Bizmgmt4-PlanBreview - What You Need to Know FIRST to Make Money Online Internet Marketing

Can You Manage Your Business Yourself?

How Much Help do you Need Managing Your New Business?

They do say "first things first" and it's especially true with a low-cost startup home-based business. You don't really have to manage your business until you start "Making Money".

Many of us would rather just make enough profit so that we can turn over the business management work to someone else - bookkeepers, CPA's, etc. Good luck with that!

Me, I wanted to know what would be involved managing my business before I really got into it. I took a Small Business course at the local college, read a few books, including the DUMMIES version. I even read a book that was a mini-MBA course. (That's Master's in Business Administration.) Oh, don't forget about the SBA - that's the Small Business Adminstration and there are state sponsored websites and offices you can visit or call for more information. They want to help you succeed.

I feel comfortable recommending this summary of what I think you would want to know before you spend all kinds of money getting your new business "off the ground".

Either do it yourself, or pay someone to do the following:

Business Plan Management Consider writing and changing your plan as you learn more and try different things with your websites, products, or services. See Starting Your Business for more details.

Keep a Business Journal or Log of what your do, try, spend money on, new ideas, etc. This really will be invaluable. It's hard to pass this task off. You need to write the log, maintain the important information you will need later, and know what is there.

Record Keeping and Legal Responsibilities Record all money transactions that are related to your business, at least on paper and filed where you can find the information when you meet with your CPA, lawyer, or accountant. And you WILL need to meet with one of these experts unless you ARE one yourself. Don't kid yourself.

Plan to spend a few hours with the experts. Discuss with them your Business Plan and what records you need to keep. They may help you do as much of the record keeping as you like and what software to use. See my section on Accounting Software for more details.

The experts can also help you decide what legal business structure is right for your business. You might want to incorporate sometime, but start up "doing business as" a private business owner (reporting on 1040-Schedule C).

Funding Your Business is ongoing. If you qualify for separate business credit cards, it can make your record keeping easier, and keep your funds flowing until you earn some profits. Just make SURE you make your payments on-time. You need to keep your head afloat with enough profits or seek additional funding sources before you need them. Read more in Cash/Credit/Money section.

Business Improvement Process is that formal word for continual improvement and trying new things to keep your profits in the acceptable range. Things are constantly changing, and that's even more evident with Internet Businesses. You can have more than one website, product, service, and marketing strategy. Continue trying to do better. Some businesses will and should grow into bigger businesses, hire employees to help do some of the work, even obtain physical office, warehouse, and storefront property. Work with your "experts" as you grow.

Accounting and Taxes Gotta do it - keep records and visit your "experts" as needed. See Business Tools for more details.

Marketing Your Products is on-going. Create and manage a Marketing budget and keep trying ad campaigns and marketing strategies as you think of and can afford them. Good luck - this IS the tricky part!

Customer Analysis What and why do they make purchases? Keep track of what they like, how they respond to marketing campaigns, and the feedback from them. There are tracking tools to work with your Customer Lists and Marketing Campaigns on some of the Internet Marketing and eCommerce sites you will learn about.

Track the Business Information You Need Keep track of all the information you can use to improve your business, products, communication, customer service, etc. You can use spreadsheets for Customer Analysis, Supplier and Product Tracking, and anything else you think of that would be helpful for you to document and improve your business.

If you are savvy, you can organize and manage your business yourself using the information on this website, some Internet tools described here, accounting and spreadsheet software on your PC, and a few hours with a CPA in November and March to get your taxes ready.

Microsoft makes the most common Spreadsheet software, Excel, within the MS Office suite. If you ever used Lotus 123, it is similar. Other software options are available.

Read more about Business Tools for Spreadsheets, Accounting and Taxes, and other business skills and tools to learn how you can manage much of your new business yourself.

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