Success in business comes as a result of planning. You have to have a detailed, written plan that shows what the ultimate goal is, the reason for the goal, and each milestone that must be passed in order to reach your goal.

A business plan is written definition of, and operational plan for achieving your goal. You need a complete but success tool in order to define your basic product, income objectives and specific operating procedures. YOU HAVE TO HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN to attract investors, obtain financing and hold onto the confidence of your creditors, particularly in times of cash flow shortages--in this instance, the amount of money you have on hand compared with the expenses that must be met.

Aside from an overall directional policy for the production, sales effort and profit goals of your product--your basic "travel guide" to business success--the most important purpose your business plan will serve, will be the basis or foundation of any financial proposals you submit. Many entrepreneurs are under the mistaken impression that a business plan is the same as a financial proposal, or that a financial proposal constitutes a business plan. This is just a misunderstanding of the uses of these two separate and different business success aids.

The business plan is a long range "map" to guide your business to the goal you've set for it. The plan details the what, why, where, how and when, of your business--the success planning of your company.

Your financial proposal is a request for money based upon your business plan--your business history and objectives.

Understand the differences. They are closely related, but they are not interchangeable.

Writing and putting together a "winning" business plan takes study, research and time, so don't try to do it all in just one or two days.

The easiest way to start with a loose leaf notebook, plenty of paper, pencils, pencil sharpener, and several erasers. Once you get your mind "in gear" and begin thinking about your business plan, "10,000 thoughts and ideas per minute" will begin racing thru your mind...So, it's a good idea when you aren't actually working on your business plan, to carry a pocket notebook and jot down those business ideas as they come to you--ideas for sales promotion, recruiting distributors, and any other thoughts on how to operate and/or build your business.

Later, when you're actually working on your business plan, you can take out this "idea notebook" evaluate your ideas, rework them, refine them, and integrate them into the overall "big picture" of your business plan.

The best business plans for even the smallest businesses run 25 to 30 pages or more, so you'll need to "title" each page and arrange the different aspects of your business plan into "chapters." The format should pretty much run as follows:

• Title Page
• Statement of Purpose
• Table of Contents
• Business Descr i ption
• Market Analysis
• Competition
• Business Location
• Management
• Current Financial Records
• Explanation of Plans For Growth
• Projected Profit & Loss/Operating Figures
• Explanation of Financing for Growth
• Documentation
• Summary of Business & Outlook for The Future
• Listing of Business & personal References

This is a logical organization of the information every business plan should cover. I'll explain each of these chapters titles in greater detail, but first, let me elaborate upon the reasons for proper organization of your business plan.

Having a set of "questions to answer" about your business forces you to take an objective and critical look at your ideas. Putting it all down on paper allows you to change, erase and refine everything to function in the manner of a smoothly oiled machine. You'll be able to spot weakness and strengthen them before they develop into major problems. Overall, you'll be developing an operating manual for your business--a valuable tool which will keep your business on track, and guide you in the profitable management of your business.

Because it's your idea, and your business, it's very important that YOU do the planning. This is YOUR business plan, so YOU develop it, and put it all down on paper just the way YOU want it to read. Seek out the advice of other people; talk with, listen to, and observe, other people running similar businesses; enlist the advice of your accountant and attorney--but at the bottom line, don't ever forget it has to be YOUR BUSINESS PLAN!

Remember too, that statistics show the greatest causes of business failure to be poor management and lack of planning--without a plan by which to operate, no one can manage; and without a direction in which to aim its efforts, no business can attain any real success.

On the very first page, which is the title page, put down the name of your business-ABC ACTION--with your business address underneath. Now, skip a couple of lines, and write it all in capital letters: PRINCIPAL OWNER--followed by your name if you're the principal owner. On your finished report, you would want to center this information on the page, with the words "principal owner" off-set to the left about five spaces.

     Examples:  ABC ACTION
                1234 SW 5th Ave.
                Anywhere, USA 00000

         PRINCIPAL OWNER: Your Name

That's all you'll have on this page except the page number

Following your title page is the page for your statement purpose. This should be a simple statement of your primary business function, such as: We are a service business engaged in the business of selling business success manuals and other information by mail.

