and Project V.

In fact, there was some good progress made on Project V. The main investor has continued to be really pumped about the project. I can always expect to wake up, check my phone, and literally see 4-5 new e-mails from him every morning. In addition, we speak on the phone (Skype) nearly every day for around an hour discussing the vision and other elements of the project.

It’s a bit odd for me, as I’ve been working online for a living for around 12 years or so and have never collaborated on a project before. I’m still the primary owner of the project, but it’s still weird to discuss it with somebody else. I’m a bit of a control freak so it’s definitely a different feeling, but it’s nice to hear somebody else’s opinion of things.

More Investors

Since my last blog post, where I briefly mentioned that I was still open to accepting investors on the project, I received a few new inquiries. One of them never replied back to my response. Another was sent the NDA and non-compete from me but I haven’t heard from him since then, and the other sent me the signed NDA and non-compete and skimmed through the slideshow (but didn’t listen to the MP3) but wasn’t interested.

Since there have been a number of developments made in the project lately, I decided that I would update the slideshow presentation as well as add a new slide. In addition, I actually went ahead and re-recorded an entire new MP3 presentation for the 2 new possible investors as well. I was hoping to make it a bit shorter in length, but it ended up being exactly an hour (just like the previous one) so I guess that’s just how long it takes to present it.

Anyhow, I’m not liking the lack of response from the people who have contacted me about investing… but that’s okay. If it ends up just being me and the existing investor, that’s a bigger share of the pie for us.

Domain Acquired

Not too long after I first thought of this idea a year ago, I went ahead and searched for a domain that I thought would make a good fit.

I came up with a list of names that I thought could work, and my favourite on that list was a domain that was listed for $5,000.

Recently, when I decided to go ahead with this project, I found that the domain had dropped to $3,500. I spent a lot of additional time looking for alternative domains (the other investor did as well), including any domains up to $10,000 but there was nothing that beat this domain.

I wanted a domain that was very brandable and related to the project idea, so it was not easy.

So I went back to my favourite domain and ended up negotiating the price down to $3,000. In addition, I bought the .net and .org variant of the domain as well as a typo variation of the domain (which I’m actually surprised was available!).

I had the other investor register appropriate names on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The domain is up and running on one of my servers with a splash page. And for the first time ever, I set up rDNS (reverse DNS) on the domain (which was pretty confusing due to the lack of documentation available).

In addition to the domain, I received a logo with it as well. I am not sure if we will end up keeping the logo or not – it’s pretty good, but we may be able to do better.

World Class Programmers

With progress being made on the project, I started to look for a development company.

As cringe-worthy as it may sound, I did take a gander at Upwork and Freelancer and browsed through the top providers there with the highest feedback and a solid number of past clients. It has been a while since I last developed a website from the ground up, so I was curious how the quality of providers was today.

Unfortunately, looking through the portfolios, I was not too impressed. They simply won’t do for this project. I want this website to have a top-notch development team behind it, and there simply aren’t any top notch providers on these freelance websites.

But then I found Toptal. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this place before – it must be pretty new.

The best way for you to learn about Toptal is to visit the link above, but basically they’re a cream-of-the-crop freelance agency. Essentially they’re like Upwork and Freelance but have incredibly high standards to who they let in.

Doing some research from actual programmers, I found out that it’s very difficult to get accepted as a provider there. You have to go through multiple long phone interviews and undertake many tests over a period of a couple of months.

There are world-class programmers there… ones from Microsoft, Java, IBM, Zynga, etc. It’s kind of insane really.

Clients of Toptal include Entrepreneur, CNBC, Fox, and a lot of startups.

The main downside that I can see so far is simply the price. You get what you pay for, and from a very preliminary research into prices, I think they range from around $75-$125/hour.

At $125/hour, 120 hours would cost $15,000. That’s a 3-week 40-hour/per week programmer.

The upside is that you’d be getting a seriously talented developer with proper code.

I started the process of signing up as a client, and found that I myself have to go through some phone interviews. It just shows how serious they are about the standards of their agency.

Anyhow, that’s what has been going on this past week.

Project "V", Income Taxes, and My First Deposit

It’s been 9 days since my last blog post so I thought I would give you an overall update on what’s happened since then.

