Anyone got any good links to business plan templates and/or guides to writing same?


cheers,

Have you looked at Google ;)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=writing+a+business+plan

Tons of free resources there.

I did have a look but most of the results seemed to be comercial services/spam sites, although there's a few good links, was just wondering if anyone here had come accross anything they'd recommend thats all.

Check with the Small Business Admin http://www.sba.gov/ or SCORE http://www.score.org/.

It might also be worthwhile to check out software that helps you write a business plan, such as PlanWrite.

A business plan is about you justifying that what you intend to do is viable, that you will make money and not go bust. If you can honestly do that on an envelope then that's a good enough buisiness plan.

For webhosting, you'll have to spend a lot more time on the competition and margins, both in getting and keeping customers compared to how much you'll make from them.

for a template try this:

1. Executive Summary (your elevator pitch, no more than 3 paragraphs)
2. Investor Relations (What you want from other people)
3. Description of Business (about 1 page)
4. Sustainable Competitve Advantage (The only thing anyone will read other than the executive summary)
5. Description of Competition (a full page is about right)
6. A list of competitors with a the strengths and weaknesses of each in about a paragraph per.
7. A timeline for what you want to do and when
8. SWOT chart (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
9. Financials (make up some numbers and use them to make excel graphs)

Hi!
Microsoft has a few example business plans (no..you really don't need word)
to view and look at. They are here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT062100751033.aspx

I noticed some new stuff...some templates from bearingpoint. They used to have a business plan there written by SCORE as well..you'll just have to look around.

Most of these can be viewed and printed fine from Wordpad. Even so...if you don't have Word..you can download their viewer if Wordpad is not up to the task.

There are many useful templates for financial planning as well...again...you can download a excel viewer if necessary. Well...as for Powerpoint...ummm..no comment. ;)

Sadly..they have a free viewer for that too.

Bryon