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A Great Business Idea: Outsourced Blog Updating - Part Three

Author Cameron Martel | 12.09.2007 | Category Online Business Ideas

Part Three: Business Goals and Product Requirements

Once you’ve determined the general overview of your blog updating business and what your monthly expenses are going to be the next stage of the game is to determine what your business goals are, and hence, what your product requirements are going to need to be in order to achieve those goals. Goal setting is very important when you are starting a business, and being able to set and meet realistic and achievable goals is one of the best ways to become successful.

Setting Realistic Business Goals:

It is important to remind yourself that the goals of your business and your personal goals should be two separate things. Unless it is your goal to live to work keeping your goals separated will allow you to develop both personally and with your business.

For a blog updating service that has nearly no overhead it is not unreasonable to have one of your goals be focused on developing quick and early profitability. For example, one of your goals may be something like “to generate three new clients, valued at $300 a client, within two weeks using free promotional methods”. That gives you 14 days (10 business days) to generate three clients- not an impossible feat, and with the demand that we are expecting it should be a cakewalk.

Set out your goals so that they are progressive and are focused on a time line of “immediate”, “one month”, “three months”, “six months”, and “one year”. This will allow you to set some objectives that are both short and long term, and it will also give you a yard stick to measure the success and growth of your business by. Don’t forget to include a brief explanation about the goal to remind yourself why you set it.

An example goal list might look something like this:

Immediate goals:

• Generate two new clients, valued at $200 each, per week - These clients will form the basis of the businesses initial income.
• Generate 25 unique hits to my website every day using free promotional methods - The conversion ratio from visitor to client will be studied over the next month to determine what the average targeted conversion ratio is.

One Month Goals:

By the end of the first month, it is the business goal of INSERTBUSINESSNAME to have :

• Generated a minimum of eight new clients valued at $200 each - This results in a net revenue of $1,600 for the first month and is congruent with the immediate goal of two new clients per week.
• Attracted between 700 and 1,000 unique visitors to INSERTBUSINESSNAMEWEBSITE - This remains consistnent with the goal of 25 unique hits per day and will provide information that can be used to analyze the conversion ratio the website is experiencing.
• Begun offering three new packages at higher price points - Being able to offer clients a $300, $350, and $400 package will increase revenue and possibly increase sales through variety.

Three Month Goals:

By the end of the third month, it is the business goal of INSERTBUSINESSNAME to have:

• Begun generating three new clients per week with an average value of $300 - This will increase revenue from $1,600 at the end of month one to $6,800 at the end of month three ($3,600 in month three sales, and $3,200 combined month one and two sales.
• Begun generating 150 unique hits or more per day to the website - This will be accomplished by free promotional methods and possibly some paid PPC or ad placement marketing.
• Hired first employee come the end of month three - Increased volume will result in the need for an employee to assist in updating client blogs. The employee will be paid 80% of their daily volume, which is an estimated $80 per day.

Six Month Goals:

By the end of the six month, it is the business goal of INSERTBUSINESSNAME to have:

• Reached a total client load of 64 clients that are billed an average of $300 per month - This equates to a monthly revenue of $19,200.
• Begun acquiring one new client a week with a value of $500 a client - This will require more a larger sales focus.
• Begun acquiring five new clients per week with an average value of $300 a client - This will be the result of an increased sales initiative and positive word of mouth advertising.
• Hired six employees come the end of month six - Each employee will be required to conduct 12 updates throughout the course of their workday and will be paid $80 per day for a total monthly salary of $9,600.

One Year Goals:

At the end of the first operating year, it is the business goal of INSERTBUSINESSNAME to have:

• A total of 250 clients with an average value of $300 per month - This is substantially less than projected client acquisition as it compensates for client loss throughout the year. The value of these clients is approximately $75,000 per month.
• A total of 30 clients with an average value of $500 per month - The total value of these clients would be roughly $15,000 per month.
• Hired 15 employees come the end of one year - Each employee will be responsible for 20 updates throughout the course of their day and will be paid $120 per day, for a total monthly salary of $36,000.

Though the figures quoted in the example may not actually reflect your businesses pricing they do an excellent job of illustrating the profit potential for this kind of business. Before you start actively marketing your blog updating service, conduct a trial with a few different marketing methods and study the results. From there you can then accurately base your goals and business objectives.

Product Requirements:

A blog updating service is going to be labor intensive, so the onus will be on you in order to determine how long it takes you to do each blog update and at what price you need to set those updates at. If you estimate 20 minutes for each blog update, for a total of 3 updates per hour, you can reasonably estimate that you are capable of 24 blog updates in a day. That is 24 potential clients assuming each package that you set specifies one update per day.

The pricing for your service should be based on the amount of time that it takes for you to fulfill your obligations. If you are charging $10 per blog update and are able to do 24 in a day that’s roughly $240 per day, or $4,800 a month, in revenue that you are capable of completing. Charging $15 for each blog post adds another $2,400 to your bottom line.

The product needs to be designed from the customers convenience, however, so keep your offerings attractive in both price and execution. You can do this by addressing your target market, or by determining what your customer (bloggers) will want from your service. Running a survey among bloggers is one way to find out their expectations, or you can approach several well-known bloggers address the market’s concerns through their concerns.

A business is generally defined by three variables: price, speed of delivery, and quality. It is hard to accomplish all three, so my advice would be to focus on quality and speed of delivery, as someone who is making thousands of dollars per month from a blog is likely to pay $500 or so to have it run automatically.

In our estimation a new blog updating business will likely see success by offering two distinct packages:

• Package A - $200 a month - One blog update each business day with a minimum of 350 words. This price includes research and remote posting.
• Package B - $300 a month - One blog update each business day plus one blog update on the weekend. Each update will be a minimum of 450 words. This price includes research and posting.

Keep in mind that those prices are set without any actual product testing, though we feel that they are a good place to start.

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