Getting Started

Finding the right online websites that provide relevant and accurate information for making sound business decisions can be an overwhelming challenge. From the following resources, you will find many useful websites that are a good place to start.

If you are located outside the four counties within the Navarro College SBDC service area (Ellis, Freestone, Limestone, and Navarro), visit the North Texas SBDC Network, which covers 49 counties in the North Texas region. For other regions in the State of Texas, visit the Texas SBDC locater. To find a Small Business Development Center near you anywhere in the United States and its territories, visit America's Small Business Development Center Network. The mission of the SBDC network is to help new entrepreneurs realize their dream of business ownership and assist existing businesses to remain competitive in the complex marketplace of an ever-changing global economy. Hosted by leading universities, colleges and state economic development agencies, and funded in part through a partnership with the U.S. Small Business Administration, approximately 1,000 service centers are available to provide no-cost consulting and low-cost training.

TUTORIALS/HOW-TO GUIDES

The Virtual Advisor Interactive available through our North Texas SBDC Network provides free online training modules that can help you develop your business plan, manage your finances, and market your business.

The Four Steps to Starting a Business serves as a resource for new businesses in Texas. The four steps cover your legal structure, tax responsibilities, licenses and permits, and employer requirements. The first step in starting a business is to determine the basic legal structure of the business, and to properly record the business name. The second step for starting a business is to determine the federal, state, and local tax obligations. For the third step, please visit the Texas Online "Licenses, Permits and Registrations Database". The fourth step is determining the federal and state employer requirements.

Business.gov guides you through the maze of government rules and regulations and provides access to services and resources to help you start, grow, and succeed in business. From the menu on the right, search categories that include topics related to starting & expanding a business, registering, licenses & permits, finance & taxes, and either general or industry specific compliance with laws.

Designed for any business, BizToolkit provides access to free and premium business tools and resources to help your business grow and succeed.  

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BUSINESS PLANS

While there is actually more than just one type of business plan, most entrepreneurs start out with a general outline that is organized into key sections. The following websites cover the key components (sections) of a business plan.

SBA: Small Business Planner provides an overview of the essential elements of a business plan.

BizPlanIt: Virtual Business Plan addresses the basic ideas, concepts, and common mistakes to avoid for each section of a business plan and provides advice, articles, tips and links. Click on each link under The Virtual BizPlan in the left menu. Each of these links covers a component of the business plan.

Business Owner’s Toolkit: Planning Your Business will take you through the steps in preparing, writing, and using a business plan. Follow each link within the article in order. Each new webpage will offer more links that further explain each topic.

Once you understand the components, there are several websites that provide sample business plans that you can review. Remember that your plan will be unique and, therefore, not identical to any of these examples, so use these plans only as guides. The Business Plans Handbook provides 11 volumes of business plans. You can search the entire collection or a single volume by using the keyword search option. Bplans.com includes over 500 free sample plans arranged into 28 categories. For sample marketing plans, visit Mplans.com.

To develop your business plan, it is best to use a guide to step you through the process, such as a template or business planning software. Two templates that may help you in developing your business plan are found in the BizToolkit. First, select the Free Access option, and you will be logged in automatically. Next, choose the Beginning category. From the list provided, select Create a business plan where you will find the FastTrac Business Plan and FastTrac Financial Plan templates. Both of these templates are used in FastTrac, the nation's premier entrepreneurship education program. In addition, SCORE provides free, downloadable templates for business planning, financial projections and startup expenses. Another option for financial projections is found in the Missouri Business Resource Library. The Financial Projection Spreadsheets and Startup and Annual Expense Worksheets were developed by Missouri SBTDC counselors to help you create realistic projections.

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FINANCIAL ANALYSIS

A positive bank balance is critical to keep your doors open, but it doesn’t tell you much about the profitability of your business. Every company has its strengths and weaknesses. A thorough understanding of your financial statements and ratio analysis is critical for monitoring the health of your business and both favorable and unfavorable trends. The Business Owners Toolkit provides a review of the income statement, balance sheet, and position statement (cash flow statement) along with several other useful indicators including the different types of ratios. Through benchmarks and ratio analysis, you can compare the financial performance of companies in your industry. For an overview and description of the most common ratios used in analyzing your financial performance, visit Missouri’s Financial Ratios webpage. Next, check out the interactive Financial Ratios calculator found within the Business Calculators section of the CCH Financial Planning Toolkit. This tool allows you to enter your projected or actual numbers and then view a report that analyzes the results. Another useful website resource is BizStats.com, which allows you to instantly access useful financial ratios and business statistics based on an industry and entity type.

