Online Business Plans

Some of us do have business plans. I think the reason most don't (from what I gather) is that they don't see this as a real business but as just a way to make a few extra bucks or fix a temporary problem.

Other areas suffer just as much when comparing on and off. For example, customer service. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people here say they ignore presales questions and even post sales questions. Can you imagine the local hardware store refusing to answer questions before or after the sale?

Mark

Why bother with a biz plan when there are offers like yours, which tout ideas like ... Bank $12,895.90 Per Day Click Here Free Video.

YOU are the reason less than serious business wannabees don't have a plan.

GordonJ

I agree.

Having now started two offline businesses, and had to produce business plans for the banks and investors etc., it would be crazy to start an online business without having a plan.

But that's what the 'get rich quick' mentality promotes - "buy my product, do this and get rich" - without any thought of actually how to run a business.

That's what leads to the failures - 98% of new marketers never make a dime. But they spend a lot of money trying!

Even the simplest plan:
How much does your traffic cost? What is your conversion to buyers? What is your EPC?
would at least show people whether they are going to make a profit or a loss.

In my experience most affiliate marketing products fail to mention even how to calculate EPC. Don't even think of starting an online business without working that one out!

Thinking back to when I first decided to learn how to use the internet for income, I didn't create a financial or business plan. I believe the reason was that I had so much more to learn about the entire process, including which 'method' of income generation I wanted to use, that trying to estimate income and expenses, startup costs etc, was kind of pointless. I just didn't have the knowledge. I have owned a number of decent sized bricks and mortar companies in the past, and while the knowledge was there I simply didn't have knowledge enough of internet marketing.

Even when I nailed down my first exact niche I still didn't know Wordpress was a 'thing' or that plugins existed, how to properly create an audio or video for online use, etc... so even then I just kept working my way up a very steep learning curve until I launched my first sales page and made my first dollar.

Now I can set up membership site extremely quickly and relatively cheaply as I know the process very well and many of the tools are already bought and paid for, so I still don't tend to do a formal financial or business plan. Rather, it comes down to niche selection and market research, then I jump in as I have the confidence to do it.

Having said all of that, the time that I have made a financial plan is once I see how well my website(s) are doing, and I start figuring out how to scale up, expand and project into the future.

I suppose my point is that given such a huge percentage of people will sadly never make much money online (so say the statistics) a great percentage of them will forever remain on that steep learning curve - in many cases they still don't know what they don't know, only that they have a lot to learn. And a financial or business plan at that point when the knowledge isn't complete is, to a degree, a pointless endeavor.

The process of writing a business plan is really the process of building your business, whether offline or online.

A business plan answers these questions:

What problem does the customer have?
How does the product solve the problem.
How big is the market?
How will the market be reached
Who are the competitors?
What's the unique selling proposition of the product?
How will the company make money
What's the growth potential of the company?
How much money do you need?
What are the expenses?
How much money will you make?

Dee

The difference between having a business and a hobby is how structured and planned out it is. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!

People who treat online business as a real business do have business plans...