June 6th, 2010

I've been working a lot on other projects that are not school related. One that I have been working with extensively is Valley Creek Co. In the last few weeks the following things have happened to progress the business.

• We have registered Valley Creek Company as a C-Corp entity. The business has been registered in the state of Nevada for tax purposes.
• We have registered multiple transaction accounts to allow for financial transactions to transfer from our sites into our bank account. We had to set a very high limit to be able to allow for the huge amount of transactions we hope to have. Our limit is set around $200,000 a month.
• I've continued to work on the site design for Valley Creek Co. I've included just a few of the MANY templates I've designed in the last few weeks.

Work is being done for the E-book that we plan to sell online. This will be one of the first products that we will sell online. We don't plan on making a lot of money from the sales of E-Books, but simply generate a name for the brand that we are creating.

Once the transaction accounts are complete we plan on establishing the affiliate programs that we will sell from. There are a few horse affiliate programs that we feel would be a good fit for our site.

Valley Creek Co.

Progress has developed to the point that we have decided on a name. Valley Creek Co, is the name that we have decided on. I've put together a logo for the business and I've started design for the site itself.

We will be working on making an E-Book and DVD's to train people on how to ride horses or train horses. I did quite a bit of research to discover what would be the most search topic that would sell the most.

We have also discussed the following topics to start building a strong foundation since the beginning:

• What affiliate programs are we going to use? Do these affiliate sites have Billy Cook, Circle Y, etc? How can we sell major brands if they don't have an affiliate program?
• How do we want the site designed? Look and feel, etc. How do we need it done so we can turn it over to someone to build the template?
  
• Formation of the S-Corp Business.
• Discuss responsibilities for contracts between one another.
• Financial Responsibilities - Profit/Loss Statements, Initial capital, etc.
• Will we run a PPC campaign in the beginning if we are just affiliate?
  
• What do we sell? All Horse Tack or just saddles? What about Cowboy Boots and chaps? Now or in the future?
  
• Discussed future warehouse plans and ideas and make sure we're on the same page.
  
• Possible integration of the new Facebook "Like" button under each product and the benefits

These are a few of the things that we discussed and made plans to move forward in the next few weeks.

Building a Business Within the Horse Tack Industry

For the last few years I've taken a real interest to online sales. I've started many websites, and started a few business based on the ideas. The biggest thing I've learned about web business is to trust online analytic data.

I like the fact that online businesses don't need to be based on emotion or intuition. You don't need to be a savvy business man to analyze data and simply choose an industry that sells a lot.

Weight loss is an industry that I have been in for the last few months, and I've had much success in selling weight loss products throughout the United States. However, I've been looking for an industry that would shatter weight loss, and have relatively low competition.

I found this industry in Horse Tack or Horse Supplies. This includes Horse Saddles, Bridles, Reins, Bits, etc. The industry is ENORMOUS! This picture illustrates some very simple data that supports my beliefs about the Horse Supply industry.


On the left are keywords that people search for within one month on Google, and the global search volume is how many times people search for that specific keyword. The data on the right is how much you would have to pay per click to have Google advertise for this keyword.



Keep in mind, this data is simply for Horse Saddles, it has nothing to do with all the misc. tack that can be sold as well. And in looking at the competition, there are a few sites that stand out, but the biggest of all of them is Horse Saddle Shop. Here is picture of that homepage:

One interesting fact about this site is that the e-commerce is built using a very simple and childish tool called Yahoo E-Commerce.

Horse Saddle Shop ranks higher than any other Horse Tack site, often it appears in the number one spot for very highly searched keywords. They generate an estimated 30,000 visits each month.

In other words, the most competitive site in the industry is doing and awful job of optimizing their site traffic, and the industry is waiting for someone to come in and take that number one spot.

I want to take that number one spot and be the new comprehensive Horse Tack site on the internet. Throughout the next few weeks I will document my process of doing this.