When I started out online, I jumped on board any offering that said I could make money and proceeded to fail miserably. My plan was to make money, but beyond that I didn’t have a clue.
Often it seems that online business is just helter-skelter. It seems like a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but it seems almost impossible to make a realistic plan. It seems to be quite different from a ‘brick and mortar’ business where you can plan in more detail. This is not true. What I would like to do in this post is help you get an idea of how you can make a business plan for any online business.
Setup
Any business will have start-up costs and the same is true of you online business. You may be able to join a program for $10 (or even less), but you will still need to invest in a few tools if you are serious about your business.
You will probably want to at least buy a domain name, and you probably will do well to actually get a web hosting site. This may cost you only $5/month.
Also essential in any online start-up is an auto-responder. This business is primarily about developing a list of interested buyers. The auto-responder takes care of that for you. A company like AWeber (which is one of the best auto-responders) will cost about $20/month. If you start out with a lead builder like Magnetic Sponsoring, you could wait with this step until your second or third month.
You will probably want to set up a blog on your website. One of the best free programs for doing that is WordPress. Even if you don’t want to work with a blog just yet, you should consider making your own site which talks about your product (like a review). There are free programs that allow you to create pages with no html knowledge.
All of these parts could be set up in a week’s time, but if I were making a business plan, I would allow at least a month for getting things set up properly.