If you decide to write the plan yourself, you’ll find numerous websites that provide free outlines and guidance. Taking on the job yourself can be intimidating, especially if you’ve never written a plan before. This document is, after all, the most important paper you’ll possess when it comes to raising money for your new business, understanding all of the intricacies involved in creating and running your company and planning for its future growth.

Ask friends who already run successful businesses if you can see their plans or if they will take a look at yours. Also check with your local Chamber of Commerce for any information they may have relating to planning a new business. When hiring a company be sure to do your research. Ask for references, examples of prior work and check out the owners’ credentials. Again, query friends and relatives to see if they have worked with a business planner who they can recommend.

Consider what a business plan is designed to do. It has numerous applications, with some of the most important being:

* It’s a personal document that clearly outlines the progression of the creation and implementation of your business.
* It defines your goals for yourself, your employees and your suppliers.
* It illustrates how you will achieve your goals.
* It serves as an anchor, which is especially useful when times get chaotic and unanticipated problems arise.
* It is a problem-solving document that you can continue to develop as concerns, challenges and changes evolve.
* It defines your market, product and clientele.
* It’s your initial financial document that will show loan providers and investors that you are on solid economic footing, making you less of a money risk.

In order to achieve the above, your business plan should provide the following information:

* Define and describe your business and your store’s image.
* Determine what you want and need in a storefront.
* Describe the day-to-day operation and any weekly or monthly benchmarks or tasks.
* Clearly define your marketplace and delineate marketing strategy.
* Determine sales potential, including a typical customer profile.
* Discuss how you will attract customers.
* Indicate pricing and customer service policies.
* Illustrate how you will advertise your business.
* Determine how you will work with wholesalers/suppliers.
* Spell out how much inventory you anticipate stocking and how quickly it will turn over.
* Plan on how invoicing, accounting, ordering, display creation and other behind the scenes jobs will be done.
* Define your budget including:
o Start-up Costs.
o Monthly Expenses.
o Anticipated sales.
o Accounting measures.
o Stock control.
o Receipts.
o Sales.
o Disbursements.
o Break-Even point also known as your ‘nut’.

Once you’ve created your plan and determined that it is sound, you’re ready to begin implementing it. It will take time to perform the necessary research, write the document and successfully present your plan. You must also be prepared to rewrite your plan due to new information, developing trends and changes in the marketplace.

Remember that a business plan is as specific and grounded as it can be in a business world that is constantly changing.

eSources.co.uk is the Internet’s largest wholesalers, dropshippers, wholesale suppliers and UK wholesale distributors directory. Browse suppliers by country: Germany wholesalers and Wholesale China.

The spider process and site architecture

Search engines index pages depending on how a site is built and the value it provides to certain audiences or visitors. Search engine spiders crawl the Web and include web pages they find relevant within their search engine index.

According to some industry watchers, search engines actually index only about 20% of most websites’ content. If that estimate is true, then:

* You want your website to be above average in terms of indexing and;

* You need internal links from those pages that the spiders are picking up to other important pages within your site.

There are a number of site building decisions that can impact your success with search engines. Let’s take a look at several important areas.

Domain name

Your domain name is your first opportunity to make a good impression and invite people to look at your site. If at all possible, your domain name should be short, should not include hyphens or numbers, should be a .com (rather than a .net or .biz) or country specific (for example, .co.uk)and should describe your business in terms of keywords. (Read our article on domain names to learn more about this subject.) By the way, since Google gives more worthiness points to domain names that have been around longer, because spammers buy domain names for short periods then abandon them, be sure to purchase your domain name for a multi-year period. It’s not terribly expensive and makes your site look like it’s here for the long run.

Home Page

Your home page is typically the landing page for most viewers. This means that your home page needs to do a lot of heavy lifting to attract your viewers to move deeper into your site. Your home page should contain links to all of the other major areas of your site. Even if you operate an ecommerce site, don’t fall into the trap of making your homepage into your store. Remember that when users get to your store, you want to convert them to buyers. You may need to use one strategy to get a high page ranking for your home page and a different strategy to create conversions.

You should have the standard links to about us, contact and site map in place on the home page and every page then expand on those links with a clear picture of your site’s offerings. For example, if you sell management software, you may want to have home page links to client case studies, products, technical specs, resources, blog and so on. Your resources link might have a drop down menu with choices such as technical articles and industry news.

