I’ve written lots about the importance of planning. I truly believe the old adage about failure to plan equaling planning for failure.
But sometimes you just want to get on with it.
So here is a quick guide to setting up a web business from scratch, which I am writing as I do it for a new project.
Web Business Purpose
My purpose is to set up a site to provide opportunities for people who are currently working from home, or want to be.
My project will support existing sites of mine or my clients, offering paid work to anyone who wants to write about all manner of topics. This exciting new venture will also help people produce and market their own websites in a friendly environment.
I have a list of types of people who I want to attract, and types of service that we will offer. This is part of a clear vision about the purpose of my web business. You will need a similar vision, and list of market areas to target, before you can continue to plan and develop your own online business.
Web Business Rewards
In this article, I’m not describing the full rewards process for my entire business, but this part is relevant to anyone considering an information based web business that will generate revenue from advertising. It is also relevant to existing businesses as a replacement for some or all of an existing AdWords, or similar, campaign.
We start with some likely target markets. I’m going to keep this very simple, and decide between work at home, or work from home. Instinct tells me that the first will be best, but let’s check the numbers.
I’m now going to extract some broad demand and cost numbers from AdWords, and feed them into an Excel spreadsheet. The process will work with most spreadsheet software, including free Google Docs and Open Office. My Freeche tool will take some of the repetitive work out of the process, but it is not yet complete enough for general use. I’m sorry that the Freeche site is down, but if you sign up for updates in the form top-right, I’ll let you know when it is back online.
I’ll be back in an hour or so to give you some numbers.
[1 Hour 15 minutes later] I’ll write about what I’ve just done in the last hour soon, but here are the numbers:
| Market | Demand (Million) | Value $1000 |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 850 | 83 |
| Work At Home | 260 | 24 |
| Work From Home | 355 | 34 |
The significant points are:
- Never trust my instincts.
- There is a significant, relevant, market that contains neither at or from in the keywords. Perhaps that is where you should start your research if you fancy a slice of $25k per month.
Web Business Objectives
I’m just going to keep this simple, and plan for Adsense revenue. Usually, you would look at other revenue streams from related products and services. You can often add these later, but for the perfect plan, you should investigate them first, so that you can structure your site to drive traffic to the most profitable sections.
Web Business Strategy
You may have read my opinions on KEI and other pointless rubbish elsewhere. I am going to keep my strategy planning simple and just focus on demand. There is an argument for planning around profitability, but I will go for traffic domination first, and focus on profitability afterwards. In either event, the process for producing the all important strategic site blueprint is similar. For profitability categorization instead of demand categorization, just add a column that factors in your expected profit and use that instead of demand.
As I explained in my previous article about Internet business strategy, you now need to put aside the Rewards plan, and start again with an analysis of phrase or exact demand.
My Business Websites Templates pages in the Strategy section will explain this process in more detail.
Web Business Production
After 8 hours work on my website template, I should be ready for the WordPress Installation. However, as I will explain in a separate article, web business templates should not be rushed, and there are some outstanding issues that need to be cleared up before I can truly say I’m ready to start the Production phase.
Web Business Reap
It is not worth thinking about reaping rewards until the site has 50 to 60 pages, and is getting traffic. Clearly, if your Objectives include Rewards in the form of inquiries or sales, then the appropriate forms should be amongst the first in your production sequence. If you are familiar with AdSense, or other advertising revenue schemes, then include the appropriate codes if you can do so quickly, but do not waste time on this until your traffic has started flowing. Everyone has different points where traffic becomes relevant to generating income.
Please do not do what some charlatans suggest, and build your site, promote it as a non-commercial site, then add revenue generating pages once you’ve got into non-commercial directories. It is wrong by any standards, and will do you harm in the long run. Any short term benefit you may get from such a scheme will be lost many times over when your reputation is tainted.
Web Business Appreciate
Do not waste time trying to run any Appreciation processes until you have sufficient returns to measure. This means something like 50 inquiries per month from a single landing page, or 50 clicks per month on an AdSense revenue page.
I know that I’ve said a “web business in hours, not months,” but the Appreciate phase is longer term. You can certainly start generating revenue in hours, and so you have a business. However, you need a few months page production and promotion before the revenue is significant enough to appreciate.
Web Business Warnings
- If it is your first project, better to take it a little slower.
- The topic I’ve used is pretty well saturated, so maybe you should think a little longer than I did about doing something different. My key phrases are OK for the basis of a blog post such as this, but a real web business takes a little more thought and ingenuity. Be shrewd.
Your Web Business In Hours
There you have it, a web business that is (almost) ready to go with just a long day’s work. Depending on the scope of the business model, it is possible to do it in a few hours. This time, especially as my project involves more than just an information web business, it will take a little longer. It will still be up and running long before it would take with some tools I have used in the past. It will also be more successful, but I’ll let you judge that when I launch it next month.
Please sign up for my free update service to stay informed about new processes and advice to help you plan and manage your web business. If this article raises any issues with you, or you simply want to share some of your own experiences, please join the discussion at General Web Business Management Questions.