I’ll be the first to admit that there are a ton of things that you can do to screw up your marketing. Each mistake can cost you a lot of money. But there is one mistake, that if you make it, can cost you thousands. You’re probably wondering what one thing can be so detrimental that it can practically ruin your business. Well, if you keep reading, you’re going to find out. It’s not what you think.

Okay, so what is that one thing that can cost you thousands of dollars, if not more? It’s this…failure to make a business plan. Now I know, you can try to wing this business. I’ve done it. I freely admit it. It took me a long time before I sat down and made a REAL business plan. But guess what? Once I finally made a business plan, my income increased by four times. I’m talking tens of thousands of dollars in lost income when I was just winging it.

But why? Why is this one thing so important? Well, the answer is very simple. Without a business plan there are two key pieces of the puzzle that you don’t have written in stone. The one is how much of a budget you’re going to allow for expenses. Without a budget, marketers just tend to spend money left and right. Then, all of a sudden, they look up and find out that they’ve spent more than they’ve actually made. That’s how you end up in the red.

On the other end we have projected income. Now, I know you’re probably thinking that you can’t possibly know what you’re going to make when you first start out. While that might be true, what happens when you don’t have income goals is that you end up getting in a rut. You make a few hundred dollars, or maybe even a few thousand dollars, and you begin to coast on that. You have no goals so you have no real desire to make a plan to increase that income. You just do the same thing…over and over and over. This leads to a stagnant income. There is no way around this.

Add to those two things that fact that without a business plan you don’t even know who your prospects are and what they want, and you end up marketing in the dark. Not knowing what buttons to push (market research) is a sure way to fail. Certainly, you’re not going to maximize your income without a solid plan.

So yeah, you can wing this Internet marketing thing. Lots of people do. But if you REALLY want to maximize your income, you’ll sit down and make yourself a business plan.

And you’ll do it TODAY.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to know what the 7 Deadly Sins of Internet Marketing are? Get my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/7deadlysins/7deadlysins.html and save your business from going down the tubes before it even has a chance.