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INDUSTRY RESOURCES

Identifying the correct SIC and NAICS codes is critical to finding information on industries, customers and competitors. For useful insights on how to use these codes, read this short article, Cracking the Code.

Standard Industrial Classification Search This site allows the user to search the 1987 version SIC manual by keyword, to access descriptive information for a specified 4-digit SIC, or to search the manual. To find an SIC code, enter a keyword in the search box related to a specific business or industry. It is often more productive to use a single keyword and singular rather than plural keywords (gift rather than gifts). Once you find the four digit SIC code, click on the two digit category to identify related industries that may be potential competitors or partners.

The most recent update for the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is NAICS 2007. Although NAICS was developed to replace the U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system, both are still used by many government and data information services. Whereas SIC codes are a 4-digit system, NAICS expands to 6-digits. Use the same keyword search strategy as suggested when searching SIC codes. Once you know your industry codes, the next step is to find websites that allow you to search by these codes or related keywords to find industry and company profiles.

Hoover’s provides detailed information on public and private companies. The companies in Hoover’s are large, but you will learn a lot about the types of businesses that operate in a specific industry. To find an overview of an industry in Hoovers, click on the Industries tab at the top of the page. If you select Industry Overviews you can browse through and select an industry from the list within First Research Industry Profiles. You can also search by keyword and see if there are public companies that operate within a specific industry.

With the name of a public company, its ticker symbol or SIC code, you can now use EDGAR Company Search to find SEC documents filed by public companies. Enter a company name, ticker symbol or SIC code in the appropriate search box. If you choose the SIC code option, click on the CIK number to the left of the appropriate company on the results page. You will then find the address and SEC filings for the company. Once you find a company, narrow down the type of filing you want to review by using the Form Type or date option. The 10-K usually provides the most information for analyzing a company’s industry, current trends, marketing strategy, competitors, customers, products and/or services, subsidiaries, financial statements, growth strategies, distribution channels, suppliers and more.

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COMPANY INFORMATION

Depending on the industry, you may have many, few or no public companies that are direct competitors. However, you may find public companies that are indirect competitors. They may compete in several related industries that are complementary to their primary operation and create opportunities for additional revenue.

If you do not find any public companies competing in your industry, your competitors are private companies. Information is usually available on private businesses, but not in one convenient location. There are several resources that provide profiles of both public and private companies. While Hoover’s provides information on larger pubic and private companies, several other websites provide free company profiles for small businesses.
Manta offers all site visitors free access to contact information, location, and other details for more than 45 million companies. Visitors who register with Manta gain access to more detailed profiles of companies, also free of charge.

Zapdata.com provides industry reports and information on millions of U.S. businesses. Registration (free) is required for some search features. After you identify businesses in categories related to your industry, use resources at this website to obtain a profile of each company that may include SIC code, range for sales, range for number of employees, year started, type of organization, executive or owner, and more. For a fee that varies with the type of data you select, you can build a detailed profile of competitors or potential customers. Under the Prospect Lists, Zapdata gives you 25 free leads when you register.

Many public libraries provide free access to ReferenceUSA, a research and reference tool that contains detailed information on more than 14 million U.S. businesses and is licensed to libraries, educational institutions and government agencies.

Each SBDC in the North Texas SBDC Networksubscribes to ReferenceUSA and provides information at no cost to our clients. This database is an excellent tool for identifying prospective business-to-consumer or business-to-business customers and building a customized contact list. You can also identify and analyze the types of competitors, level of competition and estimate the size of a market. Knowing the competition provides valuable insights into how a company can differentiate itself from others selling similar products and services.

Superpages.com helps you locate all businesses within the U.S. with the convenience of an online directory. Select the Business tab at the top of the page select Advanced Search.  Next, check the box next to Search by Distanceand choose from 5 to 100 miles in Select a Radius. Next enter a Category or Keyword plus at least a city, state or Zip. You can find profiles of either competitors or other relevant types of businesses using this approach.

Zoominfo is a unique summarization search engine that finds, understands and extracts the latest online information about people and companies and instantly delivers it in concise and useful summaries. In addition to finding information on companies, it is also important to know who the people are that own and run them. Zoominfo allows you to search for people by their name.

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DEMOGRAPHIC RESOURCES

Zapdata, Manta and ReferenceUSA identify demographics related to a business such as number of employees and revenues. If you sell your product to other businesses, this is very helpful information for targeting potential customers and competitors. However, a retailer sells to consumers and needs demographic and psychographic information about the individuals or groups of consumers that make up the target market. Demographics usually include information such as age, gender, race, education and income while psychographics refer to an individual’s lifestyle. American FactFinder provides demographic data from the 2000 United States Census and 2005 updates through the American Community Survey. Business Information Solutions and You Are Where You Live provide both demographic and psychographic data.

