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Archive for ◊ January, 2010 ◊

Author: admin
• Thursday, January 28th, 2010

H-F-L Team: Business Plans: The Art Of The Website (Part I)

Word Count:
535

Summary:
You have chosen to operate an online business to establish your Hundred-Fold-Life. The last stage of establishing a business online is the website. Because it serves to represent the business’ image and provides total convenience for potential customers, the website is by far one of the most important parts to the business. Therefore, every aspect of its creation must be overseen with precision. Remember that your site will reflect how your business will be perceived.

Depe…

Keywords:

Article Body:
You have chosen to operate an online business to establish your Hundred-Fold-Life. The last stage of establishing a business online is the website. Because it serves to represent the business’ image and provides total convenience for potential customers, the website is by far one of the most important parts to the business. Therefore, every aspect of its creation must be overseen with precision. Remember that your site will reflect how your business will be perceived.

Depending on whether or not the business owner does the work her- or himself or hires a professional web designer to do the job, knowledge of web construction is imperative. If the latter is the case, the expenses will naturally be higher, although some instructional software might be necessary for business owners to teach themselves, so that will have some cost as well. Those preparing the website should do personal analyses to determine will need to be paid and establish a budget to cover it.

This includes, too, the basic template, which is advised to be used for the home page. This tool can be purchased and downloaded from any of various sites online at a price falling anywhere from $30.00 to over $200.00. Before buying, however, one should weight the pros and cons of employing one ore more of these implants. This alone will definitely affect expenses to some extent, depending on which template is bought and how many.

Despite the cost, the webpage template has several advantages to making one’s own. First of all, the template is professional looking in its visual quality. This will indeed inspire confidence in those who gaze upon it. There is also the consideration of preorganisational design. These templates accommodate the basic need of every single business: menus, title space, color and style, tables, and link icons for email, identity page and links space. Another innovation is the possibility of utilizing more than one template in constructing the entire site, which would illustrate diversity in the variety of style as displayed through each page having its own appearance. This would require more than one template to apply, although a single template can be modified as necessary. However, one page can bring consistency in appearance and arrangement to the site, as every page would look the same. In either case, cost will definitely come into play, and between them costs will undoubtedly vary.

For those who are building their own page, HTML and PHP knowledge, paint and photo shop, and clipart uploading will be necessary for implementing page coding. Just as much time will go into studying webpage design as it does in conceptualizing the business and getting own the Mission Statement, the Procedural Policies, even the budget itself.

It is for these and other reasons that the design, construction and price rely strongly and directly on the business owner, who it is, what that person’s knowledge and skills are, and the person’s personal preferences and funding. Once it is all determined, however, the next stage will be to laying out the entire webpage in detail to see what it will look like when completed. This will be the very first visual representation of the online business to emerge for anyone to see . . . .

(to be continued)

Author: admin
• Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Using sample business plans and their structure, along with studying as many business plan examples as you can, will provide you with the necessary framework to consider your business from every possible angle.

Starting or running your business without a business plan is akin to being a human without a skeleton!

Not only will using a sample structure highlight any areas you haven’t fully thought through, but it will also provide you with a good idea of what makes a good business plan, and what doesn’t.

The importance of your business plan as a motivational factor in running or starting your business cannot be underestimated. You will find that your commitment continues to build as you collect information, research and write each section.

Your business plan should always accompany requests for Small Business Loans , and lenders or any kind of angel investor will simply refuse to consider your business proposal without one.

Lenders and investors want to see your plan with the aim of satisfying key questions before they make their decision to grant funding or not.

Once you’ve commenced trading your small business plan will act as a steak in the ground, and help you measure where you expected to be against where you actually are. It will help you take corrective action as necessary.

Sample Business Plan Structure

All plans should include at least the elements listed below, and perhaps additional sections depending on the type of industry.

Executive Summary
Company Background
Products or Service Overview
Unique Selling Proposition and competitive advantages
The Marketplace
Operations
Leadership and management profiles including professional competencies
Professional Support
Risks and Threats assessment
Financial forecasts including key assumptions
Relevant appendices

Collecting the information for all the sections is time consuming and sometimes difficult. The business section of your local library is always a good place to start research. Ask your friendly librarian about how to look up market research reports, and how to investigate competitors.

If you are not familiar with spreadsheet software, constructing the necessary financial forecasts represents a significant hurdle. You have 2 choices:

Pay someone to put part or all of the plan together for you, or a small investment in some business planning software.

The advantage of using a professional is you will receive the benefits of their experience, combined with a professional looking plan.

The disadvantage is that it won’t be easy to make changes, and more importantly, because you will not have been as involved in its preparation, you won’t be as familiar with its contents as you should be. Make sure to learn the contents well.

One final tip though, remember it’s the quality of the information you put into it that determines what comes out.

Author: admin
• Saturday, January 16th, 2010

Business planning help is help that is structured to help your business in any way that you need it. It can help you to get your ideas worked out. It can help you to find the legal aspects of your business and take care of them. It can even help you make decisions that you are too close to making. Business planning help is a resource that will allow you to move forward without moving back first. That is something that many individuals struggle with.

So, where can you find the business planning help that you need?

