• Using Full Page Ad’s

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion, Traffic | Response: 0

    Full page ad’s can be used for more than just ‘adverts’ in fact, there is a wide and varied range of uses for them, below I have detailed some of the uses that I have tried in the past and from my experience, they seem to work well enough.
    Creating A ‘Hub’ Site – By interlinking FPA’s together in a range of niches and, offering your surfers a money bar linking to other FPA’s in different niches, you can actually get some good rankings in the SE’s and, if you utilize banner exchanges or counters on your FPA ‘hub’ site you can also ensure you get a fair amount of additional traffic. One thing I like to do with my FPA hub is use it as the ‘exit’ page when a surfer leaves one of my sites. This ensures that I am getting optimum traffic for my time spent a) building sites and B) building my hub.

    A lot of people I have spoken to about ‘hub’ sites simply forget about them once they have been built, personally, I do not see the point in doing this, if you build something like this why not send your exit, top list, counter, banner exchange traffic to the first page of your ‘hub’?

    Doorway Pages.

    FPA’s also make exceptional SE doorway pages, by optimizing your image names, meta tags and text on the individual FPA’s you are not only ensuring they WILL get ranked by the SE’s but, if you ‘hub’ them together as explained above you will also get some premium listings from them.

    Filter Pages.

    What I learnt to do early on is rather than send my surfers directly to the sponsors using the ‘standard’ linking codes is to send them first to an FPA with a money bar (or table ad) on it, this way, if they click the link in error and not realize that they are going to a pay site, you can give them an option, not only to use their ‘back’ button but also, to go to a different niche or, to continue into the sponsors tour. Now that you can link directly to a specific tour page on ARS sites, this method is a good way to give your surfers a ‘fresh’ tour front page.

    PPC Listings.

    An FPA is an ideal way to get sites listed in the PPC engines, not only do you show the surfers EXACTLY what is in the site they have just clicked on but, you also have the added option of being able to utilize blur consoles and exit consoles on them.

    One other thing that I will mention, is that often, you will find that FPA’s that you have made yourself, no matter how ‘amateur’ looking they are will work better than the ‘pretty’ sponsor built FPA’s.

    Hopefully, this article has given you some ideas on how you can better utilize FPA’s and not just use them in the same manner as every other adult site on the internet. If you have some good results from using FPA’s in this manner feel free to post about it on the ARSR Support forums and likewise, if you can think of any additional uses that have not been mentioned here let us know on the forums.

    Article written by Lee

  • Adding Images To Your Web Pages

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    The Basics

    Adding Images To Your Web Pages – The Basics.

    So you have just got into the online adult business but don’t know your ass from your elbow, you have the simplistic stuff relating to HTML down but, you want to find out how you can start adding banners and images to your pages here is a quick guide to help you on your way.

    What Is An Image?

    The answer, is, believe it or not simple, An image is a picture on a page of your website. There are however, many way to display images on your site from the size of it to the overall effect you want the image to have on your HTML page and from borders around the image and many other things.

    However, I don’t want to blind you with information at the moment considering you need to actually know the basics of adding images before you can start using fancy styles and the likes.

    Adding A Basic Image.

    The HTML code to add an image on any HTML based page is a straight forward one however, before you can use this HTML tag you need to know where on your page you want the image to appear.

    Now that you have decided where you want your image to display you need to use the image tag, the HTML coding to place an image on your page should be IMG. Also, you will need to tell your page where you want the image to come from or, in other words, you need to tell it the source of the image you want to use the HTML tag to do this is SRC.

    For example, lets say you have an image called porn.gif (you need to include the extension in your SRC coding) you would display this image on your page using the following code:

    <IMG SRC=”porn.gif”>

    Simple huh?

    Well, actually, maybe not, for example, what do you put if the images you are linking to is NOT in the same location as the page you want it to appear on? That’s not a problem, all you need to do is use the FULL location of the image in your IMG HTML tag like this:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif”>

    You should now be able to include images on your pages without any problems.

    Image Sizes.

    Ok we can now include an image on our pages but, what if we want to make this image fit the feel of the rest of our page / site, how do you manipulate the graphic to ‘look’ right?

    There are a number of ways images can be manipulated for example, if you want the image to be 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels high you can add the WIDTH and the HEIGHT tag to your HTML coding like this:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″>

    That will now resize your image into a square that is 100 pixels wide and high.

    Now we have the image on our page in the right size we require what else can we do with it? Read on..

    Borders + Colors.

