You don't get something for nothing. There's no affiliate program that can make you wealthy without offering value to your website visitors. You must offer value, and that value is closely related to your core competencies. This may sound elementary -- and it is -- but many e-businesses start up without being able to offer value, and then wonder why they don't succeed. This is a business question, but it is also a marketing question. If you're going to design a marketing plan, you first need to know what your competitive advantage is, and that flows directly from what you're good at.

Assess Your Interests, Abilities, and Strengths

If you have a one-person business, start with jobs you've held. Is there anything you're well-versed in? Do you know a trade or an industry well? Do you have a hobby that you've become an expert in?

If you're a larger business, what do you do the very best? Not your corporate hype, but what you really excel at. You may have the very best such-and-such in your industry. Perhaps you've won awards in a certain area. What are your core competencies? A strong e-business -- any business, for that matter -- is founded upon excellence. If there's no area where you have achieved excellence, I really don't recommend starting a business. Life is too short to fail one more time.

Are you great at manufacturing a quality and useful product? Can you provide a needed service flawlessly and evoke customer delight time after time? Are you good at logistics, managing the flow of products? Do you possess great knowledge about racing bicycles? Look for areas of competence, of excellence. That's the bedrock of your business.

Monitor Your Likes and Dislikes

But you may be very good at what you do, and hate every minute of it. Not likely, though. We usually hate those things we fumble with or fail at. The point is, you must have a passion for your business activity if you're going to succeed. Passion without competence won't make it. But excellence combined with enthusiasm is a winning combination.

Identify Your Competitive Advantage

Like it or not, when you put your business on the Web to offer products or services nationally or internationally you are in competition. If you've just got a brochureware page for your Mercedes repair business in Centerville, you probably don't have many competitors; your market is defined by how far people are willing to travel to get their Mercedes repaired. But if you decide to sell Mercedes accessories or add-ons, repair manuals, photo books, or replacement hood ornaments online, you've just entered the competitive arena. You've just launched a business that will compete for sales internationally.

To succeed, you need to identify your set of core competencies. Determine what kinds of competencies your online competitors bring to the Web, and then see how to leverage your strengths to gain a competitive advantage. The world doesn't need 15 Mercedes accessory websites in the US. A few will succeed, and the rest will get so little business that they'll drop off the Web in a year or two. In order to succeed you'll need to find a way to leverage your strengths in such a way that you can offer something better than your competition -- better selection, better service, better prices, more interesting photos and articles, larger collection of used Mercedes hood ornaments. Something must be better or you'll fail to attract attention and repeat buyers. Mediocrity leads to bankruptcy.

Decide How to Sustain Your Competitive Advantage

Finally, you'll need to determine how to maintain your competitive advantage over time. In any business, but especially on the Web, innovations can be copied easily. Your great idea that pulls you ahead of your competition will be reproduced. Amazon.com began the Internet's first affiliate program, but BarnesAndNoble.com soon was working to develop their own affiliate network -- and, encourage their affiliates to market through the signatures in their e-mail messages.

You may have some unique expertise or strength, but can you sustain that over the long haul? An idea may rocket you ahead for a while, but a pattern of innovation is necessary to keep you ahead. Successful businesses count their people and in-house expertise as their most valuable assets. You'll need to retain your cutting edge competence in order to make future gains on the Web.

So what determines the shape of your online business? Your core competencies, your areas of excellence. Determining what they are, and engaging them in building your e-business, is the first step in developing an online marketing plan.

Exercise: List your company's main core competencies. Determine how this will shape the direction of your business. Decide what core competencies are necessary to acquire in order to be competitive in the direction you choose. Begin to write these down and keep notes on your reflections. This may take a while to come together, but get started now.