Do You Need a Business Plan at All?

I’m a big believer in research and planning. Without it, it’s impossible to make decisions that are going to give you the best return on the time or money you invest.

There’s no good reason to be a shot-in-the-dark kind of freelance writer–the type who tries every marketing tool or tactic for example, because they didn’t bother to do the market research to know what methods would have the best potential reach from day one.

Not only do business and marketing plans help you figure out where to go next, but they help you evaluate where you’ve already been. When you review your plan(s) each year to plan for the next, you’re forced to take a hard look at where you were then versus where you are now. Did you reach your original goals? Did you manage to get the most out of your budget? What worked exceptionally well, and what mistakes did you make that you can avoid next year? Your business plan helps you get a better handle on your business.

Does Your Business Plan Have to be Long-Form?

You’ve probably seen business and marketing plan templates ranging anywhere from 10 – 30 pages or more. To freelance writers who are attracted to freelancing in part due to the ease of entry, the thought of putting in that much work might make them opt to neglect it altogether.

Now I’m a fan of long-form business planning, and I do strongly recommend that you go that route, especially in your first year. But I’m also a realist. I come across freelance writers all the time who haven’t even considered a business plan, nonetheless written one.

In those cases, I fully support the idea of using abbreviated business plans. In fact, as you may remember I actually released a one page marketing plan template and a one page business plan template previously that you can download.

While it may not be true of all things, this is a case where it’s absolutely better to do something rather than nothing. Why? Because even if the plans are abbreviated in their written form, you still have to invest the time into researching your market and competition in order to complete them. In other words, they still make you think about how you’re going to be able to best manage your freelance writing career over the coming year.

So tell me. Do you keep updated business plans? Do you use a traditional format or an abbreviated one, or something in between? Do you consider them a necessesity in handling the business side of your career, or do you look at them as an unnecessary hassle? Share your thoughts!

Holiday Marketing – Our post last month mentioned that you should have started working on holiday marketing plans (you always should start on that early if you want enough visibility for it to matter closer to the holidays themselves). If you haven’t done this yet, you really need to this month.

Remember, whether or not you personally celebrate a holiday is irrelevant. If the bulk of your clients do, you should be basing marketing tactics around that holiday.  If you haven’t written a report or something to give away as a gift, get started on it this month (I’ll be working on a free report this week). If you haven’t considered bonuses, discounts, or something else for the holidays, consider it. If you haven’t made a list of gift ideas on your blog yet, do it (you need it indexed and showing up in search engines before they sneak up on you; not right before the holiday).

Evaluations

Now to the “big” task for November – evaluating this year’s progress in your freelance writing career (or that of  your sites, blogs, products, etc.).

Let’s face it: you’re probably going to be pretty busy in December. That’s not an ideal time to start looking over the past year. At the same time, evaluating where you’ve been and how you’re doing are vital to your marketing efforts. Why? Because you can’t work on next year’s marketing plan update (or creating a brand new one if you don’t have one yet – which you should) without knowing your current position.

Are you earning at a level you’re comfortable with? Are you working with the types of clients you want to work with? Are you working on the types of projects you want to work with? Are your billable hours generally filled? Have you gotten mostly positive client feedback? Do you have a professional site already? Is there something you could do to improve it? Have you diversified your income streams to protect yourself? Could you add some new products next year? Have your products not sold very well, or are they bringing in a good amount of income?

These are just a few examples of the things you need to ask yourself in evaluating the current state of  your career as a freelance writer. Next month we’ll talk about setting resolutions for the new year. In the meantime, start taking some notes on what you’re not thrilled with at the moment so you have something to base those resolutions on down the road. A great place to start would be to look at your resolutions for last year and see how many you kept, how many you neglected, and why.