Presentation

It’s important that your site presents as attractive, professional and appealing to viewers. Although spiders can’t ‘see’ your pages’ appearance, other website managers can and you’ll be less likely to attract high quality links if your site doesn’t present well. Additionally search engines are increasing storing data on your visitors’ usage of your site: the more visitors use your site, the higher your site’s perceived usefulness, the higher your rankings.

Search tails

Most people optimise their homepages for the more general keywords and keyword clusters. For example, if you sell garden plants, you will probably be using keywords and clusters such as garden, plants, gardening, greenhouse and cultivate. However, these words are so general that while they may bring traffic to your site, they’re far less likely to convert to a sale. These words are often referred to as the ‘head’ words of a search. The words that tend to create conversion are most often the ‘tail’ words, those words that narrow a search down to a much more specific product. If you optimise your home page using ‘head’ words, you can draw viewers to conversion pages by links that contain ‘tail’ words such as water plants or even more narrow, pond lilies.

Blog content

Blogs are a great way to add quality content quickly. Each blog looks like a new page to the spider. Therefore, by actively blogging, your site will be identified as having a good supply of fresh content as the spiders pass by and sample your site over time.

Bottom line

Fill your site with interesting content, make it appealing to look at and build sensible navigation paths to all of the information.

eSources is the Internet’s largest verified wholesale suppliers, dropshippers, distributors, importers and manufacturers database. Browse by country: Wholesale Australia & Autralian wholesalers, Wholesale in Italy & Italian Manufacturers, China wholesale and UK wholesale.

“You only get one chance to make a positive first impression,” says Louis Chatoff, deliverability manager for the StreamSend email marketing service,. “Being tricky in order to get your message opened will only result in the recipient’s hitting the spam button.”

Make your message targeted and send it only to people who will be interested in reading it. “Use demographic information to push relevant content to segmented groups,” recommends Chatoff.

“Professional-looking content is also key to recipient action. Nothing pushes people away like a message that resembles a public access commercial. Make sure that your brand is clearly visible and identifiable. Brand awareness should be among the goals of every email marketer.

“Also remember that your content is being sent via email. It is not a web page. And because there is no standard email client, keep your HTML code simple so that it can be properly rendered.”

But don’t get too hung up on the design of your email, warn copywriting and marketing experts Nick Usborne and Ann Handley, who believe the single biggest truth of email marketing is that content is what really counts.

“Pay the most attention to what really matters: the words in your message and the words on any web pages the email links your customers or readers to.”

Adding a few short sentences to the very top of the message – right under your banner – will let your recipient know why they are receiving your message, says Chatoff. “Ask them to add your ‘From’ address to their address book, and let them know where the functional unsubscribe link is so if they no longer want your messages they use the unsubscribe link and not the Spam button.

Before you do a mass mailing, test your message by sending it out to a small group of people within your organisation, she says. Then send it to a small group of external recipients. Use A/B split testing on different subjects and content.

Finally, analyse the results once your email has been sent.

“Analysing your delivery reports will allow you to make adjustments for your next send,” says Chatoff. “Take a look at hard bounces – messages that are only attempted once due to the bounce code. Most hard bounces will include unknown recipients and domains. Make sure these addresses are not sent to again.

“Also look through your hard bounces for ISP blocks. If you are being blocked, you will need to look closely at the bounce codes in order to take the appropriate action.” Check your open rates too. “A falling open rate is a good sign that you might be over-mailing, sending to an audience that does not want your message, or sending to an ISP that is delivering your message to the bulk folder or filtering your message before it even gets to the mail server,” explains Chatoff.

Strategies like that can explode your small business quickly, that’s why I’d suggest you go right now to http://www.freemarketingbook.org and request a copy of Jonathan Jay’s new book “Marketing Secrets of a Multi-Millionaire Entrepreneur”
Copyright SuccessTrack 2009

“Why should you create information products? Well, the margins are incredible compared with most other products or services. Information products allow you to create huge margins. What other business can you produce something for $5 (or even less) and sell it for $100 and have people begging you for more?

“If you have knowledge about a particular subject or the passion to research a topic, chances are that you can sell that knowledge and get paid handsomely for it. It virtually doesn’t matter what your field of expertise is. Someone out there will want to know more about it.

