An Online Business Plan That Really Works

You want to start your own online business, and to begin with you must build it with limited time because of your existing job, life or family situation – sound familiar?

I was the same way – the last thing I wanted to do is use my hour each day to work on a dead-end project or worse yet, work my butt off only to put money in someone else’s pockets without putting me in a better situation.

The fact is that most unsuccessful attempts to start an online business fail because they a) Don’t follow a plan of any kind – instead taking the shotgun approach or b) Follow a faulty plan that is designed to make other people money – not you.

When I first started out online 8-years ago, we hit some dead-ends pretty fast – but in doing so found one specific online business plan that really works no matter who puts it into action.

It works mainly because YOU have a product that can be controlled and sold 100% by you – you are not relying on making someone else wealthy, but instead can leverage your product to finally achieve the time and financial freedom we all seek as entrepreneurs.

There are 10 steps to this proven online business plan, and while this may seem like a great deal of work, the fact is that you can master this entire process in as little as 6-weeks while still working away at your current job.

So here is the plan.

1. Uncover a hot desire within a target market by visiting forums, discussion groups, blogs and social networking sites that clearly indicate a niche market with an interest in a subject area. Then, pull out the biggest frustration, challenge or desire from within that market – this will tpyically be a question like “How do I keep 10-pounds off for more than 6-months” or “What investment plan should I follow given today’s highly volatile economy?”

2. Publish a blog on your topic posting daily for a few weeks to build traffic. By blogging and submitting to various blog directories as well as social networking sites you will get more traffic along with some backlink advantage from authority sites improving your search engine position over time. You are “putting up your sign” for your new online business.

3. Start building your list right away by putting an opt-in forum with a bonus download on your main page(s). List building is so important because…

a) 8 out of 10 visitors will not buy on first visit to your site

b) You can double (and often triple or more) your conversion of visitors to sales by exposing them multiple times to your sales page

c) You can survey your list for further ideas, case studies, or sell them other people’s products and make affiliate commissions

d) You’ll have an eager group of customers highly motivated to buy from you in the future

4. Create your own book, ebook, manual, course, guidebook or formula in the form of either a digital written, audio or video product OR in the form of a physical print or Audio/Video shipped on CD or DVD. Address the major desire you researched in step 1 and structure the information as your own solution system. You can see an outline on how to structure your information product business in the complimentary video: http://www.infomarketerszone.com/public/254.cfm?sd=2

5. Write your compelling sales letter by targeting specific desires within your marketplace and turning those desires into benefit statements. For each compelling question your market has explicitly asked or is thinking about you should have a solution in your infoproduct and a benefit statement on your sales page.

6. Generate traffic by using multiple techniques such as writing articles submitting them to high authority article directories, publishing to your blog on a daily basis, advertising using pay-per-click, becoming active on leading social networking sites and emphasizing your affiliate program.

7. Seek out JV partners and super affiliates. Setup your affiliate program using the capability built into Clickbank or using other affiliate tracking software – then actively seek out top affiliates within your marketplace. Make it a part of your system to seek out at least 3-4 top JV partners each month.

8. As you begin selling your products (or giving away early review copies) work with your customers to build PROOF that your information and system works. This will build momentum and result in many more ebooks being sold. The entire process of building proof around your product should be built into the original design – for example, you can’t hope to get proof if you haven’t structured your infoproduct as something that is testable or usable.

9. Monitor and improve by building in an ongoing testing and monitoring function into your business system. What is working, what is not and make adjustments. For instance, you may be getting a TON of traffic, but conversion sucks – so you make changes to your sales letter. Or, you may suffering for traffic, so work a little harder at writing more (or better) articles, blog posting, and recruiting affiliates who can flood your site with traffic. It’s a plan-do-review process that leads to top selling sites.

10. Finally, structure your communications to your subscribers and customers in a way that they guide your business toward the best opportunities. By allowing comments to blog postings, surveying your subscribers and customers, speaking with your customers 1:1 and running frequent brainstorming or coaching calls your customers will tell you exactly what they want giving you the biggest advantage of all to stay ahead of your competition.

We know this plan works, we’ve applied it to multiple markets and have coached using this system for the last 5-years and now you can apply it to your own desire for an online business plan.

