REVIEW:

What You Get:

Over 100 case studies – from overviews to detailed – of how real-world businesses are making money, both online and off. Real stories from business owners that will motivate and inspire you to create your own money-making ideas to grow or start your business.

You also get a member discussion forum, and articles from biz experts like Mike Van Norden, Jeff Gardner, Jim Straw, Rosalind Gardner, and Ron Ruiz himself.

See more at: http://www.BusinessFastlane.com

What's Great:

I particularly like the “Idea Generator” segments of the site. These are basically articles and/or case studies that are designed to first describe to you how someone else has already made money with this idea, then describe how you could duplicate their success.

I just don’t know how Ruiz was able to find so many case studies and articles from people in such diverse areas of business. I think the variety is great.

Although I tend to be a little (stubbornly, yet intentionally) closed-minded in wanting to read about the success of ONLINE businesses only, I know that can limit my potential. I like that the owner allowed inventors, clothing designers, drop shippers, press release writers, super affiliates and more to contribute, to help round out his site.

I think the information within this site is very good, though I wasn’t able to efficiently locate and process all of it, due to the issues below.

What Needs Work:

Needs editing. In a MAJOR way.

I know I personally tend to overlook grammatical errors on my sites, just because up until recently, I didn’t have an editor. I’d spell check AND proofread SEVERAL times over, but I’d still manage to miss something!

I know how it is.

Even still, there were too many such errors on this site to be comfortably overlooked, in my opinion. For instance, in just one, 2-sentence paragraph on the Member’s Area index page, there were four errors. There were two in the very next paragraph of four sentences.

Next, the site is too busy. There are SO many things going on with the design – case study excerpts, testimonial after testimonial, tons of links, several content sections – that it makes it very hard to stay focused. Even at first glance, it LOOKS overwhelming.

I also think there’s too much text shown on any one page at once. A lot of it could be cut down to make the site easier to handle and navigate through. For instance, the navigational system could be organized into categories AND subcategories. Like, when you clicked on a category link (say “Case Studies”), you’d be taken to a page that listed the different categories OF case studies (Product Ideas, Membership Sites, Internet, etc.). That’d be one way to do it.

The design and layout is pretty willy-nilly. For instance, the template for the MEMBERS area of the site still contains testimonials and “become a member!” verbiage clogging the sidebar. I don’t think we need to be reminded how great other members/reviewers think the site is.

Instead, there should be links and descriptions that *clearly detail* each individual section of the site so we can get around fast – and soon offer our own testimonial. And the text is so small, combined with there being so much going on with the site, I couldn’t stay focused for more than a few minutes at a time. I’m talking 5, tops. I left each time with my head swimming.

Finally, it’s a little disorganized in there. A few of the articles/case studies were listed in more than one category, making it hard to keep track of what was what. It’s fine to have something that can apply to more than one area of the site, but I think it’s confusing to members to keep reclassifying the info.

Another example is, for the different sections – say, case studies for instance – the studies are listed by title, including a description. I think that’s a *wonderful* way to organize the info. BUT, after the table of case studies with descriptions, there’s THEN a list of just the titles of them below that table. I kept scanning the title list, thinking it was more new articles (just without the descriptions).

Closing Summary:

The disorganization and “willy-nillyness”, combined with the obvious lack of editing are what made me give Business Fastlane such a low grade. I really did try to give this site a better grade – I revisited a number of times to try to get through all the info – but in the end, I couldn’t. I just kept feeling “lost.”

It’s a GREAT concept, with loads of useful info. But until it’s cleanly presented, edited with a fine-toothed comb, and greatly reorganized, I just can’t grade it higher.

On the other hand, if you don’t have a problem looking past those things, for the price, this site is a good place to find several useful ideas for your business.

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