“To start, get going with an e-book. It’s the ultimate “quick and dirty” way to start selling information products. You don’t even have to write the e-book yourself. You can hire someone to do it for you. Remember, if the topic you sell the e-book about becomes a HIT, you’ll need to quickly start producing other information products to support the e-book. You’ll only want to do this if you plan on making money selling your information. Eventually, you’ll want to have a whole line of information products that include: e-books, physical books, audios, videos, seminars, workshops, bootcamps, software, teleseminars and everything else that your customers demand.”

It begins with a niche

“So here’s how you do it. Find a very specific niche. I don’t produce a product just because I like it. That’s not a good way to make money. You take a look at the market and ask yourself, “What do people want to know right now?” Then you match your product to meet that interest or need.

“I’ve created multiple niches. One of the reasons to create a tightly niched market is the ease of generating targeted traffic for low amounts of money. Once you’ve set up a product and a system, your whole role as a marketer is to drive traffic to your site.

“Don’t try and write for everyone. Find a niche and figure out what you know better than nearly everyone else. Find a way to create a line of products that are complementary to your initial product. In my case, my highest strand is coaching and consulting.

“When someone doesn’t know who you are, they are initially leery to spend big dollars with you but they won’t mind investing a little bit of money to buy your front end product. That first product might be a book or an e-book. And by the way, I am not a genius. To turn a book into an e-book, I just use a pdf version of my book. If my book is selling for $14.95, I’ll justify the e-book selling for $37 by adding lots of bonuses. That’s where you start.

“Once people get to know you and they like what you have to offer, they will trade themselves up to higher and higher point products.”

Strategies like that can explode your small business quickly, that’s why I’d suggest you go right now to http://www.freemarketingbook.org and request a copy of Jonathan Jay’s new book “Marketing Secrets of a Multi-Millionaire Entrepreneur”
Copyright SuccessTrack 2009

Now, I should tell you first tell you that there really are two different kinds of business plans. One is the kind you use to present to potential investors if you are looking for capital, or the bank if you are going after a loan. It’s clean and polished and looks pretty. That’s not the kind I’m talking about.

The other kind is a down-and-dirty, roll-up-your-sleeves, dog-eared document that you pull out every single day and review. (After a while, you’ll be so familiar with it that you will pull it out every other day, then every other week, and soon you will know it by heart, as I do). It’s what I call a “living document” because you’re always in it, always changing it, and making it useful to you. No one else will see it and you’ll use this plan to drive your business.

A business plan should be a document where, if you were to wake up with total amnesia one morning, your spouse could say to you “you are a successful apartment building investor and this is the step-by-step plan of what you’ve done”, and then you go out there and repeat the same success. So your business plan should be useful, user-friendly, and enjoyable to interact with. (Unfortunately, too many people think that their business plan needs to the be the first kind – the polished kind – so it sits on a shelf and collects dust). You can create it on your computer, print it out, and carry it with you, making notes and updating it regularly.

So, what does your plan include? Well, mine includes the three main activities I perform: Acquire, Operate, and Improve. I started by writing one page for each step with ideas and best practices and reminders to myself, all in a step-by-step format. “Acquire” is about finding multifamily apartment buildings and determining my exit strategy; “operate” is about running them, “improve” is about making them better.

As my business grew and my processes developed, I began to hone my plan. I aggressively modified each one the things I learned from every new investment. Today, my plan’s structure isn’t that different from my early days when I performed those three tasks, but you can be sure that each of those steps is tightly defined and rich in value. If I were to suddenly lose everything I had, that plan would still be worth millions to me.

Under each of the three headings I include the steps around what I do, where I do it, how long it should take, who I work with, what my intended outcomes are, and what happens if things go off the rails. It’s in a step-by-step format so that I can simply follow step one, step two, step three, etc. Of course, I rely on my instincts and bank of experience but this plan makes sure it gets done. But I’ve added a fourth heading – teach.

Today, I not only acquire, operate, and improve multifamily investments, I also teach others how to do the same. Your plan will probably start with the first three and you might find in time that it may grow to include the fourth as well. But you need to start somewhere. So start with a 3 point Acquire, operate, improve business plan and make it the most valuable pieces of paper you own.

Lance Edwards is living proof of his mantra that you don’t have to “graduate” from single family to multifamily – you can start with multifamily; using none of your own money and not dealing with tenants and toilets. For FREE information, visit http://www.ApartmentWealthMachine.com.