An Engineering Business Plan is More Important in a Recession

Is your engineering firm meeting its goals in this recession? Do you have more business or less? When do you expect the economy to recover? If your company is like many other engineering companies, you were caught off guard at the beginning of the recession. Are you sure that the current and expected market changes are reflected in your business plan? These are all questions that need to be answered in your business plan; your company’s business road map.

Without a doubt most business owners know that they need to have an up-to-date business plan. All that is required of any business owner to keep the plan current is the time to review, analyze, and update the plan, which can be difficult. So if you have not already, now is the time to review your plan and periodically make modifications.

In a prolong recession a proficiently ran business is more important than ever. Professional engineers are extremely knowledgeable about their career, but are rarely the experts in operating their company’s. An engineer will have spent 8 to 10 years in college and post graduate training before being licensed as a Professional Engineer without ever taken one class in business.

When the projection of incoming revenues slow or stop coming in the door your first reaction is to find more clients from the same source and second to cut costs by downsizing. This may not be the right business steps to take. Usually the better action is to re-examine each of your markets and clients in those markets, and to determine if those markets change in direction is temporary or long term, and then to careful review your company’s services and products. Operating any business should be a constant review of the process of that business, and whether it is operating at its best. Mistakes in the operation of the business during the good times are easy to compensate, but during the not so good times the same mistakes can close the business. A careful review may also show that your company is relying on one market to heavily and may need to diversify into other markets.

The kitchen table sketch may have been the beginnings of an engineering business plan, but as the company continues to operate and grow, the business plan needs to be formalized and updated periodically. The engineering business plan is nothing more than an outline, summarizing how the company will operate to be a successful business. Within the plan there are estimates based on industry research and personal experience which determines how much the company can expect to profit. This is established by quantifying the amount of services and products to be sold minus the expenses. It is one of the business owner’s primary responsibilities to work on the business through the process of reviewing and updating the business plan.

A detailed description of the engineering firm’s direction and purpose is found in the business plan. Without a plan the company can and often will wonder aimlessly, and may eventually fail. A slowing economy can be very damaging to poorly structured companies whether they are large or small. These companies are usually not in a position to handle the changing market conditions, and end up closing their doors. The stronger companies are usually better managed with an operations plan in place to handle the ups and downs of the economy or the changing target market conditions. Companies following good business plans whether small or large tend to survive a recession, and are set to expand during the economy’s recovery period.

There are many resources on the subject of writing a business plan, including websites, computer software and books. Unfortunately most of these sources address the generic business such as retail or service businesses. Engineering is unlike any other professional service business or any type of business.

A very good resource is the United States Small Business Administration website http://www.sba.gov. According to the website, the minimal requirements for a business plan are as follows:

  1. Description of the business: What is the structure of the business, and what are the services and products it provides?
  2. Marketing: What are the potential clients and how will the business communicate with them?
  3. Finances: What are the expected revenues sources and what are the expenses? Also what are the potential profits and losses?
  4. Management: Who are the key personnel and who is responsible for the various functions of the company?

The best way to get through the recession is to have a plan. Now is the time to review your business plan, and, if necessary, revise some or all of the sections. Write out the strategies that will improve all four areas of your business. Next implement those strategies, and monitor their daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly results. If the results are not meeting your standards, then make adjustments.

New to Business Planning? Start With a Basic Business Plan

Why would you want to write a basic business plan as opposed to a more elaborate one? Most business owners I know struggle with the idea of writing a full-blown plan for their business. To be completely honest, writing a plan for anything, let alone a business you own or intend to start, is challenging because…

1. we don’t know where or how to start
2. we want our plan to be perfect the first time we write it – as in, we don’t want to make any mistakes
3. we don’t like to write – and let’s face it, writing a plan involves writing.

I’m going to share with you ways to overcome each of these hurdles. But before you do anything, allow yourself to break the process of business planning into small steps.

The first step is to have a basic plan which will serve as the foundation for a more detailed and comprehensive plan down the road.

How to Start Writing Your Plan

What goes into a basic plan? Well, let’s first define a basic plan as a plan for the bigger plan you will arrive at later on.

Here are the essential questions you need to answer:

1. What do you want to gain by writing this plan?

Is this plan an internal plan which you will use to guide yourself or your team towards achieving specific and measurable targets? Or are you aiming to attract potential investors? Is this something you would like to take to the bank to propose a loan for your business?