    In addition to placing the image and resizing the image on our pages we can also add a border and, a border color to the mage to make it stand out if needed for example:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDER=”2″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

    As you can see we have now added the two tags ‘BORDER’ and ‘BORDERCOLOR’. The first ‘BORDER’ tag tells your HTML what size of border you want around your image and, this can be any size you want to make the image stand out on your page. The second ‘BORDERCOLOR’ tag tells your HTML code what color you want the border to be again, this can be any color you like to match the rest of your sites pages.

    Linking An Image.

    In addition to resizing, adding borders and colors we can also link our image to a specific URL (the most common form of this is with banner advertising) and, if you want to link your image to a URL you would use the following coding:

    <A HREF=”http://www.sponsorsurl.com”><IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” BORDER=”2″ WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

    This will create an image that is 100×100 pixels in size, with a border size of 2 pixels in the color FF0000 that is linked to http://www.sponsorsurl.com

    Also, the order of the HTML tags we use is not important however, you should try to get used to arranging them in a certain way to make your work easier if it ever comes to editing your images.

    Hopefully this has been of use to you and you can now see that adding banners and images to your sites isn’t as daunting as you first thought.

    Article written by Lee.

  • Guaranteed Marketing – Power Words

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Search Engine Optimization, Writing | Response: 0

    How many webmasters do you think actually pay attention to what they are writing so far as their sales copy go? Furthermore, if you actually think about it, how much time do you put into choosing the words in which you use on your websites? With the help of this brief article hopefully, you will start to choose the words in which you use a little more carefully, let me explain.

    Power Words – What Are They?

    Power words are a set of roughly 10 words that can invoke interest in a person, object or, in our case, a product which we would like to sell however, they are also much more than that. When used in the correct manner power words can become a webmasters greatest selling tool. However, everyone has their own unique set of power words that will appeal to them over everybody else, the good thing is, for the most part there are at least 25 words which almost everybody will look positively towards.

    Power Words – The List.

    The following list is compiled from research at Yale University consisting of the most popular power words amongst a demographic of 1000 individuals of mixed sex. The words are, Discover, Easy, Guaranteed, Health, Love, Money, New, Proven, Results, Safety, Save and, You. By using these words in a variety of ways when writing our sales text we can almost be certain that we will keep the surfers attention and enable us to put the power of our marketing to good use.

    Power Words – Uses.

    As already mentioned, the best use for the most common power words on our sites is to use them within our text links either at the start of the sentence or, the absolute end. Take a look at the following example to see what i mean.

    1) High Converting Affiliate Program.
    2) Guaranteed To Convert Your Traffic.
    3) Turn Your Traffic In To Cash – Guaranteed.

    You can see from the three examples above the the first example doesn’t really catch your attention whilst examples number 2 and 3 somehow seem to pull you into the ‘spirit’ of the site itself without even knowing what affiliate program it is.

    By using this power word marketing technique as often as possible on your text links you can not only give your site visitor information but, compel them to click on your link.

    Power Words – An Overview.

    Hopefully you have seen from this brief article the ways in which power words can improve not only your text links pulling power but also how with the right marketing combination you can also use them to increase your sales.

    Article written by Lee

  • 10 Ways To Promote Your Site

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    As we all know, getting productive traffic to your site can be a long and tedious task of course, there are ways to generate ‘optimized’ traffic at very little cost and time involvement. Below are just a few suggestions about how you can increase traffic to your
    site and, inevitably, there are hundreds of different variations of these that will work for your site, I think the key to getting a successful traffic source is dependant on how much effort you put into it and, if you work hard and play little, you will reap the benefits tenfold.

    1. Create an email discussion list. The list should be related to your web site’s subject. Place your ad on all posts and it will remind people to visit your site.

    2. Prove your site is a bargain. Add a lot of free stuff to your offer or, if you’ve sold the product for a higher price before, show them the difference or, show them how much your competitors charge.

    3. Make your web site more useful. Sell ad space, generate hot leads, answer visitor questions, offer free content, be news friendly, etc.

    4. Make the most of each visitor. Sometimes your price is to high. You should provide a variety of similar products at different price ranges.

    5. Test and redesign your banner ads till you get your desired click through rate. Once you do, join many banner exchanges and buy ad space.

    6. Use holidays as a reason to get free publicity. Write a press release or article about the current holiday. It’ll have a high chance of being published.

    7. Utilize the free content on the internet. Publish one article on a single web page and your main web site link then upload it as a doorway page.

