Planning for your membership website

Why should I plan?

You are serious about setting up your membership website, lets face it if you weren't you wouldn't be reading this.

And what's more you want to be taken seriously by your members; therefore establishing and maintaining credibility is crucial to your success.

So you need to take a professional approach to your enterprise, in how you set it up and how you operate it on a day to day basis. All of which means you need a plan. A business plan.

There is an old adage "Fail to plan, plan to fail" a simple fact overlooked by the many people who just 'have a go' at a project, falter, get fed up and then drop the idea.

Planning is not something that should scare you off and dampen your entrepreneurial spirit. Put it into context. The content you put into it, how much time you spend compiling it, the level of detail contained in the plan should all be appropriate for your business.

Even if you are setting up alone, developing a plan will encourage you to think. To think about what you are trying to achieve with your project. How you plan to put in place the business model. The to do list of all the things you need to complete in order to get things going. It's not simply a template completing exercise just for the sake of it, you do and will get something useful out of it.

A business plan consists of the following elements:

• An elevator pitch
• Mission statement
• The sales plan
• How you will deliver
• Any strategic alliances
• Resource or people plans
• Financial Details

The elevator pitch the 'one liner' to describe your business, as they say. The answer to the question 'What business are you in?'. Essentially a description of the unique benefits of your product or service, concisely, focused and to the point. It's important that you can also support your assertion with evidence or an endorsement.

Mission statement describing what your company does, how you intend to achieve your goal, mentioning the values of your business.Explaining why does your business does what it does, what's the driving force behind it.

The sales plan, what and how you intend to sell your products.

Any strategic alliances that you will draw on support and to help you achieve your sales and delivery plan.

How you will deliver what you intend to sell. The mechanism of how you deliver your product or service.

The resource or people plans needed to help your enterprise realise it goals.

Financial details and projections the start-up finance you may require, the flow of funds as you begin to get sales and have to pay bills.

Again keep things in context, your plan can be anything from a concise one pager, to 50 pages or more of complex analysis, charts and drawings.

So do what's appropriate for your business and situation.

Go plan and get your business going.