There are many wilderness areas, state parks and national parks that are near or in the Rocky Mountains. The most notable of these is the Rocky Mountain National Park. The current park is about 265,770 acres in size. There are many habitats represented in the National Park including Pine Forrest, Riparian, Meadows, Alpine habitats Grassy hillsides and even Tundra can be found within the park. The majority of the park is montane areas and subalpine ecosystems.

The plant and animal life is wide ranging. There are larger mammals including bighorn sheep, mule deer, elk, black bear, cougars, coyotes and many many small animals. There are also many hundreds of plan species occupying ever niche. From pine trees, to flowering plants, the Rocky Mountain National Park has it all.

There are 150 lakes along with 450 or so miles of rivers and streams. As with all mountain habitats, the weather can be sunny one moment and turn to a down poor the next. The best time to view flowering plants is from April until September.

The park is the highest park in the nation. Elevations range from 7860 to 14,259 feet. Almost a third of the park is above treeline ( about 11,200 to 11,500 feet ). There are many small permanent glaciers hiding in the upper elevations. For more information, visit the Rocky Mountain National Park.

What do I mean business model. This is how you run your business in terms of products, revenue and overall operations. Listed below are the key models that web companies will use.

Affiliate – The affiliate business model is where the website links to another web site and a percentage ( 2-20+% ) of all sales generated from that link or visit is paid back to the affiliate. This is rather simple, just place a few links on your page to another web page and get paid. Sounds simple and actually is. The problem is that the visitors you send have to purchase something on the other website for you to get money. For good websites, the conversion ratio is 1 out of every 100 visitors will buy something. For less than optimal sites ( not well designed, not quality leads and many other reasons ), the ratio is more like 1 in 1000-2000 visits. This is not very good if you only send a few hundred to the site each month.

The good part about the affiliate model is that there is not customer service, no merchant accounts, no gateway accounts. This is a very simple model to use if you don’t want to worry about any customer service. You will need to generate a huge amount of traffic to make any money however.

Drop Shipper – This the most common form of a business model to use. The store owner ( you ) will essentially resell products from another business. Your store will take the order and send the order to the manufacture to ship directly to the customer. The benefit is that your store does not have to store any products. Simply send ( usually be email ) to the manufacturer and they will ship the products.

The drop shipper usually maintains their own ecommerce site where the store takes money ( credit cards, paypal, google checkout and more ) and maintains some sort of customer service with the customers. The customer actually communicates with the store owner and not the manufacturer. There is a lot more work to set up this type of model and a lot more time to run the store. The reason to choose this model is that they store owner can sell the products for a good margin, typically 30-50 or more. Compared to the affiliate program, the store owner can make a lot more money. The downside is the store owner will have to invest more time, resources during the setup and ongoing customer service.

Reseller – this is similar to the drop shipper except that the store owner maintains inventory in a warehouse or garage. The benefit in doing this is to prevent product shortages and to ensure prompt delivery. I would however recommend starting with the drop ship program first. This will allow the store owner to see how well the product will sell before investing in huge amounts of money into inventory.

Back to running an online store

The Rocky Mountains are the longest mountain range in the lower 48 states. They start from British Columbia in Canada and end in New Mexico. This mountain range is over 3000 miles long ( 4800 ) kilometers. The Rockies are contained in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.

The Rocky Mountains contain many opportunities for outdoor recreation including hiking, climbing, skiing, fishing, winter sports and much more. There are many types of lodging and resorts available for tourists that wish to stay in one of the many cities located in or near the Rockies. Listed below are the national parts located within these mountains.

• Pikes Peak
• Royal Gorge
• Rocky Mountain National Park
• Yellowstone National Park
• Grand Teton National Park
• Glacier National Park (U.S.)
• Sawtooth National Recreation Area


The tallest mountain is Mount Elbert in Colorado. There are over 100 mountains that are higher than 14,000 feet. There are many more mountains reaching over 13,000 feet making the Rocky Mountain range one of the most widely used recreational areas in the United States.

Listed below are specific mountain ranges for each state.

Colorado

1) Mosquito Range
2) Front Range
3) Sawatch Range
4) Elk Mountain Range
5) Sange De Cristos
6) Kenosha Range
7) San Juan Mountain Range

Another common misconception that many people have when starting an online business is the amount of time spent on starting the site. Staring a business takes time. The more you can put into the planning the better. Here is an example of the types of calls I would get from people wanting to use the drop ship services provided by my company.

The conversation would start out by the person asking about my drop ship program. I would ask them a few questions about how they would sell the items. I would ask them what marketing plans they had in place and what prices they would sell the items at. Most people indicated they would they would sell the items online and think the products would magically find their way into their stores.

It takes anywhere from 4-24 hours or more just to enter products into a store. Sure you can copy and paste descriptions and images but do you really want to be just like the next guy. Setting up the credit card processing, email and all the site content could easily take up 1-3 weeks of time. Most people are just not aware of the amount of time required to start a business.

Along with the initial time to start a company, the business owner must also send several hours a week running the site. This includes filling orders, searching for new drop shippers, answering phones and returning phone calls and emails. I would usually spend about 2-5 hours a week running the patio furniture business. This is low as a rule of thumb. I would estimate anywhere from 2-10 hours a week for a store that receives a good amount of traffic.

Next post is what business model to use.

Back to making the decision to start a web based business

Getting started in a web based business is always the most difficult step. There are many decisions to consider when deciding to start a business. For web based businesses, I highly recommend that you start something that interests you. I you like cars for example, consider a car accessory site or a custom modifications/advice site. It is real easy to get caught up in trying to sell something that people end up selling something that they don’t have an interest in. This will quickly lead to boredom and you will loose interest.

The first decision criteria when deciding to start a business is what they have to offer. What makes them different, why are they special. There are thousands upon thousands of internet retailers out there. There are probably several hundred selling the exact items/services you are. You have to have some "edge" or advantage over the next guy or you simply won’t succeed. Here are common traits that you may have.

- I know how to create and maintain web pages.
- I manufacture my own products.
- I have a huge built in customer base that I can tap into.
- I have a unique product that nobody has.
- I have lots of money to throw away ( call me if this is your case!!, I will gladly take it. ).
- I know how to perform web, email other marketing, I have done it before.

These are just a few of the traits. If you don’t have any traits like this, it will cost you a minimum of $5,000 dollars to start. The reason for this figure is simple. If you don’t know how to market products and services on the internet, you will need to pay someone to perform you marketing for you. The biggest trap people fall into is the think they can build a website and people will automatically find them. Wrong….. Nobody will find you. In fact, nobody will find you for 4-6 months or more unless you are willing to pay.

To review, you will need to determine if you have an advantage that you can leverage or get ready to pay at least $5,000. Please feel free to reply to this post and see if your “edge” is a good one or one that won’t help.

Next, what are the time commitments to start and run an online business.

Back to starting an online business