    8. Test your new products on the bottom of your home page. You don’t want to take away hits from your best selling products until others are proven.

    9. Make commissions without joining an affiliate program. Just propose a joint venture offer to web sites that don’t have affiliate programs.

    10. Persuade other web sites to link to yours. It can improve your search engine ranking. Just offer them something of value in return.

    Article written by Lee.

  • European Surfers – Porn High On The List!

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

    Adult web sites were visited by 3.8 million home Internet users in the UK in June 2001, according to Internet monitoring company Net Value. This accounts for more than a quarter of the entire UK home Internet population.

    UK visitors to adult websites spent more than 45 minutes on these sites each in June. Adult sites make up 41.2 per cent of all the sites visited in the UK with a significant audience. Students (23.2 per cent), manual workers (15 per cent), and professionals (12.8 per cent) are the largest groups of UK visitors to adult sites.

    However Germany has the largest audience for online porn in Europe with more than 5.3 million Germans visiting an adult site in June. They also spent more time on these type of sites than any other nationality – each German visitor spent almost an hour on adult sites in June. Net Value data also showed that more than half (52.3 per cent) the websites visited in June by a significant number of German users were of an adult orientated nature.

    Spain has the greatest proportion of visitors to pornographic sites – 40 per cent of Spanish home Internet users visiting a pornography site in June 2001.

    “Pornography has become a lucrative online business, with many companies now recognizing it as a valuable additional revenue stream,” Net Value’s Alki Manias said. “And this would seem to be a stable business area – the popularity of online pornography continues unchecked.”

    Adult sites are also popular amongst the earliest adopters of the Internet. People who first got online at home before 1997 account for 18.5 per cent of visitors to adult sites, though they only make up 14.1 per cent of the whole UK online population.

    In the UK, Lastminute.com has just introduced an auction for adult toys and aids, whilst in Germany, Freenet.de and T-Online are also moving into the adult business.

    The following charts detail various demographics relating to European surfers usage of adult sites:

    Visitors To Adult Sites In Europe

    Time Spent On Adult Sites By European Surfers

    Number of adult websites visited, June 2001

    Number of adult websites visited Total number of Websites visited* % of websites which have adult content
    Germany 4,140 7,909 52.3
    Norway 3,847 7,756 49.6
    Denmark 3,675 7,661 48.0
    Italy 3,131 6,579 47.6
    Sweden 2,419 5,231 46.2
    Spain 3,069 7,019 43.7
    UK 3,879 9,411 41.2
    France 4,348 11,845 36.7

    * Sites with a significant reach

    UK visitors to adult websites by occupation, June 2001
    Occupations Of Porn Surfers In The United Kingdom

    As you can now see, we, as adult webmasters, have a considerable chunk of the online adult industry sitting in our laps and, we should concentrate on tapping into this market as more and more American companies are realizing the importance of these figures we will inevitably reach a stage where the European market will be passed across to our US counterparts.

  • Filtering Adult Traffic For More Sales

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    When webmasters build sites there seems to be the train of thought that just because they use one of the top converting sponsors site they will make sales regardless of what type of traffic they are sending.

    Unfortunately, this is often not true.

    One of the first steps that we should take as webmasters when it comes to creating a new site, whether it be a free, avs or a TGP site is to learn the art of targeting our sponsors tour with the content and, more importantly, the traffic we are going to use.

    taking it to the simplistic levels, a straight teen sponsors wont convert on a site that gets mostly mature traffic, the niches, although complementary, are so far apart its unrealistic.

    That said, lets take a look at some options we can all implement on our sites to better target and filter our traffic to ensure optimum conversions.

    One of the simplest ways to target and filter your traffic is to build yourself a hub or a surfer trap. Of course, we also have to take into consideration the type of traffic we are currently receiving to our site and, that we ‘could’ receive in the future.

    Just because we receive 10,000 hits to our teen TGP doesn’t mean that ALL of that traffic IS looking for a teen site, this is where our surfer trap or hub site can come into play.

    Even if your main focus is the teen niche, you should make sure that the first thing the surfer see’s when visiting any type of site you build is a multi-site FPA (Full Page Ad) where applicable.

    This then starts your filtering process. If they know that they can find other niches than teen on your TGP then chances are, they will go to them either because that is what their niche is or, they are curious about that niche.

    Another thing we can do as webmasters is to ensure we use the headers and footers of our pages in the proper fashion, offer our surfers a choice of the main niches, Asian, Gay, Ebony, Teen, Ect using only text links and, you will probably find that by lining these text links to your hub or surfer trap that you actually have a diverse range of traffic available to you.

