Back to writing and setting goals and having more goals to do by the end of the year. Details are important, so on to details and the meaning and importance of them. One such way is to think about your articles that you write in your business.

Blogs: Got a blog? Have you written on it yet this year? Blogs are an important way to connect to others. Simple writing each day helps, and it does not have to be long. This can also be a great and easy way to build a few “writing articles” adding these as popular blog posts can mean more people are exposed to your writing.

Online Writing Sites: Comment and other matter will help you get into the swing of reading and writing. Again these are great ways to build

Novels: Have you edited something this year? Planning to finish that novel? Work in Progress not progressing? Now is a great time to begin. You can think of your novel as a series of short to long chapters which are writing articles. This is a great way to help break you novel down.

Articles: Simple articles that you have said that you will be working on? These do not take long, and can be a good break from something else. Most of these articles can be found offline, and can create some much-needed money fast. You can write online or you can choose to offer services to the offline community such as magazines or newspapers. Many of these places allow for articles which you can write and help others and bring your profile up.

Business: Have you got your business plan up and running? If you do not now is a great time to write it down. This will improve your writing business. The best part of writing a business plan? Focus. You will want to make money in various ways, but a quick and simple way of doing this is by writing online articles and other things.

In pre-internet days, we were all told to build an extensive business plan, develop a great product or service and then start our business and watch the dollars roll in. I know, as I grew up in these times and received my MBA shortly before the internet exploded. However, I believe the internet has turned conventional wisdom on its head.

The best way to succeed in business today is to build the web site first, then the product or service. Sound crazy? What if I told you that over 90% of purchase decisions start on the web. The yellow pages are dead – if people want to buy something they turn to the internet 90% of the time, and the other 10% of the time they’re getting advice from friends.

Why would you do build a web site first? Well the truth is that today it takes many months in most niches to build sufficient traffic for a brand new site starting from scratch. It is hard to reach the tipping point – usually around 500 subscribers, where the site starts to take off and build momentum.

Building a web site first has a lot of advantages:

* Not every web site catches on – in fact billions have almost zero traffic. Building the web site first lets you experiment with developing your market niche and find out if it will work.

* Trying to sell something to your new audience too soon can turn them off.

* You can develop your product or service while you are building your web site following.

* You’ll learn a tremendous amount about what it takes to build an online business by simply creating your site and starting to build content for it.

* Once you have an online following for your site, you can actually have your customers tell you what they would like to see from your business. Give them what they want!

* Building a web site is inexpensive – a web hosting account starts at only a few dollars per month, and some sites will even host your site for free.

They are like fingerprints; no two are alike, even within the same organization. One further point, opinions about what makes a good finished product are like noses-everybody has one. The ones that work and prove to be executable are the best. With this in mind, let me offer my views about business plans at a macro level having written a sizeable number of plans for internal and external applications. One other point, a business plan can build a team quicker than any formal team building activity.

I have written business plans for all manner of industries: a coin operated jukebox company, airlines, travel companies, new product launches, and anti-aging product companies. It is not necessary to have a passion for the product or the company to write or develop a business plan. What you must have is a passion for aggregating information, getting involved with and understanding the service or product, and understanding the financials of the product or service. By financials I am not referring to having a CPA before you undertake the task, but rather understanding the presentation of the information and analysis/ numbers to support the activity being planned. Financials are important because they are the score card in the world of commerce.

There are many reasons for utilizing such a document. Is the final document going to be about implementing a decision already having been reached or is it about analysis and recommendations for a newly proposed activity. As noted above, a finished document may be for internal or external purposes. Externally they are often used to solicit funding for a start-up or joint venture. Whatever the purpose, do not confuse effort with say, a marketing or a production plan.

I mentioned the financial aspect of a plan earlier, so let me add this. Another fact about financials to consider: not all business activities are about making money. Point being, in most enterprises financial considerations are centric to the document. But there are some other considerations. For example, a few years ago I wrote a plan for a new subsidiary that was focused on developing an inventory of patents. The potential financial returns were years into the future. Those patents may or may not ever have commercial value. Another example is a non-profit enterprise that has need for a complete roadmap for growing their profile in a market, of which a marketing plan would be the centerpiece.

If a document needs to be developed that requires input from other disciplines-Finance, HR, Property & Facilities, Marketing, Procurement/Supply Chain- then most likely you are looking at a team building effort to get the job done.

In any event, don’t look at the task as only as a roadmap that leads to a profitable product or enterprise. Business plans are a great way to build team buy-in, force a thorough review of options, define objectives, establish benchmarks to judge performance, and help arrive at a plan-of-action. Ultimately, it can lead to a Project Management approach to implementing a plan and that can be as involved and detailed as is necessary.