? One of the best methods for getting the business planning help that you need is to contact an attorney. Yes, this may be more expensive, but when it comes to setting up and running your business, having someone with a legal edge to it may make it go much more smoothly. Even if you just get some solid advice from them, take advantage of them.

? Don’t forget your software. There are many software programs and applications available to the new business owner. They can do just about every aspect of your planning needs. They will help you get your ideas down, help you to get your ideas moving and allow you to track how well you are doing throughout. Legal, accounting as well as idea management is all included in this type of business planning help.

? Turn to those that you know and trust. There is no better teacher than experience. If you know someone that has begun their own business from the ground as you are doing, in any field, you may want to talk to them. Find out what they did and what they didn’t. Most importantly, find out what mistakes they made and learned from so that you do not go through those same problems yourself.

Business planning help is also available throughout the web a well. Get focused and get motivated to finding and implementing your business plan.

Author: admin
• Sunday, January 10th, 2010

It is very annoying when we want to call our friend, but unfortunately we lost or forget his cell phone number. What will you do if you felt the same thing? Actually, you can find someone’s cell phone number on the internet. Don’t be surprised. We can do almost everything on the internet. So, it is no weird if we can find someone’s cell phone number on the internet. There are many websites offer lookup cell phone number service on the internet. Those websites which will help you to find someone’s cell phone number.

Since there are so many websites offer lookup cell phone number service on the internet, choosing the most reliable website could be a tedious task. Don’t take it hard, there is reliable website offers lookup cell phone number service to you, you could visit the website at lookupacellphonenumber.com. As far as I know, that website gives me the best result when I lookup cell phone number on the internet. Just type the name (first name and last name) of the person whose phone number you want to know and hit enter. Then, if you have become their member, you could see the cell phone number you are looking for.

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Author: admin
• Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Ok… so you’ve finally reached that stage in the development of your home business to get started. You’ve done the research, you have a game plan and you’re ready to go except for one small detail… you need money. Whether it comes from a loan or from investors it doesn’t matter but you need a good dose of seed money to put all your hard work and planning into action. However, regardless of who hears your money pitch before they give you a dime they will want see your business plan.

Business Plan – What Is It?
A good way to think of a business plan is that’s it’s a document that provide answers to the type of questions anyone who may provide financing would like to know about your home business. You will not get outside funding without one, because the people giving you the funding will insist on one because it helps them to know that you’ve thought through what you’re proposing to do. A business plan says to them… “I’ve considered this from every angle, and here’s what I’ve come up with”.

Business Plan – What Does It Include?
What is your product or service? This is the first question every business plan should answer. You must explain in the clear, concise language what in the world you plan to produce or what service you plan to provide. You will also want to include why you’ve chosen this particular product or service.

Who are Your Customers? After you’ve explained your product or service, the next step is to identify who you plan to sell your product or service too and why. The demographics (age, sex, language, country, state or city, income, etc.) You need to clearly identify your customers in order to properly target your advertising, packaging, pricing, et.

What Makes You Different? You need to identify the “primary factors” that will make your business different than other businesses you’ll be competing with. What niche are you filling that they are not or what do you plan to do to fill a particular void in the market that you’ve identified?

What are Your Expenses? Your start-up expenses include any equipment that you need before you can get up-and-running, while your day-to-day expenses are staff costs and supplies.

Following is a Simplified Example of Business Plan
This a a simplified and shortened version of a business plan. In the real world… each one of the following sections would be 1 – 2 pages in length. That being said… in most instances it’s better to be as brief as possible. Only add information if your potential backers request it. It’s a bad idea to go into too much detail in your plan. You’re not trying to explain everything down to the nth detail, just the basics of the business and why they should give you the money you need to launch it. And always focus on profit.

Catering Plus
Nature of Business: The business will be a home-based catering company, producing luxury food for special occasions such as birthdays and weddings. We will provide a comprehensive catering service, while specializing in high end customized cakes, which have a higher profit margin than other foods.

Target Market: Our catering business will be aimed at middle-class customers who desire a top-of-the-line catering but must operate on a budget. Our initial market area will consist of Mytown and the affluent area of Theretown.

Key Factors: We will only use commerical grade ingredients purchased from wholesalers and provide top quality design and service. This will allow us to provide food that looks tastes great, while keeping costs as low as possible.

Expenses: Beause I will be using my kitchen and making the food myself, there are only two real expenses: The purchase of an industrial grade mixer and then the day-to-day cost of supplies. I’ve attached a suppliers’ letter listing prices. Our research has shown that this supplier offers the best value for start-ups.

To wrap it up, you should include a breakdown of both projected profit and loss per month (in graph form)for the first year in business. Show one-time and day-to-day expenses versus projected profit to indicate how you will pay-off your loan. Your business plan should show you making enough of a profit each month to live on ? if it doesn’t, then it may be considered unfeasible.

Study a Few Real-World Business Plans
The best way to get a real a feel for the dos and do nots of a business plans is to find real-world plans that have already been approved and study them. A good place to start is the internet. Once you’ve studied a few, you will get a better feel for how much work will be involved in putting your business plan together. Remember, until your business exists for real, the business plan is the only tool you have to sell prospective backers on how great your business is going to be.