Business planning for newbies?

Personally, I don't think you need a fully comprehensive business plan to get started with Internet marketing.

What you need to do is learn enough to start making some money, that's all.

Look for a simple way to make money online and try it out. Try to keep your costs low. Most of your first attempts at making money online will be failures. That's okay. You're getting an education.

Too many people try to create a full business plan and fail to take action. There is no substitute for jumping in, and trying things, and seeing what works. Actually doing something gives you knowledge and experience that cannot be gained by reading some e-book.

My advice: find something that might work and run with it. Every day people post new and innovative ways to make money online right here on the warrior forum.

Don't wait for all the stars to align and for the planets to perfect their orbits. Get a little knowledge and take action.

I agree with Nick. No need to worry about trying to create an in depth business plan like those used in traditional businesses.

That said, I think you need to develop a plan on how you want to make money (affiliate marketing is a great way to start), how you are going to do it (build a website, or an email list, both, or something else), how you will get traffic to your offer, etc.

I would suggest grabbing a copy of 5 Day Cash Machine from Liz Tomey. It gives you a good foundation on how to start. She shows you a method that she uses to generate some of her income.

She walks you through finding an affiliate product to promote, an easy way to build a website around that affiliate product, how to promote it, and how to use it to build an email list so you can make future offers to that list.

You need to just focus on the basics. Don't make the mistake of buying product after products. Find one area of IM and stick to it. Like for example if you want to create websites that sell affiliate products then just stick to that and master that formula and then move on to the next. This will save you years of frustration.

My simple answer would be ...just like any other business. Many people start out setting up their business plans with limited knowledge of their intended market.

One pre-requisite of the actual business planning is finding out as much as you can about the market before you actually get into the planning. This would be known as the "market research" phase.

Business Planning 101:

1. Market Research - How do you go about Market Research? Well let's break it down into 4 main components:

• The Market: One common mistake with people starting out in Internet Marketing is that they don't pinpoint what type of Internet Marketing it is that they'd like to pursue. There is Affiliate Marketing, Creating Your Own Product, Selling a Service, Blogging, Website Flipping, etc. Find out exactly which one of these fits your criteria or matches your skills. Once you know what you want to do exactly, you can then proceed to find out as much as you can (give yourself a reasonable timeframe so you don't get into research paralysis) about that particular industry. Questions you might ask include: What is the market size? Who are the main players in the industry? What will be your likely position? What market share do you hope to achieve? What would you sell or what niche would you be interested in getting into?
• The Customers: Who are your customers? Where on the Internet are you likely to reach them? (message boards, job boards, freelancing portal websites, email, Google searches, etc) What type of prices are they willing to pay? Do they have needs (conscious or unconscious) that are not presently being met by the existing market? And if they do, how will you be able to meet them? Is there something unique and beneficial you can offer to them?
• Competition: Who are your competitors? What is their offer in terms of pricing/positioning? How well are they performing? How will you price your products or position your own products?
• Suppliers: Who are your suppliers? Where are you going to find them? (freelancers, friends, professional services, software) What are you actually going to need to buy or subscribe to? (this one is important so that you know exactly what products you are looking for to back your business up instead of running around buying all the tempting useful stuff you come across) How much is it going to roughly cost or will it cost anything at all?

2. Business Planning - All the above market research is basically to gain a general knowledge of your intended market. It's still very raw, unorganized and somewhat incomplete information. Business Planning is the process of organizing all the information into something that resembles a road map or guideline for you to follow when you actually execute your business activities.

Don't spend too much time trying to perfect this though. I recommend spending no more than 2 days for the whole process. You don't need it to be beautifully written or 100% perfect. It's only for you to see and you will inevitably need to make changes to it as you learn more along the way.

I'm not going to go into detail of how to write a business plan. There are plenty of resources you can Google up. In fact, you don't really need one of those complicated business plan formats at all. Just figure out the bare essentials that will help structure the path you are going to take and compile it fairly neatly into a format you can understand. Think of it as a detailed to-do list with additional resource information.

Things you SHOULD think about and put into your business plan (remember this is really just the same information you found in the market research phase, just more polished and focused):

• What is it exactly that you plan to do?
• Why do you think it would work given the market, competition and customer demand?
• How will your business make money?
• How much money you need to get started?
• How much money do you need to sustain before you turn a profit?
• How long will it take before you turn a profit?
• Who can help you along the way and how are you going to get in touch with them?
• What skills of yours are you going to maximize in order to make this work?
• What skills do you think you lack to make it work? And how do you compensate for this? (JV's, Outsourcing, learn it yourself, etc)

I think it is also very important to give yourself time frames along the way. How long your research phase should be? How long should you spend creating your product? How long should you spend trying to figure out how to use AdSense?

Planning out your business is essential. By doing it as a first step, you are clear about what you want to achieve and all your efforts will be focused on making it happen. Like Tony Robbins says, concentrate your efforts and it's like creating a powerful laser beam.

If you don't plan, you'll most likely fall into the common trap of analysis paralysis or information overload or not exactly knowing what to do which is common for a lot of people starting out on the Internet to make money.

I hope this helps. I didn't invent any of these stuff up and the business planning part is based on the structure found in the Hashemi's "Anyone Can Do It" book which is about setting up a coffee shop. It can be adapted to pretty much any business.


Cheers & Live High,
Maverick Wil

Before you can lay out a busines plan... you must first have a "Business Model".

Take a look at Ryan Deiss's (sp?) video that he made about his "Million Dollar napkin". Google "Million Dollar napkin Video" and get some good information of how important it is to have a business model.

Once you have a busines model in place you can lay out your business plan.