Another consideration. Should the business plan be a document that is focused on selling an idea for a product or service? For many years I worked in a company that did not want anything in a business plan that could be construed as showing a bias towards or against a project. The mantra was to only present facts in the business plan. The Operations Research Department was there to review the analysis as being unbiased. To handle the “what if” scenarios or sensitivity analysis we prepared a supplemental analysis documents which were mostly financial oriented. Personally, I like a factual approach and use the presentation of the final document to point out the conservative aspects of the content.

Here is a recap of where we are in this discussion:

Business plans formalize an understanding of the task with appropriate analysis leading to a plan-of-action.
Not all business plans are for profit motives.
Business plans are for an enterprise effort and not focused on disciplines/departments, e.g. Marketing plan, sales plan, HR plan, supply chain plan, etc.
Business plans are a great vehicle to build a team effort.
Plans can be utilized for formalizing metrics relative to achieving goals and performance measurements.
Some complex plans might include a Project Management professional.
There are internal and external audiences for business plans. Most external focused plans are for outside funding of projects.
Be mindful of the ‘tone’ the plan projects to the reader. Tone refers to the impression a person gets from reading the plan; a subliminal feeling about the plan.

Organization and content of the business plan will evolve as it is prepared. For example, if the driving force of the plan is marketing or sales then a preponderance of the analysis and plan-of-action section will be more up-front and sales oriented in tone. With business plan’s the world is your oyster; think from the center out to the edges and think outside of the box.

The best start up businesses for women that my wife and I have come across is also some of the most lucrative businesses that we have ever seen.

We just wish that more women would take a serious look at these types of businesses and the real potential for high earnings that can be achieved by anyone.

These businesses are easy to run require very little outlay and have extremely low running costs.

Typical start up costs are less than $40 and monthly running costs of around $55. To put this in perspective it equates to less than the price of a of a decent cup coffee each day.

Most of the best start up businesses for women is online businesses. This makes them great for mothers with children or mothers who would like to increase their income working part time or full time from home.

Please do not be misled into thinking that these are just little top up incomes. Many work at home mums are making five figure monthly salaries with these types of start up businesses.

The start up businesses for women that we are showing you is of course suitable for men as well as women.

In the present climate it may be an option to do a joint venture with your partner or even a friend.

My wife Karen and I work together on our businesses this way we can see a bigger picture of where we are going.

We have tried multilevel marketing but just could not make a living from it plus it took up a huge amount of our time.

Our own home businesses are all developed around affiliate marketing. This concept suits us because we never have to deal with customers and never have to purchase or sell any stock.

It is a very simple process where we promote digital products and services such as e-book’s and software online. The sales from these products and services then give us a commission for each sale.

Some of the best products to promote are monthly or annual subscriptions, for example magazines or educational courses.

This then gives you monthly or annual commissions for as long as the customer remains loyal. As you can see this can be a great way to produce a long term residual income for life.

The secret of a successful courier service is providing services not available from the bigger firms like Fedex and UPS, such as local, same-day service, or finding a profitable niche, like medical specimen deliveries. What delivery services should you offer? A business plan can’t tell you that, but your customers can. Instead of wasting your time and energy coming up with an elaborate business plan, just get started. Have one of the many web-based printers (just search “printed notepads” to find them) print notepads to hand out to prospective customers in your area. One marketing tip is to offer new customers a gift certificate for one free pickup/delivery. This let’s them test your service at no cost, and makes them much more likely to call you the next time they need a same-day delivery.

You’ll quickly learn who will be your best customers, as they now have your contact information and will call you when they need packages or documents delivered locally the same day. This takes care of the biggest problem a startup business has – cash flow. Once the money is coming in from deliveries, you can prospect for more businesses in your area that are similar to the customers you now have.

Regardless of how much planning you do, it’s only a hunch – an educated guess about how well your business will do. The danger is, by spending too much time on planning, you’ll have less time and energy to try new marketing ideas to find paying customers. The secret is to test your ideas as quickly and cheaply as possible, then improve and refine them. Handing out notepads with your contact information and a catchy slogan is a great way to do that.

Here’s another “quick & cheap” way to do a simple courier business plan for your new courier service business. If you plan to borrow startup money from friends or relatives – the most common source of funding for new businesses – do an “executive summary” business plan to show them that you’ve done your homework. It should cover the business plan basics, with an overview of the business, a market analysis with a look at the competition, and an estimate of your first year’s sales. It assumes that you will not have employees to start, or buying or leasing property and equipment. Here’s a sample:

ROADRUNNER COURIER SERVICE – BUSINESS PLAN

Business Overview: Roadrunner Courier Service is a new courier service based in Bend, Oregon, specializing in local, same-day deliveries. Roadrunner can transport documents and parcels to customers within a 40 mile radius of town. Our customers are medical professionals, attorneys and local businesses who need reliable, same-day services not offered by the larger service providers, such as Fedex and UPS.

