Internet business plan

Stage 1: Collecting information

• Identify the product or service your business will produce and what special features it will have.
• Assess the market for it and its competition.
• Record factors from the general economic climate which will have an impact on the business and how you will operate it.
• Note any personal factors and whether you have any limitations on the effort you will devote to the business.

Stage 2: SWOT Analysis

Internet business plan usually includes some sort of brainstorming exercise. Begin by simply listing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of the business, There is no magic in the SWOT or the analysis - it simply enables you to be objective about your business, and gives you an organized way of thinking about the business. The purpose of the SWOT is to make you think how you can use the strengths of the business to take full advantage of its opportunities and to target any threats, and to know the weaknesses so you can protect or develop them.

Refer to the analysis you did in stage 2, and identify any specific strategies foe operating the business. For example, set out your sales and marketing strategy, show how your finances will be used to run the business and indicate how these will contribute to profitability.

Stages 4: Put it in writing

Bring all the earlier stages of the plan together into one document - using a language and style you are comfortable with. Truthfully and logically write out how you propose to operate your business - it should accurately reflect your efforts to plan for the success of your business.
Your business plan could have these components:

• A cover page
• A list of contents
• An executive summary which condenses in a few short paragraphs, the main points, the profitability and the risk
• A statement about your business objective, some background about you and the business, and the structure of the business - some business plans may use this opportunity to give the mission statement
• A list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and strengths (SWOT) and some observations about them
• The operational plan (strategies and implementation)
• The financial plan (strategies and implementation)
• Any financial projections.

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One of the software that we recommended is:

Business Plan Pro 2004 (with 450+ Internet business plan) It has a very useful feature called EasyPlan Wizard® which is like a virtual tutor... answering simple questions and the EasyPlan Wizard selects the outline, reports, charts, and tables your plan needs based on your responses.

All the features and benefits of Business Plan Pro are too numerous to go through here, but you can visit PaloAlto Software to find out more.

I have downloaded and used some Internet business plans from PaloAlto for my own business plan... thank you for those people who contributed those plans.