Educational Website Business Plan

Financial Plan

One Week At A Time is a business that is very financially simple. Our only expenses consist of marketing, website hosting, and one salary starting in late 2003. Our marketing expenses and salary could even be cut if necessary, since generating lots of income isn't the primary goal for this business.

Even though generating tons of cash and a huge salary isn't the goal, we do want to remain profitable and keep a positive cash flow and cash balance to keep the business running strong and keep it healthy. As long as we keep our expenses low, even minor amounts of sales should achieve that goal, as shown in the following financial plan.

8.1 Important Assumptions

The Financial Plan for One Week At A Time makes the following assumptions:

• That we will be able to generate traffic for our website through our marketing methods.
• That affiliate programs for Earth-friendly products will remain available and that those retailers will stay in business and fulfill orders correctly and on time.
• That people will remain interested in helping the environment.

8.2 Break-even Analysis

Our Break-even Analysis is quite simple. We earn revenue by receiving commissions on products we recommend in our weekly tips. This means we don't produce any products so we don't have a variable unit cost. We estimate that we'll receive around $2 per sale made since most of the companies will pay 5-15% in commission on products ranging from $5-$20.

Our fixed costs are cheap. This accounts for our website hosting, miscellaneous bills and expenses, and some search engine marketing.

8.3 Projected Profit and Loss

One Week At A Time expects to have a tremendous net profit due to our lack of expenses, cost of goods, and only having one employee. Conversely, we don't expect to generate a huge amount of sales, or really end up earning that much in net income.

We expect to reach net profit for 2003 and 2004 which we plan on contributing to various environmental causes we support.

8.4 Business Ratios

The ratios in our table should point to One Week At A Time being a simple business with a chance and level of profitability.

8.5 Projected Cash Flow

Starting with our initial investment, One Week At A Time plans on always having a positive cash balance and cash flow. Even though some companies suffer from negative cash flow on occasion, we foresee no reason that we should ever be spending more in expenses than we're bringing in from sales.

Our low overhead and initial investment keep us from needing to ever borrow cash or sell off assets to contribute to our cash balance. Our only true fixed expense is website hosting. Any marketing expenses can be trimmed so that we keep our goal of maintaining a positive cash flow and cash balance.

8.6 Projected Balance Sheet

Due to our keeping expenses low and slowly growing our site traffic and sales, the company's net worth will gradually increase over time. We aren't in a race, and have no motivation to try and rush anything and/or spend money frivolously to reach any of our goals.

Our liabilities are very slim, and our sales forecast is conservative so we are more likely to beat these projections than to fail at reaching them.