Market Analysis: The demand for reliable, cost-effective delivery services has been growing in the area for several years as the town’s population continues to grow. In addition to a growing population, there are more customers who require faster service, ranging from “stat” medical specimen deliveries to time-sensitive legal documents to “just-in-time” parts deliveries to local manufacturers. There is only one other local courier service in the area, and we believe there is ample room, due to our growing local economy, for another reliable courier service.

Marketing Strategy: The marketing strategy of Roadrunner Courier Service is to provide dependable and exceptional delivery services to businesses and professionals who have a regular need for pickup and delivery services. This will insure that Roadrunner will have a regular, steady income from repeat customers. The second part of our marketing strategy will be to gain customers who need courier services occasionally, such as last-minute parts and supplies delivered to a contractor’s job site, plans deliveries for architects and engineers and documents and materials for local government agencies.

First Year Goal: Based on the size of the local delivery market and the fact that Roadrunner will be a one person business, our sales projection for the first year is $45,000. We plan to build our customer base through direct contact with prospective customers and word-of-mouth referrals from happy customers to continue to grow our sales, focusing on the most profitable types of deliveries.

Stage 1: Infancy

The very first thing in our strategy is keyword research. Using popular and effective keywords on your website will help to assure that it will be visible in the search engine results instead of being buried under thousands of other websites in the search results. In order to gain a better understanding for how potential customers will find our website, we look at what keywords are related to our product/service, and try to decipher which ones have the highest number of searches. We use Google as a tool to do our keyword research because Google holds a very large percentage of searchers in comparison to other engines.

Once we’ve done some extensive keyword research, we now know what to use in our title tags, image’s ALT tags, meta data, as well as what to name our files. When deciding what keywords to use where, one thing that must be kept in mind is relevancy. We want to rank for our keywords, but we do not want to over-use them, or use them in an irrelevant fashion. By understanding what keywords we are trying to rank for, we now have a decent idea of what types of content our potential visitors are searching for. This leads us to the next stage in our website business plan.

Stage 2: Design and Implementation

It’s good to understand design and SEO implementaion before you start your site. That way, instead of updating an existing site for search engine optimization, your site will be created from the ground up with search engine optimization as a priority. Your site potentially could have easily become a flash website, but instead will become a XHTML/CSS based site. All your web pages will contain 100% unique content, and will target different keywords. Visuals should be kept relatively simple, although hopefully aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Every link needs to have been carefully placed with intended anchor text and destinations. Every image should be tagged and every bit of information should go through a personally conducted “relevancy test”.

Stage 3: Traffic Driving

Every aspect of search engine optimization boils down to a methodology to obtain more traffic from search engines. Traffic can be converted into money, and we want traffic! We have developed a checklist of operation to complete after when your site goes live.

o Site will be submitted to the major search engines.

o A press release will be submitted.

o Video content will be submitted to YouTube and various other video sites.

o Industry related articles will be written and submitted to EzineArticles and GoArticles, as well and any additional article services that are found to be credible.

o Small-scale testing will begin with pay-per-click campaigns.

o Multiple social networks will be explored, with a link back to our site in each profile.

o Questions will be answered on message boards with links to relevant information our website provides in the form of tutorials.

o Images will be submitted to image-based search engines.

o Website will be submitted to relevant Google Directory listings.

Stage 4: Ongoing Maintenance

We’ve come up with a weekly regimen that will help both build traffic over time, and keep the site maintained:

o Write and submit one article.

o Make 1-2 Forum postings containing a informative post and a relevant link back to your website.

o A new blog post will be posted or new page created on your website.

o A request will be sent to another reputable and relevant website for a one-way link.

Conclusion

But there are only two ways of getting started in your own business.

Firstly, you can buy an established one which means you need the purchase price or be able to borrow it.

Or secondly, you can start it yourself. But you still need enough money to pay for start-up costs and ongoing running costs of the business until enough income is generated to make consistent profits.

In all cases you need capital funds. It’s easy to go broke and it’s probably the main reason why businesses fail, namely insufficient capital funds.

The best way to preserve your capital funds and make it less likely to fail is to use services which cost nothing or cost as little as possible.

That’s where free online business software and tools come in!