Although I’ve used my accountant’s firm to handle my income taxes since around 2003, it still takes a lot of time and effort myself. I have to dig up all my accounting history over the past year for both my personal self as well as the corporation’s income taxes. Next year, I will have to do this for the new holding corporation as well! I am planning to hire an audit services or an insurance services company like these insurance services in Fresno, CA to take a look at all prior tax years before moving forward.

When you add in affiliate marketing, it just makes all this even more time consuming as I have hundreds upon hundreds of transactions going on. In fact, I probably have close to a hundred sources of income and expense sources that I have to organize information from!

Then there’s the unfortunate reality that many online sources offers very poor accounting and reporting options, so I end up having to dig deep to get the necessary information, often having to request the necessary information from various company’s accounting departments.

Lastly, there’s crap such as having multiple credit cards and bank accounts, exchange rate and multiple currency accounts, etc. So, even though I have somebody else do my taxes, it’s still a lot of effort just to gather all the information to pass onto them!

Anyhow, it’s always something I’ve despised having to do and always procrastinate in getting it done. Last year was my latest ever and I even had to pay the government a penalty and interest on that penalty for being so late!

I’ve finished preparing my 2014 personal taxes, and am now roughly 20% done preparing the operating corporation’s 2014 fiscal year’s taxes. When I finish, it will be a huge weight off my shoulders and will allow me to allocate more time towards other work things.

My First Deposit

While I literally held the keys to my first rental income property a month ago, I didn’t actually receive my rental income until just a week ago.

This is because I am using a property management company to oversee the property, which means that there is a bit of a delay from when they receive the funds on the 1st to when they process it, take their cut, and then send to me.

So here it is, after the property management company took their 10% cut:

A few days later, they also sent me an accounting spreadsheet documenting all the details. All I have to do is keep those and send them to my accountant at the end of the year. Easy!

Anyhow, obviously the $1,505.10 I received is not all profit. I have bills to pay: the mortgage, city utilities, property tax, and insurance. And I keep a contingency fund for capital expenditures, repairs and maintenance, and vacancies.

Project “V”

Finally, here are a bunch of updates pertaining to my website idea.

First off, I am now referring to the website idea as Project “V” for easier reference.

I had an NDA and non-compete documents made up and signed by both interested investors (and myself). I then created a slideshow presentation design and presented it to the first investor online via a Skype conference call.

He asked questions throughout the presentation (about every 1-2 minutes in fact) and I would pause and address them until he was satisfied with my answers. Once the presentation got to the point where it revealed the main idea, the investor started to become very excited.

The presentation ended up taking 2 hours! Since I was talking 97% of that time, my throat was very sore by the end of it! I am not used to talking so long – in fact I’m not used to talking at all! Here’s a screenshot I took of Skype once it finished:

When I finally finished the presentation, the investor was extremely excited about the project. He definitely wants to come on board for a $15,000 investment. We’ve been communicating everyday since about the project. He’s very excited.

The second interested investor is located in a time zone 9 hours ahead of mine and we had a hell of a time coordinating a time to schedule the presentation. So finally I decided that I would just record the entire presentation again on MP3 and then send him the slideshow so that he can follow along.

In fact, I actually literally said “click” each time I would click on the next item of the presentation so that he could follow along exactly with me. I didn’t record a screencast because it would have been too huge if it was another 2 hour recording. I actually added a few slides to the 2nd presentation (18 total)!

While recording it though, I was very cognisant of the fact that the first presentation was so long, so I tried to both speed things up and keep things simple. It seemed to work, as it ended up being an hour long exactly. It probably helped a lot that I wasn’t answering questions throughout

Anyhow, the 2nd investor ended up not being interested at all, so he definitely won’t be coming on board. He did provide some reasons as to why he didn’t like the idea. I respect his rationale but I personally do not agree with them. I actually think the project has other more concerning issues, such as traffic retention.

So where we stand is a raised $15,000 investment from one investor who is extremely excited.

I am still open to other serious investors coming in (send me an e-mail). Please only contact me if you’re interested in investing a minimum of $5,000. It would also help and speed things up if you can provide some of your background.

Should no other investors come on board, the other investor and I will proceed with creating the investment agreement document, signing it, and having it notarized by a notary or lawyer.

After that it’s off to begin the development phase.

Raised $15,000 For My New Project So Far

In my previous blog post, I wrote about how I was thinking of launching a new website based on an idea I’ve had for a while now.