The title of the page should be in all capital letters across the top of the page, centered on your final draft--skip a few lines and write the statement of purpose. This should be direct, clear and short--never more than (2) sentences in length.

Then you should skip a few lines, and from the left hand margin of the paper, write out a sub-heading in all capital letters, such as: EXPLANATION OF PURPOSE.

From, and within this sub-heading you can briefly explain your statement of purpose, such as: Our surveys have found most entrepreneurs to be "sadly" lacking in basic information that will enable them to achieve success. This market is estimated at more than a 100 million persons, with at least half of these people actively "searching" for sources that provide the kind of information they want, and need.

With our business, advertising and publishing experience, it is our goal to capture at least half of this market of information seekers, with our publication. MONEY MAKING MAGIC! Our market research indicates we can achieve this goal and realize a profit of $1,000,000 per year within the next 5 years...

The above example is generally the way you should write your "explanation of purpose," and in subtle definition, why you need an explanation. Point to remember: Keep it short. Very few business purpose explanations justify more than a half page long.

Next comes your table of contents page. Don't really worry about this until you've got the entire plan completed and ready for final typing. It's a good idea though, to list the subject (chapter titles) as I have, and then check off each one as you complete that part of your plan.

By having a list of the points you want to cover, you'll also be able to skip around and work on each phase of your business plan as an idea or the interest in organizing that particular phase, stimulates you. In other words, you won't have to make your thinking or your planning conform to the chronological order of the "chapters" of your business plan--another reason for the loose leaf notebook.

In describing your business, it's best to begin where your statement purpose leaves off. Describe your product, the production process, who has responsibility for what, and most importantly, what makes your product or service unique--what gives it an edge in your market. You can briefly summarize your business beginnings, present position and potential for future success, as well.

Next, describe the buyers you're trying to reach--why they need and want or will buy your product--and the results of any tests or surveys you may have conducted. Once you've defined your market, go on to explain how you intend to reach that market--how you'll these prospects to your product or service and induce them to buy. You might want to break this chapter down into sections such as..publicity and promotions, advertising plans, direct
sales force, and dealer/distributor programs. Each section would then be an outline of your plans and policies.

Moving into the next chapter on competition, identify who your competitors are--their weakness and strong points--explain how you intend to capitalize on those weaknesses and match or better the strong points. Talk to as many of your "indirect" competitors as possible--those operating in different cities and states.

One of the easiest ways of gathering a lot of useful information about your competitors is by developing a series of survey questions and sending these questionnaires out to each of them. Later on, you might want to compile the answers to these questionnaires into some form of directory or report on this type of business.

It's also advisable to contact the trade associations and publications serving your proposed type of business. For information on trade associations and specific trade publications, visit your public library, and after explaining what you want ask for the librarian's help.

The chapter on management should be an elaboration on the people operating the business. Those people that actually run the business, their job, titles, duties, responsibilities and background resume's. It's important that you "paint" a strong picture of your top management people because the people coming to work for you or investing in your business, will be "investing in these people" as much as your product ideas. Individual tenacity, mature judgement under fire, and innovative problem-solving have "won over" more people than all the AAA Credit Ratings and astronomical sales figures put together.

People becoming involved with any new venture want to know that the person in charge--the guy running the business knows what he's doing, will not lose his cool when problems arise, and has what it takes to make money for all of them> After showing the "muscle" of this person, go on to outline the other key positions within your business; who the persons are you've selected to handle those jobs and the sources as well as availability of any
help you might need.

If you've been in business of any kind scale, the next chapter is a picture of your financial status--a review of your operating costs and income from the business to date. Generally, this is a listing of your profit & loss statements for the six months, plus copies of your business income tax records for each of the previous three years the business has been an entity.

Tomorrow continue the part 2...

People opt for internet advertising methods because practically half of the world's population knows HTML. If you have your own business, you have to decide on what internet advertising method works for you. Ask yourself what are you going to avail of: the expensive internet advertising methods or the cheap ones? Others will pipe in "expensive!" immediately, but they don't know cheap internet advertising method attracts great benefits as well.

Here's the lowdown and a comparative look on the cheap and expensive internet advertising methods:

The Expensive:

1. Pop-ups. Not only is this expensive, but also outright annoying that visitors close pop-up windows without even bothering to know what they're all about. This is an internet advertising method that you can do without.