These can literally save your business thousand of dollars if you learn how to develop and use them correctly. And the internet is full of online freebies readily adaptable for your business.

I will cover some of them here that I have advised my accounting clients to use as an alternative to more costly alternatives. These have helped their businesses grow and flourish.

A business plan should be prepared for any business you start. It sets down on paper how and in what direction it’s going to take.

This is the hardest part of starting a business and it’s up to you how much detail you want to document. It can be one page to a hundred page plan. I think for most purposes the shorter the business plan the better.

Free templates and software to prepare a business plan are available online, either from government funded organisations like the SBA. Go to their website and search business plans.

Or from other online sites like Bizgym.

Or keep it simple and write down a “One Page Business Plan”. Template samples can be found online by Googling One Page Business Plan.

Computer security is next and one of the most popular anti virus programs that offer a free version is AVG.

Using this and being aware of spam and websites that contain viruses will save you a lot of lost data and effort in the future.

Your business must also be compliant with taxation laws. For that you must record all your business transactions and keep all source documentation to substantiate the transactions.

So you’ll need an accounting package. This not only keeps the Taxman happy but it’s an invaluable record of your business’s activity and can supply you with reports you can view to see how your business is performing.

Things are ok. But how do you know you are thinking BIG enough? Are you leveraging the strengths, interests and talents on your team? Will you wind up in a place that will make you happy? What exactly is the best game plan? It is not that you haven’t been thinking about these questions. The business environment is complex and the choices are daunting. How do you answer the hard questions?

For the same reasons that pilots use maps when they fly cross-country and chefs follow recipes, it makes good sense to work towards organizational and personal goals with a written plan. One can operate without a plan, and many do, but the results probably won’t be optimal.

A strategic thinking and planning process can help to create a framework where you take control of the business, instead of sitting back and watching the business taking control of you. For many, the process of planning (thinking, discussing, researching and analyzing) is even more useful than the final plan. A planning process can help to sharpen a vision, evaluate alternative paths, build common understanding and commitment, balance dreams with reality, and transform uncertainty into action.

SOUNDS GOOD BUT MOST SMALL BUSINESSES DON’T PLAN

Although there is a lot of research correlating success with planning, it probably won’t surprise you that the majority of small businesses don’t have a written strategic plan. The reasons why are varied but some common themes include: “It’s not the best use of my/our limited time”, “planning takes away flexibility”, “there are too many uncertainties”, “we have a business plan”, “building consensus is too difficult”, and “it will cost too much”.

These are all real concerns, especially to the small business owner. The dichotomy is that the very reasons why organizations avoid planning are the same reasons that planning can be so effective. Let’s take a look….

TIME- “We are so overwhelmed – hiring, making sure our customers are happy, getting new products out – we just don’t have time to think about next week, forget about next year. Somehow, the future will just have to take care of itself.”
Thinking versus action provides a dilemma for many professionals. We are action oriented. When we are doing something, we feel productive. When we take the time to think, we feel unproductive. We need to do both. Without investing the time and effort to think about where we’re headed, it is likely we won’t get there.

When we become so involved in the day to day that we risk losing perspective, it is time to step back. If we stay mired in the trenches, the easiest solution is often implemented, not the best one. Planning takes time, but it leads to a focused use of the limited time available.

FLEXIBILITY- “We like to stay open to opportunities as they arise.”

Creating a strategic plan doesn’t mean that your business can’t be flexible. A plan sets the foundation so that when things start changing; there is a baseline from which to evaluate new opportunities.

Out of strategic planning come decisions like: “we will approach this target market, not that one”, “we will offer these products or services, not those”, “we will accomplish this objective before anything else.” Written plans demonstrate that careful consideration has been given to the future. It is easier to make these kinds of decisions strategically with a longer-term view. When things get stressful, it becomes difficult to see all of the options well enough to make educated decisions.

“We have a basic idea of where we are headed, why write it down?”

Unwritten goals are simply thoughts that will change as often as your opinions change. The act of writing out goals helps to clarify them and can provide an objective way of tracking them against actual results. Magic happens when you put goals on paper, they start to become real. You begin to make commitments, and are open to opportunities you may not have noticed before.

UNCERTAINTY- “Strategic planning is a business school concept developed when people thought they could anticipate and predict the future. How can we plan in a world that is highly uncertain?”

Uncertainty is a real issue in forward planning. However, putting our heads in the sand probably isn’t the best solution. Most organizations have their strategies, structure, and service offering challenged on a regular basis. To remain successful it is vital to ask the following strategic questions on a regular basis:

Where are we now? Where are we going? How are we going to get there?