There was a brief mention about how I might consider partnering with someone else on this project by taking on investors. It was just a small mention, merely a couple of sentences, yet I ended up receiving e-mails from a couple of different interested investors.

The first was interested for coming in at $15,000 but after following up with him he has not responded, and so I deem him as uninterested or at least not serious about it.

The second investor ended up being a contact who I’ve known for quite a while online… perhaps around 7 years or so. We’ve done a number of business transactions together before so there is some definite history between us there.

He has shown extreme interest in this project and actually just sent me another e-mail a minute before I started working on this blog post. He is also interested in coming on board for $15,000. For more in creating a big revenue from an investment, use this link to Find an insolvency Practitioner who can lend you a hand.

Most of us are insecure about what our future holds. Simply trusting our intuition is not enough most of the time. That is why we seek out reliable online psychics who can offer guidance and help us gain valuable insight into certain major life goals through their readings.

Be it your career, finances, love life, or marriage, we often have questions about these milestones. However, finding a reliable psychic reader online could be quite challenging, especially when numerous fraudulent businesses are thriving all over the internet, to try a psychic reading just hit the link. If your questions are about finances, read the IronFX reviews.

The Boring Stage

Our next step is to have him sign an NDA and non-compete, and then I will present an online slideshow presentation where I can demonstrate the website idea and my plans for the website.

Should that all go well, which I anticipate it will, we will then draft up an agreement and sign it under a local notary or lawyer as witness to the signings.

As such, this will be strictly be a profit-sharing deal, with no actual shares in a company or any other ownership exchanged.

The Return

So, here are the basic terms of our agreement:

A $15,000.00 investment would yield a 50% return of the site’s net profits, paid monthly, for the life of the site, including any sale of the site. There would be a 10x multiplier buyout clause where at any point I have the option to buyout the investor for 10x of their original investment. You could better analyze this with help from reading an options-intelligence review. This buyout would be on top of any return they have received so far. The buyout would cease the 50% profit share agreement.

For example (based on a $15,000 investment), in the scenario the site makes $1,500 net profit each month during the first 5 months and I want to buy them out, they will keep $3,750 ($1,500 * 5 = $7,500 at 50%), plus $150,000 (10x) for the buyout. They would have received a total of $153,750.00.

The same example as above, but this time based on a $9,000 investment (in which case they would receive a 30% profit share rate): $2,250 ($1,500 * 5 = $7,500 at 30%), plus $90,000 (10x) for the buyout. They would have received a total of $92,250.00.

He has the option of being a 100% silent partner, but has has expressed interest in taking a more active role and responsibility on.

Other Investors

With a $15,000 investment, not including the money and time I will be putting into the website myself, it is already enough to cover all development costs and a small bit of marketing and promotion.

However, should any other interested investors want to come on board as well, all the rates would change. Of course, other investors would only be allowed to come on board before I sign a deal.

For example, if another investor wanted to come in at $15,000 as well, I couldn’t give each of the investors a 50% cut since then I’d have no cut myself! Instead, the overall budget of the project would be raised to like $45,000 and each of the 2 $15K investors would receive a 33.3% cut.

The difference is that they receive a smaller cut, but the project’s budget is bigger which can mean a higher quality website and more advertising budget.

A $15,000 investment is not required. I think I’d be open to other amounts such as $5,000 and $10,000. A second investor coming in at $5,000 would probably get a 10% return.

In you’re a serious investor interested in coming on board this project, feel free to send me an e-mail. Please only contact me if you’re interested in investing a minimum of $3,000. It would also help and speed things up if you can provide some of your background. Please keep in mind that I am not going to be begging for investor money, this isn’t Shark Tank) – I am relying on my public history and reputation to vouch for me (whether that be good or bad!).

Anyhow, I just thought I’d share this little update, as it appears that my website idea may actually come to fruition…

I Have An Idea For a Website That I’m Considering

If you’ve only been reading my blog for 2-3 years, then you might think that I’m solely an affiliate marketer.

The fact is, though, that I actually have a lot more experience with creating websites from scratch and monetizing them. It’s how I made my living from around 2004-2012, with my blog and affiliate marketing income taking over since then.

The main reason I turned to affiliate marketing around 2012 is because in early spring of 2011 I sold my largest money-making website. I agreed to a non-disclosure regarding the actual sale price, but let’s just say it was around an average 2-year salary.

While a nice chunk of change in one go, it also meant that a lot of residual money each month was gone, which is why I decided to give affiliate marketing another try.

