Another idea is to negotiate or joint venture with other marketers to offer a product or service that your subscribers would be interested in for a large discount (50% off or above).

What seems to have worked best for other successful paid subscription ezines in past?

To start out as a free ezine and then switch to a paid subscription or later start a paid version of it.

For example, Wayne Yeager started out with a free version of his Trafficology newsletter (http://www.trafficology.com) last year. In which he offered over $1,300 each month in cash for best traffic generating ideas. After he built his subscription base up to over 20,000 he released Super Trafficology a paid newsletter that he includes best tips and tricks submitted. So far he has 325 subscribers paying $20 a month. 325 x $20 = $6,500 monthly. A pretty nice profit and more than he would have probably made sticking in a few ads in free version or promoting an affiliate program paying 30%.

Monique Harris makes over $20,000 a month per month with her paid newsletter. If fact she even wrote an ebook (along with Terry Dean) on subject called Paperless Newsletters (http://www.gotprofit.com).

As you can see it is possible to charge your ezine subscribers but you must go about it delicately and make sure it is right step for you to take. Will you be able to create solid enough content to attract enough paying subscribers? Would you make more money from 25,000 unpaid subscribers or 300 paying subscribers?

Management Plan Identify key players who will plan, build and maintain your online operation. Don’t forget to include personnel in charge of your back-end systems, such as customer service (check out www.workz.com/manage/cs.asp), order fulfillment, warehousing, and shipping. Determine what tasks will go to existing staff and what tasks you will outsource to consultants, so your business plan clearly states where these responsibilities will lie.

Financial Plan Decide what technical functions are necessary to your Web site and research costs of delivering those functions. You can use a turnkey solution to get your site up on Internet (such as AOL or Yahoo! Store), or you can pay for technical expertise and bring these functions in-house. (Try www.workz.com/build/vendors/host.asp.)

Once you’ve determined your technical requirements, calculate how far your existing capital will go and then decide whether to seek additional capital investment. If you’ve been thorough in developing rest of your plan, you ’ll be able to project income versus expense based on estimated site traffic and visitor-to-order ratios (the number of visitors compared to number of buyers on a site). Your investors will require this type of forecasting.

Remember old saying, "The more things change, more they stay same." E-commerce strategy combined with a traditional small-business format is winning formula for your Web store business plan.

David Johnson is the founder, president and director of workz.com. He is a lifelong entrepreneur, small-business expert, and Internet pioneer. He decided to create a trusted resource of objective how-to information to help other small businesses. Because of David's experiences, workz.com continues to provide answers and solutions to the overwhelming issues and challenges facing small businesses on the Web.