    In addition, rather than sending our surfers directly to our sponsors, send them via a filter page whether this is an FPA, or a page full of text links you made yourself detailing the benefits of the sponsor you are going to send them to, again, you will let the surfer know where they are going and, give them a choice as to whether they want to continue to that site or, choose an alternative.

    Overall, webmasters who target their surfers by niche can, for the most part have some excellent sales with a variety of sponsors that otherwise they would not be able to see.

    Target, Filter, Micro-Niche, however you do it, make sure your traffic is not wasted and, more importantly, make sure your sponsor is able to offer your surfer what you are telling them is inside the site.

    Article written by Lee

  • Why Go Adult?

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Hosting | Response: 0

    When choosing a hosting company why choose an adult host over a mainstream one?

    Simple, They provide above other things, a better quality of service, affordability and, most importantly, reliability.

    Adult hosts face a variety of technical and support issues, this coupled with the points mentioned above makes them a far superior choice to standard mainstream hosting providers. This is one of the main factors why more and more mainstream internet based companies are now turning to the adult business forum to provide their hosting solutions.

    Mainstream going adult? Yes that’s right, more and more mainstream companies are turning to our industries hosting providers for the fast speeds, security and, reliable infrastructures they can offer after all, adult sites are amongst the most prolific on the internet on average gaining more daily hits to their sites than mainstream websites so, they need to be cost efficient, not only to the hosting companies but, also to their clients, the webmaster.

    Our industry strives on the use of heavy graphics, coupled with streaming media files to secure sales and longevity, this is why the adult hosting companies need to be able to provide not just a single, heavily laden server but tens of them, sometimes even hundreds all producing gigabytes of traffic on a daily basis.

    Adult hosting companies are constantly upgrading their equipment in order to improve not just their servers, connectivity but also the smaller things that are often overlooked by webmasters, hubs, routers, switches and the likes along side the not so technical aspects of running a host, The staff.

    Along with all of this technical equipment they also need to maintain a high level of technical knowledge, after all, not just anyone can install operating systems capable of running multi-million dollar industries. They need the knowledge to maintain, upgrade, repair and sell their services to the best of their capabilities.

    What does this mean to you? Well, we all want to make money and, through the use of faster servers, e-commerce solutions and the technical support your hosting provider can give you, you will be fattening your wallet on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

    Adult hosting, quite simply, is the crème de la crème of the hosting world, they offer solid, solutions whether you are starting in the adult industry or, operate a mainstream e-commerce site.

    So how do you choose a host that is right for you?

    You need to ask some basic questions of the host and, do your homework. Not only should you find out what hosting solutions they can offer you but, you need to find out what their support service is like, how affordable they are in comparison to other companies who can offer similar or the same service. Whilst on the subject of hosting support, before you sign on the dotted line, give your host a call out of office hours, if they answer, then you can almost be certain they are a good hosting provider.

    Of course, not all hosts will have 24 hour phone support, however, that said, some offer 24 hour icq support, email support and more.

    Another sure fire way to find out if a hosting company is any good is to ask on the heavily traveled webmaster message boards, after all, you are not the only webmaster out there who will have tried this company, if they are no good, someone will know about it and point you in the direction of a reputable host like http://www.webair.com.

    Hopefully, this article will have given you some insight into the world of adult hosting companies and, will assist you in making the right choice of host for your site, whatever type of website you might be hosting.

    Article Written By Lee

  • What On Earth Is CGI?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    Let’s unlock a little bit of the mystery about something called CGI. If it helps any, CGI means Common Gateway Interface.

    This is a method which is used to swap data between the server (the hardware and software that actually allows you to get to your web site) and a web client (your browser). CGI is actually a set of standards where a program or script (a series of commands) can send data back to the web server where it can be processed.

    Typically, you use standard HTML tags to get data from a person, then pass that data to a CGI routine. The CGI routine then performs some action with the data.

    Some of the more common uses of CGI include:

    Guest books – The CGI routine is responsible for accepting the data, ensuring it is valid, sending an email acknowledgement back to the writer, perhaps sending an email to the webmaster, and creating the guest book entry itself.

    Email Forms – A simple CGI forms routine just formats the data into an email and sends it back to the webmaster. More complicated routines can maintain a database, send an acknowledgement and validate data.

