Online Business Plan

Online Business Plan - Lesson 1 for Online Business Entrepreneurs

 By Yasmine I Sander

Starting up an online business is very easy to do: all you need is a domain name, hosting, a webdesign or a WordPress blog, an autoresponder and some cash for advertising.

The topic or niche you choose depends on your passion that you would like to share with the world. As soon as you chose your niche for your online business, you need to decide which one of the many available business models - and there are as many models around as Internet & Affiliate Marketers you would like to use.

This initial challenge will keep you busy for quite some time - I even dare to say that your first 6 to 9 months will belong to this first phase of your online business plan. And you have to consider this learning phase in your plan.

The next phase will be to focus on creating good and valuable content. Content is everything you leave on the Internet. It ranges from blog posts to tweets, shares, articles and products.
During your second phase you should endeavor to find your own little spot within your chosen niche. Just imagine that you should develop yourself into the Go-To-Guy (or Girl) for 1 particular question within your topic.

The third phase will actually be already part of running your online business. So your Business Plan for your online adventure is divided into 3 parts:

1. Choose niche and initial set up plus learning the rules of Internet Marketing
2. Create good and valuable content and share it around
3. find your final place within your Niche and establish yourself as the Go-To-Person.

In contrast to Business Plans for brick-and-mortar businesses, the plan for your online business is slightly different. You don't have to define your 5 year strategy, don't define your business processes and all the human-, technical- and product development resources you will need.

You could define all this right from the start but I dare say that this procedure would be a complete overkill for your online business idea and robbed you right away of your motivation that you will need for your first 6 to 9 months.

Instead of writing a 'commonly known' business plan for your online business, choose to focus on planning your marketing campaigns: Return on Investments and Break-Even Calculations are your focal points of interest while running your Online Business.

Planning your Online Journey this way allows you to stay flexible to different ways of doing business online, but creates a stable management tool to secure your financial success.

I personally choose to do it like this with my online business model. I wrote and executed 4 different brick-and-mortar Business Plans for 4 different companies in 4 different markets.
This successful but challenging experience allows me to suggest this path to all Newcomers to the Online World as well as advice Intermediate Internet & Affiliate Marketers to add this workable management tool to their knowledge box.