Whether you are considering a web site for reselling other peoples products, starting a work at home business, selling your own products, or any other business for that matter you need a written business plan before you spend your first dollar on a web site.

There are over 162 million web sites on the Internet. Getting recognized, building an opt-in email list you can sell to, gaining customer confidence and then building a business on the Internet is not as easy or as inexpensive as some try to make you think it is. Typically you don't find this out until you leap into it, find out it isn't easy, it does cost money, your' re not getting ranked on search engines, and you have few, if any, visitors to your site and no sales.

You then start going in a circle trying to figure out what your doing wrong. You spend money buying products that are supposed to help you make it happen, hiring consultants that tell you "I can save you; just hire me or but my products," signing up for pay per click programs, doing keyword analysis and writing articles all to still find out it's just not working. After spending months and hundreds of dollars most people get frustrated and quit. There are literally millions of dead web sites out there, representing lost dreams of people just like you.

How can you avoid losing your dream? Just like any brick and mortar business, in order to have any chance of succeeding on the Internet you first must develop a well thought out, written business plan. To put a business plan together you have to research your market, your competition and where your sales opportunities might be (your niche in a market), evaluate your strength and weaknesses, and get a better understanding of what you are getting yourself into.

A business plan will help you determine the potential for success, how long it's going to take to make money and how much it's going to cost you. If you're not willing to take the time to research the business you want to pursue and write a business plan, the odds are greater than 1,000 to 1 you will not make it. You'll get better odds in the stock market or while having fun in Las Vegas or Monte Carlo.

Trust me most people cannot develop and run an Internet business all by themselves. You have strengths and weaknesses, but no one, not even you, can learn everything needed to build a successful business on the Internet. It's not as easy as putting up a web site and presto, your' re in business. It's the ongoing care and feeding of the web site that's going to make you successful.

Your plan does not have to be in a lot of detail unless you also look to using it for your business funding requirements or setting up a strategic alliance of some kind. Typically a good 8-10 page business operating plan will suffice. For this article we will stick with a simple business operating plan.

An operating plan deals with:

• How much it's going to cost you
• What your revenue goals are
• Defining your market niche
• Your strategies and tactics
• How you're going to operate on a day to day basis.

This plan should be written then reviewed regularly (weekly at a minimum to start.)

An outline for developing a typical business operating plan is:

• Define your current status and what you personally want to accomplish.
• Define yours and the business' Vision, Mission, Values
• Put together a SWOT Analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. Marketing plan. This should include at a minimum:
• • Product or service offering
  • Market Niche
  • Competition
  • Keyword definition and analysis
  • Strategies and Tactics
  • Revenue goals
  • Budget

Once the operation plan is in place you are ready to develop your web site with a higher probability of success.

- Andrew C. Nester

Andrew C. Nester is a Business Management Consultant providing business strategy processes and support to companies of all sizes. Visit our Web site at http://www.bizstrategies.biz/business-planning.html for additional information on Business Planning and get your free white paper, "Business Management Coaching: Who Needs it Anyway?" You can email Andrew at  or you can reach him by phone at 707-987-8375.

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