What would happen to your business if you were not able to tend to it tomorrow? Is there important information, key to the success of your business, that you have not communicated to the people who would inherit it or keep it running until you are able to return? If there is important information of this type then you need a contingency plan. Without a plan some of your most important assets might not be discovered, a fortune of value could be sold for peanuts, and someone important to you could waste lots of time and money reinventing your wheels or untangling a mess that you have left for them.
I recently wrote a contingency plan for my web-based business. To help you get started I’ll share the important points here…. And if you think of anything important that I forgot, please chime in via the comments so that we all can have a very complete blueprint to work from.
This document does not need to be a book. Mine was only four pages long and written in under two hours. It covered what I think are the most important topics. Here they are organized by category….
Business Profile: This is a few paragraphs that describe your business, followed by a few paragraphs describing what you believe are the key elements of its success - the things that should be held in place by the person who takes over when you are unable. How this is written and the level of detail depends upon who you expect to read this document and follow through.
Ownership History: This is a history of the primary assets of your business. For an important website it might trace the ownership from first registration to you. This type of information could be important if ownership is challenged. When I bought my main website I became the third owner and my attorney prepared a chain of title document that began with the original registrant, the second registrant and then to me. He had this document signed by each of the prior owners, each attesting that they properly and completely conveyed the property. My plan contains the name of my attorney and the location of the documents used to establish my ownership and prove payment.
Domain Registrar: Where the domain is registered and the information needed to access the control panel. Also a clear explanation of why it is important to maintain the registration of the domain and how that can be done.
Hosting: Where the domain is hosted and the information needed to access the control panel. How this is paid for and why it is essential to maintain this service. You could also include a description of the content management system used to maintain the site and how it can be accessed. Again the level of detail depends upon the experience of who will take over.
Revenue: A description of the revenue model for the site, including a brief description of all income streams. This would include your adsense account, you affiliate partnerships, shopping cart provider, merchant account service, advertiser list, suppliers of your products, your fulfillment service. Include here a brief description of how these can be balanced for maximum income but also how they can be reconfigured for low effort income.
Intellectual Property Management: An inventory of intellectual property assets and liabilities. Describe any valuable property that you have licensed to others who which has potential value for income. Also describe an obligations or limitations that you have for intellectual property (images, articles, software, etc.) that you have obtained or licensed from others.
Website Valuation: Give your best estimate of the value of this asset and how it might best be sold, leased or partnered with others for income if you are unable. You may be able to suggest someone who could sell it for you or someone who might buy it. Do your best to put a value on it or provide a name of a person who could develop an appraisal.
Run it or Sell it? Some websites produce income that requires a lot of management. A retail site requires inventory, shopping cart, pricing changes, merchant accounts, fulfillment. This type of site would require immediate management to keep the business going. On the other hand some adsense sites might be able to produce income for years and climb in the SERPs without any management at all. Think about this and write some ideas for whoever will take over.
Relationships Inventory: This would be a list of the people involved in your business. Start with your business partners, employees, important contractors and best friends who could lend a hand or advise. Don’t forget your attorney, accountant, and insurance agent. Include the names of key people who could be hired to take over some of the jobs that you currently do.
Seeing if You Hit the Mark: Once you are finished writing consider meeting with the important people who will oversee the tasks outlined in the document. Have them read the document and ask questions. Where do they need more information, what questions do they have that you forgot to answer.
Keeping it Up-to-Date: This type of document is never finished. When you are finished with this first edition you should give it to at least one trustworthy person and place another copy with your will and other important papers. Revise it when important changes happen and spend an hour reading and revising about once a year. The few hours that it takes to write and revise this one document might save hundreds of hours of frustration and an awful lot of money. This document will help you care for the business that you have worked very hard to build and the people who are most important to you.
You will feel good when it is finished and the people who this document was written for will be very thankful that you cared enough about them to help when you are not available.
Your Turn! That what was put into my plan. Perhaps you can think of other items to add or alternative ways to present them. What else could be added so that we can have a complete blueprint of what should be covered?
By: EGOL
A Contingency Plan for your Web-Based Business
Business Practices
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
excellent post egol! There's not enough information out there for online business plans and strategies. Online world is so different than brick and mortar.
Wow, EGOL. This is a critical piece of asset planning that we've overlooked. I'll certainly be making some time for this over the next few weeks. Excellent suggestion.
I'm not sure what I have to add to the piece - I think that one element might be how you envision it growing and building - almost like mapping out your dream for the property/company/resource. In the event of disability or demise, I know that I'd hate to find SEOmoz going in a direction that I wouldn't support...
