A business plan acts as a road map to the small business owner. It is a comprehensive document that gives information about the business. It requires information on how it will manage funds and people. It will include the promotion and marketing. And with writing a plan like this is equivalent to long form writing, many plans can have more pages than your local daily newspaper. This type of long form writing is not required when someone can get started on the internet within a few hours with limited funds. Traditionally the business plan was a key component to an entrepreneur getting the proper funding to start his venture. An entrepreneur would make a plan complete with all the analysis, and present it to an investor.
An investor would decide to fund the business if the plan made sense. With starting on-line an entrepreneur can fund his business with pocket change. But does this negate the use of a business plan? No, entrepreneurs would be wise to write out a business plan. The plan does not have to be comprehensive like in the olden days, but it should still act a road map to accomplish set goals. When starting a on-line business many fail, and the reason they fail is that they lose focus.
And without focus the business gets neglected. It is easy for you to neglect something if you feel it has no value. If you paid a franchise fee of $ 35,000 you would do everything you can to help that business to grow. Sadly, many on-line entrepreneurs will let their business fall by the wayside, because they did not invest a lot of money. Regardless without you paid 20 dollars or 20,000 dollars your company should have detailed goals for growth. Writing a short and simple business plan will keep your business on the right track to achieve the goals that were set. The way to write a plan is use the KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) method. Write 1 or 2 sentences for the mission statement. Write 1 or 2 sentences about the business model and activity. Then follow-up with a few sentences about how the business will grow. That is a simple template on how to write a business plan, and after every quarter of the business year review it. And after reviewing your business plan you can add some time sensitive goals to complete during the year.