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Building your Web business – Part 2

Inside Small Business | February 9th, 2009

Skip Shuda, Team and a Dream

In my last post, I talked about the role of introspection in starting your Web business. We ended up with a discussion of how you can begin brainstorming your business by bouncing your idea ball.

Now we’re ready to start the heavy lifting of constructing your plan. This means that you need to do your homework on your marketplace and competition, create a compelling message and draft your business model.

In this Web business building post, we’ll cover:

1. Create a 10-slide pitch deck

2. Perform market testing with Google Insights and/or Google Adwords

3. Explore other business models

A big part of being a Web entrepreneur is being able to move fast and with agility. You’ll need to get used to creating things, trying them out, ripping them down and re-building them with a new twist and angle. You need an agile alternative to the more time consuming business plan.

At this point, you can quickly organize your thinking into a 10 slide “Pitch Deck” like the one advocated by Guy Kawasaki in The Art of the Start. This pitch deck is a PowerPoint presentation that allows you to organize your latest thinking about your business. I suggest you take 2-3 hours to create your first one. Do it quickly – and know that you’ll be rebuilding most of it before you’re done.

To help you fill out that Pitch Deck, you need to start testing out your ideas with real data. If you’d rather learn by the school of hard knocks, spend thousands of dollars, and burn through months of stressful effort- then skip this step. If you want to save money, get to a profitable business faster and raise your chance for success, then you need to perform market testing.

You can start with Google Insights for free access to the most powerful, relevant database in the world by looking for keywords that might appeal to your target market. Check out this How To Use Google Insights Screencast of Google Insights. This will show you what’s hot, the best words to use in your web site copy and it might even highlight some other markets for your consideration.

But one of the most powerful ways to check out the viability of your idea is to “De-risk your Idea”. This post by Steve Barsh of First Round Capital is an excellent overview of how to market test your idea using Google Adwords.

Another set of terrific market testing ideas can be found in Tim Ferris’s Bestselling book, “The Four Hour Work Week“. Ferris covers a wide range of topics around creating an independent lifestyle fueled by online business. He outlines specific steps you can follow through Google Adwords or eBay to test out your idea.

Finally, you’ll need to recognize that there are a lot of ways to make money on the Web. Some are easier than others – and most Web-based businesses will pursue some combination of the most common models like eCommerce, subscription, Information sales and Advertising. Dr. Michael Rappa of NC State University provides a comprehensive review of Internet Business models here. We’ll delve deeper into this topic in the future. In the meantime, you need to ensure that your chosen model can stand up to the test of reasonable assumptions and solid financial modeling.

Part 1 can be read here

*As an Internet Marketing Strategist, Team and a Dream® founder Skip Shuda has worked with numerous startups since 1983, including Destiny WebSolutions, which he founded in 1994. Destiny was named the 1998 Startup Company of the Year and grew to $25 million in annualized revenues and 120 team members in 2000. Today, his company helps small and growing firms to create clarity and results through a comprehensive Internet Marketing Strategy.

Posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Business, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.