Monday, March 19, 2007

8 Steps to Starting a Business: my To Do List

Mar 16, 2006: I'm posting this the following monday, but here's what I did on friday.
First of all, I dug out my to do list and gave it a read. Then I wrote down the next 2 things I need to do on the back of a cracker box, and put it beside my PC (you could also use regular paper, cracker box is what I had handy)

I've decided to focus on the Buisiness for Engineers site first. Here's what the To Do list looks like now. This is a good template to follow.

1. Define your Target Market (Done)
  • Engineers wanting to move into management

2. Research & validate the top needs of the chosen market (Done)

  • Time Managment - lots of stuff available already (project managment resources)
  • Responsibility without Authority - lots of stuff available on that (leadership by influence)
  • Lack of Business Understanding - very few good resources (this is my chosen niche)

3. Create a Web Site (In Progress)

  • Content Page (good enough to start driving traffic to, don't go too crazy here the objective is to get to market ASAP, not to get it perfect before you tell anyone about it)
  • email Gathering page (I have an email newletter subscribe button, this should become a separate opt in page at some point)

4. Create Newsletter Content (In Progress)

  • plan at least 25 articles
  • write 5 of them

5. Create/Find Free Stuff - 3 Items (perhaps this step should be later)

  • Excel templates may be a good place to start
  • Good, screened articles could also be good
  • Research professional looks - what makes something look professional?

6. Create a Budget and Deadline for Spending (Promotion & Content Generation)

  • This is to force some action in this area, not get to it when I get to it.

7. Publish your Site

  • Register a domain name (I may or may not keep it under BoundlessThinking.com)
  • Find a web hosting service

8. Start promoting your site (this one still needs some flushing out when we get here)

  • Re-read the five best way to get leads to a site (see Product Launch Tips.xls)
  • Buy Advertising
  • Go to newsgroups and talk about the issues
  • Buy an Autoresponder to keep in touch with subscribers automatically
  • Submit your newsletter content as articles on-line
  • Do press releases online

Here's my complete To Do list as it stands today (an excel spreadsheet with this list and a little more detail, comments and tidbits on resources to help with upcoming stages)

As you can see we are working on steps 3 and 4 right now. 3 is almost done, it just needs a few tweeks. 4 needs to be organized so I am writing articles that matter to this niche market, not just things that interest me. That's what I'll be working on this week.

Daryl

One last thing, here's an archive of how the site looks today so we can look back and laugh later. Cheers.

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