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	The Blanga Project Building a successful Web-based business isn't easy, but that's what I'm trying to do over the summer months with the Blanga Project. If you have any advice or comments I'd like to here from you.

The Blanga Project is a series of articles covering the design and construction of a new small eBusiness : Blanga.com.

In this article, I’ll develop the business plan by going through the first 2 steps of the 7-step eBusiness design process I discussed in the last article. 

The business process for Blanga.com will essentially be the production and sale of eBooks. To elaborate on this, the process will be to commission an eBook, create the eBook, market the eBook and finally sell the eBook. There will also be three secondary business processes; 

• Selling 3rd party eBooks and earning commission on the sale
• Selling advertising space on the site.
• Participating in suitable affiliate/associate programs.

Lets look at each stage in more detail.

Commission an eBook
The eBooks will have to be on popular subjects and be sufficiently attractive that they will sell, so the first stage is market research – finding a gap in the market. Having identified the book, the next stage is to find a writer. Initially the eBooks will be produced in–house (i.e. I’ll do it), but in the longer term the idea is to use other writers to produce the eBooks. Employing additional writers means that additional processes may be required, such as contact management and arranging payment. 

Create the eBook
The series of books will require some sort of common look and feel. The intention, after all, is to establish Blanga Guides as a brand with an individual style. It will be necessary to draw up a set of guidelines or create templates. A QA (Quality Assurance) process will be needed to ensure that the product is produced to an acceptable standard.

Market the eBook
Marketing can be broken down into 2 areas, off-site marketing and on-site marketing.

Off-site marketing covers bringing people to the site for the first time - advertising, press releases, and general publicity.

On-site marketing covers persuading customers to buy (i.e. the sales pitch) and also the elements of Web site design that encourage sales. 

Related to marketing is the concept of “stickiness” – encouraging visitors to stay on-site, or return to the site (hence increasing the chances of making a sale). Community building, providing free additional content, and incentive schemes can all add to stickiness. (see The Flypaper Principle).

Sell the eBook
Once a customer decides to buy, there follows the ordering and payment processing stages, then the actual delivery of the book, either electronically or otherwise. This will lead on to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) processes – maintaining customer contact, building a relationship, and ensuring customer satisfaction.

So there’s plenty to work on. I think now is the time to produce some sort of diagram to illustrate the plan so far. There are any number of ways of doing this, but I’m going to use a brainstorming tool called MindManager. It’s easy to use, low cost and produces results that (I think) are clear and easy to understand. So here’s the MindManager diagram of the business as it stands at the moment.

Blanga Mind Map (93 K)

Next time, I’ll go through the remaining steps in the design process, and by then I should be in a position to make some definite design decisions on how the business will be constructed. 

Discuss in my forum