I’ve had many other websites too. Probably around 30 or so. Almost all of them have been sold off now, although I do still have some abandoned sites lying around such as Movie-Vault.com and PublisherSpot.com (some more are listed here). Feel free to shoot me an e-mail if you’re interested in buying any of them from me!

The point I’m trying to make is that I have a lot of experience building websites, many of which have made a decent amount of income (although I’ve made just as many if not more which were complete flops!).

The Idea

Anyhow, I can’t remember exactly when, but sometime around a year ago I came up with an idea for a new website that I thought would be great.

First of all, I think that there’s a definite need for it. Why do I think this? Because I’ve personally been in the situation many times where I could have used such a website, and I know others have as well. It solves a problem that people are constantly having.

From my research, I couldn’t find an existing website that addressed this. In fact, I was surprised! I did find some websites when I was searching for domains that had the rough idea in mind, but never actually built a website around the idea. There may be some simple apps around this idea out there (I haven’t looked), but the idea is really best suited in a website (at least at first).

It’s a website that has enormous potential… I’m talking about the sky as the limit. This is what gets me excited. It certainly has the possibility of “blowing up” in no time.

It’s a free website and has an open demographic; anyone and everyone can find a use for this website.

While free, I have 3 monetization ideas for it: standard display advertising, optional “promoted” areas which would be suited towards larger companies, and a possible credit system, although I am not too sure about the last one as it may make the website too convoluted for the regular user. I am never concerned about monetizing a website though.

Development Costs

It is not a content-based website. It is more a community or social-based site. This would aid greatly in spreading the word of the website too, as social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook would be a big part in propagating its arrival.

Development-wise, I’d rate it about a 5 or 6 out of 10 in order of complexity to program. It’s a unique idea and will be media-rich which is always a bit of a pain to deal with, and there will need to be a comprehensive administration area in addition to the main core of the website.

It’s been a few years since I outsourced for a website to be programmed up from scratch so I may be off a bit in my estimates, but perhaps $4,000 – $5,000 for programming might be close to reality.

Design + HTML would be the typical standard costs… probably around $3,000.

Then you have other costs such as domains and possible custom introductory videos, etc. maybe $1,000-$2,000.

All in all, it will probably cost close to $10,000 to get off the ground. I didn’t allocate any money for advertising or promotion.

Do I Want to Take This On?

So I’ve had this website idea for around a year now. It’s always on the back of my mind.

And when I have something on my mind that I can’t shake, it’s very difficult for me not to do something about it. Whether it’s something I want to buy or an idea I want to implement, I usually end up buying it or implementing it.

I mean, a year ago I posted about how I was thinking of investing into real estate and 12 months later I am literally holding the keys to my first income property in my hand.

There are a number of problems with developing this website idea though:

• With my health as it is, I’ve been having a very difficult time focusing and working lately.
• My company’s income is currently low as a result of the above and having just bought an income property
• I still have existing websites which have been abandoned. I should get rid of them first.
• I have other priorities I need to take care of first such as finishing my corporate taxes and getting caught up with e-mail.
• The idea could fail miserably. This really isn’t a concern though since my whole business live has always been about calculated risk.

So if I did take this on, I’d probably make it a personal perquisite to get my taxes sorted out first, sell at least 2 more of my websites, and then get all caught up with e-mail. Then it’s also possible to use a different address for your business and this gives a lot more privacy so comes highly recommended. We used a virtual office service in the Scottish city of Glasgow as the business was close to there and it was a brilliant service so a great example of what to look for.

That way, I’d have a lot less baggage and would be able to focus on the development of the new website.

There’s also the possibility of partnering up with someone else. I’ve never partnered with anyone in a business endeavour in my life before though…

There are also options such as having others invest in the project for a piece of the pie, though it may be difficult to do that properly legal-wise. I actually did exactly this back in 2009 and had a number of interested parties, but ultimately nobody invested in me. It’s a good thing they didn’t too, since after I ended up funding it myself it ended up being my worst venture ever!

If I did get investors into the project though, I’d probably want to up the development costs a bit and spend a little bit on promotion, so maybe closer to $15,000-$20,000.

I don’t know. Creating a website with a budget (as opposed to launching one for essentially free) is always a risk. I really don’t know what I will do.

But it’s certainly an I idea have and it’s constantly reminding myself of its presence.