It'll all fall like dominoes once you have a model in place. you don't have to follow Ryan Diess's model, but the "lightbulb" will come on once you watch his video... it inspired me

Thank you everyone for your input. It is truly appreciated

Copied from another thread, here's a simple blueprint for the early stages:

What action have you taken so far?

Have you identified a niche you might be interested in?

Have you worked out what keywords and keyword phrases people use when searching?

Have you decided what to sell?

Have you bought a decent domain name?

Have you built a simple website?

Have you written some content?

Have you worked out and tested some good headlines?

Have you started spreading the word about your site?

etc.

Read business and marketing books. Don't get sucked into the trap of being a lifelong IM'er. Use IM to build a large business, such as a portfolio of niche sites, that you can use to provide revenue for other business structures. The real games are played by those with the $. Create your own business and don't rely on affiliate income or Adsense forever.

Thanks for your replies. They're all helping, and giving me much to think about!

You need a business vision first then so you can work on getting from point A to point B. Are you going to be an affiliate marketer? Are you going to develop your own products/services? Exclusivly CPA marketing?

These are questions you need to ask yourself first and then figure out your business model within your vision. (How your going to carry out your vision while your going from point A to point B)


Frank Bruno

I dunno if I have got this wrong... but doesn't Bev Clement have a product or service for this kind of thing?...

I think she talked to me about the product before..

Peace

Jay

Hi Izzy, sorry for the delayed response. I did buy it and it is about niche/affiliate marketing. It is about finding a niche and then finding an affiliate product to promote to that market.

You build a website around that market. Then inside you mention the main affiliate you are promoting a few times. You can also mention another product or two that are complimentary, but not direct competitors to your main offer.

You set it us as a membership site and allow free access to build your email list. Then you do followup offers to the list.

The site in my sig file below was built using the 5 Day Cash Machine formula. I choose the make money blogging niche. I have not done much with followup autoresponders yet because I am pretty lazy (lol) and have been working on other things since launching this site. This afternoon I am researching some other products to promote to my email list.

I have built a small list so far, but have not done a whole lot to promote it either besides a few articles on ezinearticles.com, and a few videos on youtube. So it does work.

She shows you a site that she builds, and then shows you the results after 5 days, and it made I think it was around $800 in 5 days. So it can be effective, if you follow the plan. I would be further along if I had followed the plan to the letter. But I've been doing other things also, so I'm a little behind. I'm getting ready to start up with it again to promote my site more.

How i wish it is that easy not to buy ebooks about IM (lol), like all the other guys are saying here buy 1 product and do what it says, if it works stick with it. If it doesnt find another strategy that is in the same veins as your first project and keep learning.

Thanks for your input. It's much appreciated.

In a knowledge-based economy, intelligence is king. To do well, we need to have right information in our hands. I take planning very seriously before anything. Now there is something that I need to collect. Information about my niche product or perhaps the company. For instance I went to a site called ecompetitiors and got a hack load of info. So it shows how competitive advantage I will get by choosing the right option?

All of these points are very spot-on. I'd like to add that developing the proper mindset, mastering a couple marketing strategies at a time, and taking action immediately will help you get off the ground a lot quicker.

One of the biggest traps new business owners fall prey to is relying on the mindset they developed in the "9 to 5" world to make them successful at their own business. But what they fail to realize is they now have an entirely different animal on their hands. In the 9 to 5 world, you become a slave to the system. You have set hours in which to complete your work, thus your mind is programmed to know that you have X-amount of hours in which to complete the tasks for the day. And if you don't complete your work in the alloted time, you work overtime.

To reinforce this schedule, you have a boss looking over your shoulder to ensure the work is being carried out.

With your own business, you don't have that. All you have is yourself, so you must learn to hold yourself accountable for your actions. Indeed, a strong work ethic and dedication to a job-well-done can bleed over from the 9 to 5 world to your business. But you also need to keep yourself on task and be sure you're reaching your goals. If you fail to do this, you sell yourself short, and will ultimately fail long-term.

Being able to hold yourself accountable for your goals and accomplish the tasks that will make you successful WITHOUT a boss looking over your shoulder is what truly makes you a business owner and what separates "employees" from "entrepreneurs."

There are a couple easy steps you can follow to ensure you hold yourself accountable. The first is setting up a list of goals/tasks that you MUST accomplish for the day. If you work your business full-time, set up a list of 5-6 tasks. If you are working it part-time, write down 2-3 taks for the day. Or, whatever you feel is an attainable, reachable number of goals based on the amount of time you are devoting to your business. AND DON'T GO TO BED UNTIL YOU COMPLETE YOUR TASKS! Once you check off the final task, and even throughout the day, write down tasks that you want to accomplish the next day. And don't sell yourself and your success short by saying "Eh, I'll just get to that one tomorrow." Doing this opens the door to procrastination, which is an unwanted guest that never leaves once you let him in!

Next, construct a schedule for yourself and stick to it! Treat it like a normal workday. You can work whatever hours you wish, just remember that you get out of your business what you put into it. So be sure you're dedicating the right amount of time to each task. Determine what hours you want to work for the day, lay out which hours you're going to work on specific tasks, and get them done!

I also mentioned two other aspects above. It's important that you learn effective marketing techniques and TAKE ACTION ON THEM IMMEDIATELY. Inaction is a crippler that many people succumb to, and you don't want to be one of those people.

When learning effective marketing techniques, focus on 1-3 strategies at a time and work on them until you master them. A mistake many internet marketers make is learning a little about thousands of different strategies, instead of learning everything about a couple strategies. This can be overwhelming and lead to loss of focus. Your mind will be going a million different directions and never allows you to gain a full understanding of each technique.

Once you've implemented certain strategies, TAKEN ACTION by putting them to work and seen results, move onto another strategy and learn that.