Begin by examining what your specific goal is for writing your plan.

2. Who is going to review my plan, and what do you want them to do with it?

You need to identify who is going to actually study your plan, and what they are going to do with it. If it’s yourself, then it’s a little easier to answer this question because the answer lies within you.

If, however, you are writing your plan for others to review, and assuming you’ve answered #1 above, you’re going to have to do some background analysis.

Start listing names or titles/positions of people who you expect to review your plan. Then, for each person, brainstorm how you want that person to react to your business plan – what they should do with it.

You could do the same thing for investors – do you know any business owners? Ask them what they would look for in any business venture they would invest, and specifically what they would look for if you wanted them to invest in your business.

3. What is the core product or service your business offers to buyers?

To answer this, write down the product or service you intend to offer as simply as possible. We’ll answer more detailed info about it in the following questions.

4. Who is the ideal customer for this product or service?

Really, ideas for business are a dime a dozen. You often hear people talk about a great business idea they have, but they rarely back it up with any kind of proof that a customer exists for such a product or service, and that that customer would be willing to pay.

Try to be specific in profiling your buyer. For example, does your product or service cater to men or women, or both? What age groups or income levels does it service/attract? Are there any geographical areas that your product or service would supply?

5. Is there enough demand for your product or service?

This is something you’ll want to investigate in more detail as you develop your business plan. At this point though, what’s important is to do some preliminary research. Searches on Google, Hoovers or Bizminer will help you study a particular industry, and you can often drill down your research to a particular state or city. Your search at Google is of course, free, but you’ll often find for a small investment at sites such as Hoovers or Bizminer, you’ll get meaningful data for your market vertical, which you can start analyzing right away.

It’s also not a bad idea to survey buyers on their purchase behaviors and perceptions towards your product or service. Arranging a questionnaire or focus group can give you some useful insight into how potential buyers react to your product or service.

If it’s reasonable, consider giving away product or service trials and then follow-up to evaluate user expectations and experiences.

If you don’t have demand for your product or service, it really doesn’t matter how great it is anyways, right?

6. What existing problems or needs does your product or service solve for your customers?

This is one of the most important questions to answer, because ultimately, your product or service is just another one available unless it clearly and uniquely solves a problem or need which buyers face.

To give an example, let’s say your product is a software application that helps you manage your finances and taxes. There are a few applications in the market which do that already. So, what does your application do that others don’t? Is it better on features, is it faster? Is it more secure? Is it more user-friendly? Is it more portable? Does it really help someone save money or increase their net worth?

Can you see why getting clear on the solution you offer to your target market is so crucial?

7. Who are your direct and indirect competitors?

You really should gain at least an initial understanding of who else is offering similar products or services to your target market. It’s good to know how their products or services are currently used and perceived – why people buy them, and why they don’t. In doing so, you begin to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors from the consumer’s perspective.

Depending on what your product or service is, you can find all kinds of information about user experiences with your competitors’ offerings. Sites like Amazon let you see product reviews by customers who bought products.

8. What do you need to get your business rolling/growing, and what will it cost?

This is arguably the most painful part of business planning. Yet, what is the point of having a plan if you don’t know how it all adds up financially? You may not know how to put all the numbers together on your own. If that’s the case, invite or even hire someone to help you sort out the numbers.

Aside from any potential revenues earned from sales of your product or service, you’ll need to know your fixed expenses – what it costs you to run your business whether or not you sell a single item, and your variable expenses – what it costs you for each item sold.

Naturally, in the early stages of planning a business, you will be doing a lot of forecasting, and your numbers may not be as accurate as you’d like them to be. So, you’ll want to be as conservative as possible about how much revenue you’ll generate and how much your business will cost to run.

9. Putting your plan to action – what are the key steps you need to take?

At some point, the plan needs to hit the road! The plan is no good if it doesn’t help you take action. So a simple action plan should be included – what needs to be started and completed, when and who will do it, all need to be mapped out at least at a basic level.

Having an action plan will also help you get excited about your business venture, as you can see how it comes to life.

10. How can you improve your plan?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you have a basic blueprint of how your business is going to look at the early stage.

Remember, your first step is to prepare a basic business plan that serves as a foundation. From this foundation, you will want to further explore areas which need more analysis and testing, while some aspects of your business venture merely require you to get started and measure how things are going.