Actually, we're pretty well covered there, Rand. And we have one more element tended to - insurance on key partners and employees to ensure that the plan can be carried out in a timely manner successfully.
Of course, as the company grows and time moves on, it's important to revisit the plan. Doing so at the annual meeting is probably a good idea for inc's and llc's. For sole proprietors, one might want to consider it at major junctures, such as taking on new projects or properties, or if a likely heir becomes apparent.
This is one of the best articles on a web site contingency plan. As a site owner of several dozen sites all with unique components this gives me a LOT to think about.
In fact I have a lot of work to do! Going forward with new site launches this will be a criticle component of management and ongoing updates.
We do a lot of this now, but we are missing in some key areas. Again great article!
Jack Spirko
It is an overall SEO disaster recovery plan where if an SEO was to die then his or her spouse could actually get access to their affiliate money, adsense, site, sell the domain etc.
I had a friend Jacob Wissler who was SEOHouston.com and he passed away and his business partner who really didn't know much about SEO took over his business.
I would recommend leaving your SEO company to someone in your will. No one can predict the future and anything can happen so its better to always be prepared before its too late.
Thanks for the reminder.
EGOL or others have you seen this ever come in to play, I want to see practically how this played out in a real situation? Anyone have any experience in this ?
A quarterly version of this would also make a good business evaluation doc, to check on the progress of those pet projects we all love to juggle.
Throw in some revenue/hours calculations, and you'd be able to judge the value of certain sites - ramping-up some, dropping others, and opening-up time for new ideas.
A well timed post Egol. I just started laying out some details for my wife in case something were to happen. Having one kid made me consider it years ago, but with another due in about 6 weeks it seems even more important today.
This might be a good time for some to consider establishing themsemves as an LLC or other entity which may ease any transition when you're not around.
Good pointers Egol - my girlfriend has been nagging me about this for a while now. Looks like a nice template to work with in setting everything down. :)
This has been one of the most insightful blog posts I've read anywhere regarding online business.
It got me to thinking further that there are quite a few people I consider to be friends but whom I speak to mostly through IM, having met them online; people who are not "related" to any of my other friends. In the event of death, or some other reason that keeps me away from the online world for a very long period, they would have no way of knowing what happenned to me, unless they themselves called 6 months down the road. My relatives would have no idea they existed.
Therefore, it may be wise to also prepare a full list of friends who need to be contacted incase of death or serious illness/injury.
Thanks Sherwin, those are good thoughts. I am sure that many of the people who read and comment here or on the many forums would have a similar situation. A note tucked away with your will would allow them to be contacted. If a person simply "disappears" those friends would not know if something happened that kept you away or they could wonder if you were angry about something - and nobody would want to part with that uncertainty.
Certainly a good start and I know first hand how fast one can go from apparently perfect health to weeks in an ICU. As presented, I am afraid this could turn into a good idea which doesn't do the job when needed because updates are not part of the daily routine. It will be terribly easy for it to get out of date.
I am a sole prop. building many niche content sites. That means I use multiple reseller hosting accounts and have hundreds of domains registered and hosted. Each domain has a different collection of software, databases, passwords, and content. I was horrified to discover I could no longer remember which domain was on which server and had to keep lists.
My solution has been to use backpackit.com to build a personal website where all this stuff is stored. There is a page for every domain with hosting, user names and passwords, database names and passwords, links to resources used to develp the content, todo lists, etc. There are other pages for hosting accounts, ideas, and plans. It has a nice tagging system to group things and make them easy to find.
It's a pain to keep up, but I keep a window on a second monitor open to it and force myself to keep it current. My kids know how to get into it and could quickly find what they need to take over for me.
Just another approach to getting the same job done :)
Wow! You have a real empire and that takes a lot more work than my situation. I can count my important sites on the fingers of one hand.
... how secure is that backpackit site? Could someone on the outside or the inside sniff your pages? I am so paranoid that I have my passwords secret coded on my PC.
Well, they are VERY small sites :) Communications to backpackit.com is via SSL (users choice). I suppose there is always some chance their security could fail. I suspect the chance of that is less than the chance I would let my backups get out of date and loose things. For example, if your home/office burned to the ground tonight would your offsite backup be current? :)
I felt forced into some sort of solution like this. Every hosted domain has a user name & pswd for admin functions, it has another for FTP, it has still another for each database. Every reseller account has a user name and password. I suspect most folks use the same password, or some variant of it, on all their sites. This way I can use different ones everywhere. If someone cracks one site it does them no good with the others. On balance this approach feels safer for me. Which is not to say it would be right for everyone :)
Since it's a web based solution I can reach it from anywhere, as could the kids in case of an emergency. It's the first time in a long time I really feel like others have what they would need to keep things running.