    Mailing List Maintenance – These routines allow visitors to subscribe and unsubscribe from a mailing list. In this case, the CGI routine maintains a database of email addresses, and the better ones send acknowledgements back to the visitor and webmaster.

    A CGI routine can be anything which understands the CGI standard. A popular CGI language is called PERL, which is simple to understand and use (well, compared to other languages). PERL is a scripting language, which means each time a PERL routine is executed the web server must examine the PERL commands to determine what to do. In contrast, a compiled language such as C++ or Visual Basic can be directly executed, which is faster and more efficient.

    Okay, in a nutshell (and greatly simplified), here’s how it works:

    1) You (the webmaster) specify a form tag which includes the name of the CGI routine.

    2) You create HTML tags which retrieves data from your visitors.

    3) Each of the input tags includes a variable name. The data which is retrieved from the visitor (or directly set if the tag includes the “hidden” qualifier) is placed in the variable name.

    4) When the visitor presses the “submit” button, the CGI routine which was specified in the form tag is executed. At this time, the CGI routine “takes control”, meaning the browser essentially is waiting for it to complete.

    5) This CGI routine can get data from variable names. It retrieves the data and does whatever action is required.

    6) When the CGI routine finishes, it returns control back to the browser.

    Some important things to remember about CGI routines:

    You can install CGI routines on your own site if your host allows it http://www.webair.com is an example of a web host which allows for CGI routines. Some web hosts do not allow you to install your own routines but do provide some pre-written ones to you. If these are not sufficient for your needs, you can find a remote hosting service to provide the necessary functions.

    Generally, if you install your own routines they must be installed in the cgi-bin directory of your site. This is a special location which allows scripts and programs to be executed.

    CGI routines work best on Apache-style servers. Windows NT and Windows 2000 does support CGI, but it tends to be slow and problematic.

    If you use a remote hosting service, you must remember that although they appear to be giving you this for free, you are actually paying a price. Usually they want to display advertisements, although some of them actually take visitors away from your site.

    When you write a CGI routine, you have the choice of a scripting language like PERL or a compiled language such as C++ or Visual Basic. Anything which can execute on the web server is acceptable.

    I hope this short introduction to CGI has cleared up some of the mystery.

    Article written by Lee

  • Cascading Billing – Using Multiple Payment Processors For More Profit

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

    ‘Cascading Billing’ has been somewhat of a buzz word of late in the online industry however, there seems to be some confusion as to what this billing process actually involves or even does other than ‘process payments’ this is what we will take a look at in this brief article.

    Cascading Billing – The Basics.

    Simply put, Cascading Billing is a method to enable your surfers to buy membership to your site or, products utilizing multiple third party credit card processors and, other payment options. The process used, as its name suggests, is that of a ‘cascading’ feature meaning that, if you have multiple processors set up on your site and a surfers credit card is declined on your primary processor, the details will then be passed onto a secondary credit card processor where, they will either be accepted or declined and, if declined, the details can then be passed onto yet another credit card processor or, some alternate payment solution.

    Cascading Billing – The Benefits.

    From the initial reaction this new payment process has received in the online community it would appear that this new solution actually does work and, work well. Many companies who are adopting the ‘Cascading Billing’ process are reporting an increase in sales, some reporting upto a 20% increase over the normal procedures they used. This increase in sales also enables affiliate programs to pass the new found benefits onto the webmasters themselves through raised payouts and better sign-up ratios.

    Cascading Billing – The Options.

    As with any type of online payment processor or, payment system, you need to evaluate what your individual needs are and, using a cascading billing program is no different. With many solutions currently available and in development stages the choices for webmasters and program owners are growing and growing.

    However, that said, first and foremost you need to choose which processors or, billing solutions you will use to begin your cascading billing. In an ideal world, you should choose two of the more reputable third party payment processors as your primary and secondary processor in addition to a tertiary payment option or, perhaps even a custom dialer solution. Generally speaking, this will give you the best way to monetize your own and, your webmasters traffic.

    Cascading Payment Solutions – Overview.

    When all is said and done, cascading billing offers webmasters and online e-business owners ample opportunity to increase their profits through minimal outlay either by renting the scripting that will allow you to utilize the cascading billing option (costs from $300 a month) or, having such a solution custom coded which, you can have done from as little as US$5000. Either way i am certain we will start to see many more of the top online companies offering this type of payment solution in the near future and, with some of the larger online companies already adopting this method, it is sure to start happening soon.

