Your business plans don’t need to be perfect but here are some common mistakes to avoid.  

Don’t procrastinate when planning. Honestly I dread writing plans because it’s no fun to sit down and plan when there seem to be so many other things to do.  Truth is the busier you are the more you need a good plan to keep you on track. Planning will help you step back a look at your issues and goals objectively.

Planning is for more then start ups. Planning is an important part of running a business. They can be operational plans, action plans, training plans, financial plans or promotion plans.  Creating a plan is like drawing a map to reach your goals. It also helps focus your efforts and makes you more productive.

Avoid writing vague plans.  Avoid making vague statements like “my business will be successful in 2 years.” Define what success is. For the best results, planning needs to be specific and measurable so you can track your progress. Write down deadlines and assign clear responsibilities to achieve those goals. It’s important to note that you don’t need to get bogged down with every minor detail either. Focus on your priorities and get started.  

Do not create a plan that is not realistic.  Don’t create a plan that has unrealistic statements, assumptions and projections.  Create a realistic picture and don’t over estimate potential or inflate numbers.  Your goals may be lofty but they need to be obtainable as well.

With all of the information available about how to create an online business it can be confusing. Before you do anything ask yourself what do you really want? Do have the time and are you willing to put in the effort it is going to take to make your business work.

Many wanna-be internet millionaires think the internet can make them rich overnight. Get rich marketing advertisments like “ I made $50,000 in one week,” just add to the epidemic. Running an online business is like running a real business. It takes time and commitment for you to be successful. 

Don’t get discouraged the Internet has change the way we do business, communicate and socialize. This change brings enormous oppourtunity with it. Just remember to treat your online business as a real business. Find an oppourtunity or niche that interest you and do your homework.

Research the web to determine the potential market for your product or service. Determine who your customers are going to be. Is the market full of businesses like yours? If so, how will your business be different? How will you promote your business? These are all questions that need to be answered before you build your website. Take the time to determine your goals and how your going to get there.

Writing a business plan will greatly increase your chances of success.  Visit Internet business planning for more information.

There have been many articles written on how to improve a site’s Alexa ranking. Although this article will no doubt repeat many of those same strategies, here you have an opportunity to see how implementing these strategies affect a new site’s ranking in detail.  But first let’s start by spending some time explaining what Alexa ranking is, why it’s important and the strategies that will be implemented.

Alexa Internet, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com which is well known for its toolbar and website rankings.  Put simply, Alexa ranks a website by the number of guests who visit a site over a three month period.  The lower the Alexa rank the more popular the site.  You might say the rankings work similar to the Nelson television rating system except these ratings are collected from users who have downloaded the Alexa toolbar.  Many webmasters question the validity of these rankings because the system is based on sampling that is not random but that’s not important for our discussion today.  

What is important is that webmasters and advertisers use a website’s Alexa rank to determine the value of a link placed on the site. In other words, advertisers use this rank as a snap shot in order to see if placing an advertisement on a site will gain them any traffic.  

To improve the Alexa rankings on www.onlineallstar.com  I researched numerous sites that offered a variety of tips to improve my Alexa ranking.  I have only included strategies from sites that have an Alexa ranking in the top 100,000.  Although there are more techniques than are listed here these strategies were common among all the sites researched.  Many of these techniques are a bit dated so it will be interesting to see how effectively they work today.

Here’s how it works.  Alexa ranking is calculated by reach and page views. What’s important is that Alexa only counts visits to your site if they have the Alexa toolbar installed.  Therefore increasing visits from people who do not have the Alexa toolbar installed will not help improve your rank. Anyone can download this toolbar for free.

Below are common strategies that I will be applying to improve this website's Alexa ranking.  Each week I will update this post and inform you in detail how these techniques have been applied and the effect on the Alexa rank.  

Download the Alexa toolbar and visit the website every day.  

Encourage site visitors to install the Alexa toolbar by explaining the benefits of the toolbar. You can download the toolbar here: http://www.alexa.com/toolbar

Place an Alexa rank widget on the website. Clicking on these may count as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor. In order to do this must first register for an account. You can do this by visiting http://www.alexa.com/register?resource=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alexa.com%2Fsiteowners

Encourage visitors to add positive reviews of your site on Alexa’s site information page. This can be accomplished by adding a link to this page and asking visitors to rate the website.

Create content that provides relevant information for webmasters. These visitors are more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed.  Promote your site content on webmaster forums and social networking sites.

These simple Alexa strategies are easy to implement and according to these authors will dramatically improve Alexa ranking. Look for my update next week as I’ll review how these strategies were implemented and how they impacted this site's rank.

The current Alexa traffic rank of www.onlineallstar.com is 7,919,426.