How to Start Ecommerce Business Plan PDF Book Free Download

I've been involved in small business for the past 31 years of my life, as a business coach, manager of a Ecommerce firm, a seminar leader and as the owner of five successful businesses.

During my career as a business coach and consultant I've helped dozens of business owners start their businesses, market, expand, get out of troubles, sell their businesses and do practically every other small business activity you can think of.
You see, I have been there .... done it ... and bought the Small Business t-shirt! -- This free book contains techniques and strategies I've learned during my 31 year small business career.

Here's what you'll discover in the 'How to Start a Ecommerce Business' book:

How to determine the feasibility of your business idea - a complete fill in the blanks template system that will help you predict problems before they happen and keep you from losing your shirt on dog business ideas.

A detailed manual that will walk you step by step through all the essential phases of starting your business

A complete E-commerce Business Plan PDF template. This fill-in-the-blanks template includes every section of your business plan, including Executive Summary, Objectives, SWOT Analysis, Marketing Analysis and Strategy, Operations Plan, Financial Projections and more (a similar template is sold elsewhere for $69.95).

All this and much much more.

Success Tip: Setting Goals

Good management is the key to success and good management starts with setting goals. Set goals for yourself for the accomplishment of the many tasks necessary in starting and managing your business successfully. Be specific. Write down the goals in measurable terms of performance. Break major goals down into sub-goals, showing what you expect to achieve in the next two to three months, the next six months, the next year, and the next five years. Beside each goal and sub-goal place a specific date showing when it is to be achieved.

Plan the action you must take to attain the goals. While the effort required to reach each sub-goal should be great enough to challenge you, it should not be so great or unreasonable as to discourage you. Do not plan to reach too many goals all at one time.

Establish priorities. Plan in advance how to measure results so you can know exactly how well you are doing. This is what is meant by "measurable" goals. If you can’t keep score as you go along you are likely to lose motivation. Re-work your plan of action to allow for obstacles which may stand in your way. Try to foresee obstacles and plan ways to avert or minimize them.

Click here! to download your Ecommerce Business plan PDF book for free

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Here's a Sample 'Executive Summary' for a Ecommerce Business plan:

Introduction
COMPANY NAME develops a photo cataloging system to assist end-users in increasing efficiency through the use of Web based technology. The Company's customers are 1) people who want to upload, organize and document their personal photos and images, and 2) people who want the ease of creating a movie of their images that were uploaded to their account.
COMPANY NAME is a photography / picture capture social networking niche site for families to document growth of a child growing up, a home renovation, photo tracking for weight loss, etc. Because of the time it takes it document any event, the end user will keep coming back making it appealing for advertisers to invest advertising dollars in the site.  The technology will make it easy to create movies and slide shows for end users to display to family and friends.  Comment areas and communities will be available including a comment area under each photo.  COMPANY NAME will slightly resemble a scrapbooking type of site with a twist.  End users can embellish and personalize each photo. 
COMPANY NAME offers the expertise an end-user needs in order to create a personal photo catalogue system. The Company's ultimate service would be an automated photo image management system and hosting relationship with customers, in which the customer only needs a Web browser to log on to the COMPANY NAME site customized to their needs.
Secondary services will be focused on advertisers. COMPANY NAME will offer other companies the ability to use the site and customer database to advertise products and services to. 
The Market
COMPANY NAME's customers can be divided into two groups. The first group is familiar with the Internet and desires a progressive and inviting atmosphere where they can upload photo images, catalog them and display as a movie easily for other members, family and friends. The second group is companies providing products and services that wish to advertise them to members using this debut photo cataloging niche social network website.
Management
The founder, OWNER’S NAME, will be managing and operating the day to day activities for the Company.
Initially, everyone will be an independent contractor with the company including outsourced data storage and servers for the website.   Later in time, the founders plan to have everything in house, with employees and computer equipment.
Financial Plan
COMPANY NAME will require a $178,500 investment. Growth will be slow at first, but once the infrastructure is created through branding and positioning, growth will be explosive. COMPANY NAME should not need additional funding according to projections, because once advertising revenues are generated, a captive market of media and advertisers will generate a revenue stream that will pay for future acquisition of sales.

1.1 Objectives

The COMPANY NAME objectives will evolve in a three-phase concurrent development cycle.
Learning
Knowing the customer, the product and services offered by the company as well as knowing the competition are imperative for success. Planning, research and development are critical procedures for this cycle. Objectives for this phase are:

• Become experts on the social network website market and have a database of competitors, market analysis, and customer needs.
• Have a trial version completed within three months of capital formation.
• Establish good working relationships with web programmers and developers by meeting with them and plotting a mutual plan for success based on trust, reliability and service.
  
• Get commitments for support, services and products by May 2011 to support the launch of COMPANY NAME.

Earning
Marketing, sales, customer support, execution of action plans and continued learning will ensure COMPANY NAME a market position that will generate earnings and promote growth, both in new customers and new products and services.

• Establishing brand awareness and brand recognition that positions COMPANY NAME as the market leader for safe, simple, creative and reliable web based electronic photo catalogue system to end users of all ages.
• Many end-users are without comprehensive computer knowledge; COMPANY NAME 's easy to use Web based photo catalogue system allows customers to manage personal images and internally document management.
  