    Article written by Lee

  • Writing A Business Plan – The First Step To Success

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Forms & Contracts, Writing | Response: 0

    Regardless of what type of business you want to run be it a bakery, a funeral home or an online marketing empire the one thing that you will require is a business plan however, having never taken any business basics 101 classes what do you need to have and, what is required in your business plan?

    That is what we will touch on in this brief article from the basics to the not-so-basics by using a few simple steps you can be sure your business plan will contain all the information you need to make it up the ladder of success.

    Information Summary.

    As the name suggest this is a simple summary of what you are hoping to achieve from the name of your business, the goals, the concept and your plans. This should actually be no longer than two pages so that you can fill the needed information out clearly and concisely.

    Business Details.

    This will be the founding information of your business again you need to mention your business name, what type of business you will be running (Sole Trader, Partnership, Corporation, etc) in addition you will also need to include details of who the company owners are, whether it be yourself alone or a list of your business partners, this information will be invaluable to you at a later date you also need to include a brief history of the business whether you have been running it already for a number of days, weeks, month or, years.

    Products And Services.

    Basically, you need to write what exactly it is you will be selling. Are you going to be selling baked goods, marketing services or custom solutions. Keep this section simple, if you need to go into depth then do so at the end of your business plan by way of an appendices. Once you have listed several of the products or services you will be selling you should also list the features and benefits (Marketing points) of the products and services in addition, why do you think your business idea will succeed, what do you offer your clients that no-one else currently does? In addition you also need to have a basic pricing structure planned out, this will assist you in the future as, from your initial plans you can see what, if anything needs to be changed.

    Marketing.

    A business is more than just an idea. You need to have good pricing, affordable suppliers and a great marketing plan. This is what is also needed in your overall business plan. You should include details of your competitors products and how they compare to your own or, if applicable why your product will be a benefit to the market place should it not already be readily available. In addition the marketing section of your business plan should include a list of advantages as well as some of the pitfalls you are likely to see. You also need to include a section detailing your specific marketing strategies regarding your overall and individual products and services.

    Industry Economics.

    This area should detail some of the more specific areas of the industry you are going to be working in for example, what type of industry are you entering, how does the future for this industry look and, more importantly, how many existing companies work this industry as well as how do you successfully launch yourself into the industry. Parts of this area you may have covered in the marketing and previous section non the less, go over them again here in more detail.

    Target Market.

    We have detailed the business ideas and products and services but, what about your potential clients? What does your product offer then that they need which no other company does? What is your target client base? How will you reach your customers? All of this and more needs to be addressed in this area of your business plan.

    Competing Companies.

    What do your competitors do and, more importantly, who are they? Make a list of your potential competitors and address their weaknesses and strengths ensure that you leave no stone unturned when getting this information together often, you will realize that there are things your competition is doing that you can do much better then they.

    Don’t forget to address their marketing, what are they doing right and, more importantly to you, what are they doing wrong? How can you capitalize on this and make their errors benefit your long term business plans.

    Location, Location, Location.

    Location is everything and, this is particularly true in business for example, will you be working from an office, from your home or even your garage, do you require any special permits to operate your business? Can your customers reach you easily? All of these items and more need to be considered when writing this area of your business plan. By addressing any and all of these items you will find yourself with a much clearer picture of what is needed of you and your business.

    Stock + Supplies.

    Often overlooked in business plans the one thing you NEED to have is a list of potential suppliers and sub-contractors who can provide you with your products and services. What materials (if any) do you need? How much will these cost you? Where will you find your stock and supplies? By getting this information available now you will have a better idea once your business plan is laid out as to what you are able to offer easily and also it will enable you to lay your pricing structure out more concisely.

    Labor.

    So you have this great business idea all laid out but, who will be running this for you? Do you need additional staff or are you going it alone? Do you need to setup accountants, lawyers, insurance companies, consultants, bank accounts etc etc? All of these aspects of your business need to be laid out here.

    Capital.

    Money, as they say, makes the world go round. Your business is no different, how much financial outlay do you require to get your business off the ground? Do you need to ask for a loan from your banking facility to help you out? How much income are you planning on making within the next 6 to 12 months? How much of this income needs to be invested back into the business? All of these ‘financial’ question need to be answered in this area of your business plan only then will you begin to see the bigger picture of your business idea.

    Hopefully this article has given you some solid advice and information regarding planning for your new business and, once you have all of the above laid out you should be able to see whether you will succeed or fail in your new idea.

    Also, by planning now for the future of your business you should hopefully be able to avoid any hidden costs which can often push a company to the edge.

    Article written by Lee

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