Fly ads are derivatives of pop-ups which are also equally irking to the visitors.

2. 1. Pop-ups. Not only is this expensive, but also outright annoying that visitors close pop-up windows without even bothering to know what they're all about. This is an internet advertising method that you can do without.

Fly ads are derivatives of pop-ups which are also equally irking to the visitors.

2. Pod casts.

Broadcast is to TV as pod cast is to internet. It's one sophisticated internet advertising method that can somehow hamper your budget. But if you're thinking results, pod casting is worth the money.

3. Paying the search engines.

How does this one work? When someone types in a keyword related to your site, your URL is automatically included in the first page of the top results. Fixed payment for the search engine allows just that. Expensive, yes, but if we're talking about Google and Yahoo search engines here, then don't give it a second thought.


This is associated with another internet advertising method: the pay-per-click system.

The Cheap:

1. Blogging.

Go along the bandwagon and blog about your website. This is an internet advertising method that is popular as of the moment, so you never have to worry that this will never spur outcome. All you have to do is sign up for a blogging account, post and voila! You don't even need to pay!

2. Submit to not-so-big search engines.

This is cheap and dependable. If you submit your site to smaller search engines, you have bigger chances to get bigger results. Remember that the search engine giants can dwarf and overlook your site easily, so this internet advertising method might just be the right one for you.

3. Text links.

This is not just cheap...this is virtually free! Let someone text link your site and return the favor.

Cheap versus expensive, that's always the question that hounds on whenever we're trying to get something. In the field of internet advertising, just be wise enough to figure out what will suit your needs. Go for what you want as long as there are visible results.

Ever since Google came up with the master idea that is AdSense, the web has transformed in a variety of ways no one would have ever suspected. Some of these are good changes others aren't.

This is a small exploration of how a brilliant marketing scheme has taken the web by storm. It deals with the changes advertisers and publishers and even website visitors have undergone ever since AdSense has become a daily part of our on-line lives.

Even before AdSense came out a lot of people were advertising through AdWords. It ensured a lot of publicity through getting your site listed at the top in Google search queries. It took away a lot of the pain and price of SEO and the large amount of time you had to wait until you were finally on top. It made launching a website, a realistic way to instant profitability instead of a long term strategy with no immediate returns.

Through the use of AdSense, the possibility appeared of having your ads appear on just about any site on the Internet that has anything that even resembles your company is all about. And so it's for that reason that AdSense has brought a new sense of advertising to the Internet. Before PPC poorly ranked web pages had to advertise offline to get any real initial exposure.

Companies no longer have to hire expensive professionals to create extremely elaborate advertising campaigns. There are no high costs of running your ads on websites which you have to personally look for.

All you do is come up with a couple of meaningful words for your business, sign up with Google AdWords and let Google take care of the rest of the equation. Although it requires day to day management automation saves significant time for advertisers.

Of course, probably the largest change in the way the Internet works due to AdSense comes from the publishers' point of view. Whereas one would previously have to jump through many hoops to get a website to even support itself now people are making fortunes off their sites. This leads to motivation for content, and resources for web surfers.
That generally means site publishers have to worry more about what content lies on their site, and the overall way their pages look rather then be concerned with the economic specifics of maintaining a site’s profitability. Although time is invested in adsense, a large capital investment is not.

It's no surprise that the blogging phenomenon exploded when AdSense came out a few years ago. Anyone could just write a page about a subject he was passionate about and making a living out of it through AdSense.
And thirdly, one can't ignore the impact AdSense has had over the casual everyday web surfer. Whereas people used to not even notice banners altogether (which psychologically is a very interesting thing to observe) the situation is completely different for text ads.

People nowadays will take a long look at a sponsored ad. Why? Well because the whole setup brings forth a feeling of confidence about the advertiser. People don't ignore a text ad as easily as they do a graphical banner.
Another thing to note is that graphical banners have become even less profitable nowadays. It is because of this that many people are walking away from affiliate type networks to AdSense.

Of course, there are bad effects as well, with people making websites solely for the purpose of running AdSense on them and just as well, with a large phenomenon of 'click fraud', people creating artificial clicks for various reasons.