• Market metrics for evaluating market penetration success include, a market presence in the top social network markets in the country, market share, customer satisfaction ratings and click through traffic. COMPANY NAME will strive to double this metrics semi-annually until the company reaches market dominance.
  
• Begin generating positive cash flow by the end of 2011.

Returning
Balancing long-term sustainability and profitability with short-term necessities and change will the Achilles heel of many Internet companies. Therefore, COMPANY NAME believes that with a policy of returning or giving back to the community (employees, customers and shareholders) COMPANY NAME will ensure apportionment of resources without excessive waste and redundancy. Objectives for this cycle are:

• Developing a mission statement which reflects the values of the founders while providing a mandate for culture creation that will attract and retain the best and brightest talent.
  
• Develop a comprehensive holistic internal structure that is responsive to market demands and rapid change. This model is predicated on the idea of "a continuous learning organization" with the training and marketing functionality binding the entire organization.
  
• Develop value-added modules that will launch COMPANY NAME from a niche player to the premier photo catalogue social networking site on the Web by 2012. This means creating features that are action oriented, that is, coming up with solutions that allow end-users to document via imagery, easily allowing them to upload them to the web, organize them and displays them to family and friends.
• A balanced and focused approach of developing products with the customer in mind by enthusiastic and innovative employees will ensure the success of COMPANY NAME, ultimately leading to increased shareholder value.

1.2 Mission

COMPANY NAME's mission is listening to our customers' requirements in order to fulfill their individual needs for photo cataloging. In doing so the Company will strive to become the leading provider of secure and simple to use electronic photo filing systems for end-users, using Web technology.

1.3 Keys to Success

The keys to success in this business are:
Marketing:

• Establishing brand name.
• Creating barriers-to-entry by competitors through the building trust based relations between end-users and COMPANY NAME.
• Building credibility.

Simplicity:

• Create a system that is simple to use.

COMPANY NAME develops a photo cataloging system to assist end-users in increasing efficiency through the use of Web based technology. The Company's customers are 1) people who want to upload, organize and document their personal photos and images, and 2) people who want the ease of creating a movie of their images that were uploaded to their account.

2.1 Company Ownership

COMPANY NAME is a sole proprietorship company owned by OWNER’S NAME (60%) and CO-OWNER’S NAME (40%).  The Company plans to file for a limited liability corporation in the State of California shortly before product launch. 

2.2 Start-up Summary

After the trial version is completed, salaries, operating overhead and marketing expenses will kick in. COMPANY NAME anticipates this happening in the second half of 2011. Seed funding will be sought from angel investors.

Table: Start-up

Start-up
Requirements
Start-up Expenses
Legal	$4,000
Stationery/Business Cards	$500
Brochures	$2,000
Consultants	$3,000
Insurance	$6,000
Rent	$18,000
Research and Development	$95,000
Expensed Equipment	$10,000
Website Creation	$15,000
Total Start-up Expenses	$153,500
Start-up Assets
Cash Required	$25,000
Other Current Assets	$0
Long-term Assets	$0
Total Assets	$25,000
Total Requirements	$178,500

COMPANY NAME  is a photography / picture capture social networking niche site for families to document growth of a child growing up, a home renovation, photo tracking for weight loss, etc. Because of the time it takes it document any event, the end user will keep coming back making it appealing for advertisers to invest advertising dollars in the site.  The technology will make it easy to create movies and slide shows for end users to display to family and friends.  Comment areas and communities will be available including a comment area under each photo.  COMPANY NAME will slightly resemble a scrapbooking type of site with a twist.  End users can embellish and personalize each photo. 
COMPANY NAME offers the expertise an end-user needs in order to create a personal photo catalogue system. The Company's ultimate service would be an automated photo image management system and hosting relationship with customers, in which the customer only needs a Web browser to log on to the COMPANY NAME  site customized to their needs.
Secondary services will be focused on advertisers. COMPANY NAME will offer other companies the ability to use the site and customer database to advertise products and services to. 
A third goal is to not necessarily directly compete with large social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Friendster and MySpace but to partner with them as a specialized extension.  COMPANY NAME will provide the option to not only post and organize photos and images on the home site; activities can be simultaneously posted to Facebook or Twitter as well.
Description of What COMPANY NAME  Can Do
When end-users upload a photo to the site the image will also be saved as a frame for a constant ongoing movie. The end-user will have the ability to select the entire image as a frame or just select the childs face. The more ongoing images uploaded, the longer the video will be. Because of this fact, people that become members to the site will have to keep uploading their pics to keep the movie going.  Friends and families will encourage each other to continue uploading images in order to continue the movie.  No one wants to miss their child or grandchild growing up. Because of this fact, COMPANY NAME can expect a high level of return users on a weekly to daily rate.
COMPANY NAME also will be developing an app for smart phones that will enable members to add photos to the site. This will be another added tool to provide convenience for members so that they will keep returning to the site again and again.
The basic membership on the site will be free. Members will be allowed to upload and save photos as well as make the continuous movie from each pic they upload. The Paid Premium site member will be able to embellish pics utilizing the scrapbook aspect of the site as well as offering an e-mail address for members. The Premium Membership will be inexpensive at $3-$4 dollars a month, approximately.