Strategic planning helps a business evaluate market opportunities. To do this effectively, the process includes collecting and analyzing information about the business environment, understanding internal strengths, and developing a set of ‘key assumptions’. Optimal strategies are designed based on all of these factors. As the environment changes, so should our plans. One way to assess whether it is time to conduct a new strategic planning process is to check your list of ‘key assumptions’ on an annual basis to see if anything has changed.

I HAVE A PLAN- “I wrote a business plan when I started the business”

The act of strategic planning is often confused with a business plan. Business plans are usually drafted to obtain financing, then wind up filed away. The strategic planning process is an activity that is conducted every few years to evaluate opportunities, wrestle with environmental changes, build consensus, and to create updated goals. The output (a strategic plan) is a short working document that defines the positioning and future of the organization, with an action plan to get from here to there.

ORGANIZATION DYNAMICS- “I could never get everyone to agree on the best way to move forward. Anyway, shouldn’t it be my vision?”

An effective planning process will help to get people talking, and ensure that the business owner/CEO benefits from the ideas of his/her team. A good process is designed to build confidence, support and commitment among all involved. Even if only a limited group is included in the process, the completion of a strategic plan provides a great opportunity to communicate the company’s direction and core values to employees.

The use of an outside facilitator can greatly enhance the effectiveness of a planning process and keep the process on track. There is often a strong tendency of those participating to focus the discussions on today’s problems. An outside facilitator can help to broaden thinking and make sure that new ideas and directions are generated.

COST- “We don’t have a budget for planning.”

With all the activities that make up running a business, setting priorities in the context of a plan is important. Without a plan, the limited resources of a growing business will tend to be scattered in many directions, netting results that take longer and cost more.

Start by learning to make high quality soap. Learn what you like yourself by trying many different products. Buy lots of soap as market research. You’ll quickly see what other soap makers are doing. How does the soap work? Does it feel creamy or drying? Does it really last well or just melt away? Is it well cured? Do you like the scents? The colors? How about the packaging? Did you get any marketing materials? Learn anything there?

Now make a lot of soap. Try it out. Give it away. Try different methods for molding the soap. Try different scents. Does it take much more scent to get a good smell than the books say? Try to develop your own unique soap. Make soap that’s unlike your competition so your customers come right back to you. Consider making soap scented just with natural scents. Maybe you can use organic ingredients. Or make milk soap. Use regional themes. In some way make your soap designs unique to you.

Know how much your products cost to make. You already know about how much it will sell for since you’ve already bought soap. How much do all the ingredients in a bar of soap cost and how much would you save if you ordered in larger quantities? If you really want to make money with your soap, you must know the cost of each bar. Find out early in your planning.

Now how can you sell soap? There are dozens of ways. One of the best is to sell at craft shows or other events like fairs or farmers’ markets. Get yourself somewhere that many people are shopping and buying. That way you can sell a lot of products quickly and don’t have to drive around all over the place making presentations. Now here’s the trick. The real key to a good soap business plan is selling to your customers. The people who buy at a craft show will buy again if you sell a great product.

Keep a customer list and mail a little catalog to your customers and they will send you money in the mail or they will order from a website. Make sure every customer can contact you to reorder and get as many customer contact addresses as you can. That’s the way to build a real business.

In pre-internet days, we were all told to build an extensive business plan, develop a great product or service and then start our business and watch the dollars roll in. I know, as I grew up in these times and received my MBA shortly before the internet exploded. However, I believe the internet has turned conventional wisdom on its head.

The best way to succeed in business today is to build the web site first, then the product or service. Sound crazy? What if I told you that over 90% of purchase decisions start on the web. The yellow pages are dead – if people want to buy something they turn to the internet 90% of the time, and the other 10% of the time they’re getting advice from friends.

Why would you do build a web site first? Well the truth is that today it takes many months in most niches to build sufficient traffic for a brand new site starting from scratch. It is hard to reach the tipping point – usually around 500 subscribers, where the site starts to take off and build momentum.

Building a web site first has a lot of advantages:

* Not every web site catches on – in fact billions have almost zero traffic. Building the web site first lets you experiment with developing your market niche and find out if it will work.

* Trying to sell something to your new audience too soon can turn them off.

* You can develop your product or service while you are building your web site following.

* You’ll learn a tremendous amount about what it takes to build an online business by simply creating your site and starting to build content for it.

* Once you have an online following for your site, you can actually have your customers tell you what they would like to see from your business. Give them what they want!

* Building a web site is inexpensive – a web hosting account starts at only a few dollars per month, and some sites will even host your site for free.

So before you go off and develop and advertise your amazing new product, consider launching the your web site – and see if it will fly!