American FactFinder includes demographic, housing, economic and geographic data from the 2000 United States Census. American FactFinder also provides updates through the Economic Census, Annual Economic Surveys, and the American Community Survey (ACS), which is a new nationwide survey designed to provide communities a fresh look at how they are changing.

ESRI Community Data creates 2008 demographic data for a ZIP Code of your choice. Enter your five-digit ZIP Code to learn about the favorite pastimes, buying preferences and other lifestyle choices of the people that live around you.

You Are Where You Live concludes that people with similar lifestyles tend to live near one another. PRIZM NE describes every U.S. neighborhood in terms of 66 distinct lifestyle types, called clusters. Enter your 5-digit ZIP Code to find your neighborhood's top five PRIZM NE lifestyle groups!

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PUBLICATIONS

Now that you’ve identified and researched your industry, target markets and competitors, you’ll want to keep up with any current or potential changes in the business environment. Awareness of emerging trends and industry or local market changes will encourage a proactive planned response instead of a defensive knee-jerk reaction. In addition to online newspapers, numerous news search engines and alert services crawl web pages that may include current articles, press releases, and breaking news. Since they gather information from news sites, they provide focused and timely information. For information specific to your type of business, every industry has trade publications (e.g., magazines, journals, newsletters, etc) that are usually available in libraries, online or through associations related to a specific industry. While many of these publications provide free access online, others may require a subscription. If a subscription is required, first check with either your local library or one in the nearest metropolitan area.

NewsVoyager.com, a service of the Newspaper Association of America, provides links to U.S. daily and weekly newspaper home pages and sections, Canadian and international daily newspapers, newspaper groups, associations and other media organizations. Bizjournals is the online media division of American City Business Journals and provides the latest breaking business news, updated throughout the business day in each of the markets served by its business journals. There also are links to each newspaper’s home page, with news, information and commentary from each American City market. Archives contain nearly 600,000 local business articles, and industry journals provide the latest news on 40 industries around the country. Customized email products allow you to sign up to receive the latest breaking business news from any market, industry news from throughout the nation, and marketing and networking alerts.

Tradepub.com allows you to browse through an extensive list of trade publications by industry, title, key word or geographic location to find the titles. If you currently work or own a business in an industry represented by one of the publications, you may qualify to receive a free subscription. However, many of these publications may provide free online access to some or all of the content. Simply enter the title of the publication in a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, to check for availability.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Use Google Alerts to monitor a developing news story, competitor, industry or your own company.

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SEARCH RESOURCES

For internet search, two of the best search engines are still Google and Yahoo! Each has useful features and search capabilities, but there are many other specialized search engines and social media services that narrow your search on specific topics and areas of interest. While blogs and social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube let us connect and share with others, resources such as Fagan Finder and the Wayback Machine allow you to analyze websites. A company’s website oftentimes provides a lot more information than may be obvious and visible to the visitor. So, look under the hood with a few specialty search engines.

Fagan Finder, provides over 113 tools for finding information. Enter a website address in the Urlinfo search box, choose a tab and then a tool. Under the General tab, Alexa provides traffic information on a website and a useful graphing option that usually works best for larger websites. Whois Source gives you information on who owns a website and its Meta Keywords, which describe the type of content on a webpage. At one time these keywords were a critical part of a website’s code in order to be found by search engines. While there is much debate on whether these keywords still serve a useful purpose, they do provide insights into the types of visitors the website wants to attract. Under the Links tab, select a search engine to find out what websites link to the one you are researching. Depending on the search engine, you may find just a few or thousands of links. You may also have to scroll through a lot of links to find a few gems that provide useful information.

Your next stop is a step back in time with the Wayback Machine, an archive of Internet websites. Enter a website address in the search box, and you will receive a list of dates that provides historical snapshots of a website. The ability to access all the images, text and links on these websites may vary, but you often find very useful information on how a website has changed. Over time, few successful companies remain the same, and neither do their websites. These differences may reflect minor adjustments or major changes, such as a shift in a company’s strategic direction, new markets served, and new products and services.

While specialty search engines, social media sites and other search resource tools seem indispensable, they can easily overwhelm you with the amount of information returned. Unless you can refine your search, you may waste hours using the wrong keywords or technique. Make it a practice to check out the help pages that provide details on general and advanced search techniques.

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