What do you need to include in your business plan?

byYvonneBray

1.9K followers

3 years ago

Your online business plan is a formal document of business goals, objectives, target market and financial.

It is possibly written to cover your whole business activities, or to describe and justify your new online activity. It provides you withe direction, keeps you on track and it is a requirement if you are thinking of seeking finance.

Your business plan outlines your goals and summaries why you think your goals are obtainable, and includes what strategies you will follow to achieve them, including any resources that you may require.

Business plans will normally have many changes and adaptations but your plan in the beginning should include:

• a description of your vision
• a mission statement for your website
• goals/objectives
• action plans
• finances (calculations of start-up costs and running costs)

Other details to be included in your plan is a description of your market niche including:

• Any products or services that your blogs will be about
• your marketing activity such as social media
• productivity and performance targets in such areas as community awareness and branding

So what do you need to include in your business plan?

There are about 12 headings you need to outline in your business plan.

1. Title page

• your name
• the name of your business
• main objective of the business plan
• Excutive summary (briefly summarise your business/niche)
• Table of contents (it provides a quick overview of what is contained inside your plan. You would do this at the end)

2. Business Description

• Who you are
• How did you get to where you are now
• What type of business niche would you like to be involved in?

3. Future Outlook

• What you intend to do
• What are your goals?
  • Products or services (blog reviews or general information to help others)
  • Marketing Goals
  • Social Media Goals
  • Financials

4. Management or Ownership

• Will you be the sole manager or owner

5. Human Resources

• Will you be outsourcing your blogs, managing your website

6. Products and Services

• What product in your market niche will you be doing reviews on
• What information will you offer that might help your readers (e.g. steps to bathing your dog)
• What will set your market niche apart from others on the Internet that has already been written about.

7. The Market

• What target audience are you reaching out to?
• Where are they? who are they?
• Will they want to buy your product that you have reviewed
• Is there potential for growth on your market niche?

8. Location

• Where will you run your online business from (home, shed or other)?
• Will there be costs involved? Do a are running your business from home you might want to include a percent of costs e.g. 10%-20%. This step is optional.

9. Competition

• Who are your competitors? Some of you may say, this is not important, but I believe it is because so much is already on the internet and it's good to see what is not included in their blogs. This way you could get a different angle to a topic or you could write from your own personal perspective.
• Do a SWOT Analysis one for your business and one on your competitors
  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
  • Opportunities
  • Threats

10. Marketing your website

• You want to start making money, so how will you market your blogs
• which social media will you add links to
• Also don't forget to use a slogan (its amazing how many people may not remember the name of the website but they remember the name of the slogan. So they type in the slogan and hope they will find you. Make it catchy!

11. Resources

• Computer, mobile phone, iPad, etc

12. Financials

• When doing your income and expenses, don't forget to factor in you WA membership. The rest of the financial will be up to you.

It is a lot I know, I spend about 1/2 to 1 hour working on my business plan. Now I have a whole heap of goals to add.

I wish you all success and I hope you benefit from this blog. Stay tuned!