But Google does try to control such behavior, and really isn't to be blamed for such individuals' actions. All in all Google AdSense is transforming the way the Internet works and it's doing so mostly in a good way.

Now those with ideas can write them down, and make money from them. Those looking for content can find it easier, and those looking to attract a customer base can do so in a targeted way. Adsense has changed the internet through supporting the economic interests of businesses, and the utility of consumers.

A very important element in the rapid adoption of AdSense is that it has been very easy for publishers to get the ads on their site as quickly as possible.

Integrating AdSense in your website takes only a few minutes, and you can be on your way with one or more nicely integrated AdSense ads.

The first thing you need to do is navigate to http://www.google.com/adsense and either apply or log in with your existing account and password. What follows is a page presenting the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions which you must agree to in order to proceed.

You are presented with a report page which you can use to get a detailed status on how your AdSense advertising is doing. This allows you to improve your site's contents and layout to maximize your AdSense earnings.

On the top of your page you also have link to the setup section where you can generate the code that will need to be pasted on your website in order to have AdSense banners on your page.

You can use AdSense for text (the said ads), using a search box or with referrals. Your choice among these options depends on how users will navigate your site.

Finally, there is a "My Account" tab which allows you to set up details concerning your account, payment and tax information.

To add a text ad on your site, go back to the "AdSense Setup" tab and click the "AdSense for content" link. Make sure you have cookies enabled in your browser.

You can make a choice between ad units and link units. The former contain text and or images concerning a certain site for each unit, most with a detailed descr i ption, the latter only contain links to certain types.

Of course, it's a bit hard to know which type you should use so you should probably experiment with both for a while before you decide.

You can also view an example of how the unit will look to the right of your page. However, you may only use three ad units and one link unit on any given page. This is believed to be a step which Google takes for quality control.

The next step is to choose your add format and colors. You can basically select any color palette you choose with Google offering some of its own if you don't have the time or skill to create one. You can constantly view how the palette will look through the aid of an example. The one that works best in terms of appearance and revenues will vary with the look, feel and content of a website.

However, your ad formats are limited to a choice of eleven formats. There's an "Ad Formats" link which takes you to a page that lets you see all even of these in action so you can decide best which one suits your site. Sometimes the most intrusive, doesn’t work best however again, this can vary from website to website.

After you finish with customization, you can click "Continue" from the bottom of the page.

You are now presented with a section entitled "AdSense for Content". You can click anywhere in the text and that shows the Javascr i pt required to get AdSense running. This will automatically select the text in the box.

You can then copy it and paste it into your pages directly. If you use dynamic pages, you should paste this code within your template so as to ensure that it gets displayed on any page of your website. Some advertisers choose not to display Adsense on every page, and this is understandable. An example of this is a company that has adsense, may also have terms and condition which would inevitably provide legal resources which would probably be deemed inappropriate.

What is then left for you to do is get content on your page (provided you didn't have any already). Google AdSense crawlers will soon visit your site, making sure that the ads displayed are relevant to your site's content.

And you're all done. For a simple page this should indeed be a matter of a few minutes, which is precisely what makes AdSense the choice for so many. Although it is quick, its mass appeal also makes it the best. Through being the most popular, advertisers and publishers alike see Adsense and Adwords as their natural first choice.

I have just been introduced to a site that I have been hoping someone would make. A Web 2.0 site designed for Internet Marketers, this site really does have everything needed to build the perfect platform for online success.

---------------------------
Read Enough? Visit:
http://viralnetworks.com/a/13476
---------------------------

The features are awesome, not only can you network with other contacts in the same industry, which is VITAL for success, we can also build a Hyper Viral messageboard list through the addition of an awesome list builder.

The site allows you to build a downline down 5 levels and contact them via messageboard, as well as this, they also reward you with 10% of the credits earned from everyone in your downline!

Credits are used to determine how much you get in the revenue sharing pool which means, just from being an active user, ViralNetworks share their revenue with you! How good is that!

---------------------------
Read Enough? Visit:

http://viralnetworks.com/a/13476
---------------------------

The site has taken around 18 months to build from the ground up and these guys are serious about making it so much easier for you to succeed! There is no space in this email for more, but rush over to the site now:

Best Regards