Educational Website Business Plan

One Week At A Time is a website business based in Lexington, Kentucky that is owned and operated by Frank Williams. The website aims to educate people on how they can help the Earth and lessen their environmental impact by accomplishing one task each week for 52 weeks. The tasks are simple and will show people how easily they can make small changes in their life to make a difference in their world. The revenue stream for this website will come from commissions on recommendations of Earth-friendly products that fit with our weekly tips. We will have affiliate relationships with retailers providing these products so we won’t be producing them or carrying inventory, just earning commission on each sale.

Our financial strategy is based on staying profitable while keeping expenses extremely low. We plan on using profits to support environmental causes we believe in, so it’s not our mission to earn as much money as humanly possible. We’re more concerned with keeping the cash flow and cash balance positive. The accompanying chart highlights our financial plans.

In order to reach our goals, we must complete the following keys of success:

• We must develop quality content in the form of our tips which engage the readers, empower them, and inspire them to share the tips with others, and so, grow our user base.
• We must execute our marketing plan well, since the focus is on not spending money, while maximizing our online exposure.
• We must keep our expenses low. We don’t plan on generating a large amount of revenue in the near-term, so we can’t let expenses get out of control.
• We must pre-sell our product recommendations in order to get users to purchase through our site, thereby garnering our commissions.

1.1 Mission

One Week At A Time is an educational website that teaches busy people how they can help the environment by accomplishing simple weekly tasks over the period of one year. We hope to help people become more environmentally conscious, help retailers sell Earth-friendly products, and use our commissions to pay our expenses and contribute profits to environmental causes.

1.2 Objectives

1. Use simple weekly tasks to teach people how they can help the environment and lessen their personal environmental impact.
2. To sign up 5,000 subscribers to our weekly environmental tips list at the end of the first year.
3. To receive 10,000 visitors per month to our website.
4. To achieve profitability within six months.
5. To use all company profits to contribute to environmental organizations and causes.

1.3 Keys to Success

• Quality Content: Write good weekly tips which are simply written, friendly, to the point, and inspire people to accomplish their weekly task.
• Marketing: Focus on link-building, search engine optimization, and word of mouth to spread the word about our website and email tips.
• Expenses: Keep other expenses low to make achieving profitability easier. There is no need to spend a lot of money in order to accomplish our goals quicker.
• Promote and pre-sell Earth-friendly products in a way that inspires our users to buy using our site’s links so we receive our commissions.