newbie questions

[hally]

Hi - I have a question and would be really grateful if anyone had some answers.

A friend and I are starting an information website on all aspects of schools and education, aimed at parents, and we're hoping to build up some income through affiliate marketing. I want to apply for a (small) new business grant to help with the costs of the site (we have a professional designer doing it for us) plus a small amount of marketing (we'll be doing as much online, free marketing as possible, of course!)

But - I need to do a business plan to apply for the grant and I haven't a clue how to do any estimates of what our site traffic / income might be - or how to find out.

Our plan is to make the site as great as possible, market as widely as possible, pick our affiliate links as carefully as possible (with such a wide topic there should be lots of relevant products) and manage them as tightly as possible - and then just hope we build from there. All we stand to lose if we don't make anything much is our initial investment in the site (it won't bankrupt us) and the time that goes into writing our content (which is our passion and area of expertise anyway) - so we're just having a go - and having a great time! But - we don't think that will wash as a financial forecast for a business plan!

Does anyone have suggestions as to how we find actual data, on which we could base some proper predictions. For example, if you have X number of hits, what kind of sales could you reasonably expect - and what percentage do you get? Do you only get a percentage from sales nowadays, or are there still programmes where you get paid per visitor or per click?

Any pointers on where to get data would be much appreciated. I should say we are UK based - so does that still make this brilliant site relevant to us?

I hope so!

Thanks in advance / Hally

[GregK]

Hally,
Here is a good way to go about that. If you go to a network like CJ or even if you just contact and affiliate manager you should be able to find out a EPC, which is the average amount of money made per click, sometimes this EPC is actually earnings per 100 clicks so you have to be careful there. Then you can find out an average click rate of your site, say 5-10%, but it might be different for your industry. The final and most vague part is a traffic estimate. For this, find a few competitor sites that are similar in nature and go to compete.com. You should be able to get an idea of how many people go to their site per month and you can work from there. Finally, just multiply traffic x % click x EPC/100 and you should have an idea of your monthly revenue that is suitable for a business plan. Of course you will see in the real world, the numbers will be much different, but speaking from past business plan success, I can tell you that with numbers, they are mainly concerned that you have looked into it and have some sort of reasoning for your estimates, they make loans knowing some people will be under and some over.

You might also want to talk to HCG, he frequents these forums and is a big believer in website business plans, he might have some additional advice for you there.

[hally]

Thank you very much for your reply, Greg - it's much appreciated!
Hally