Thoughts on Business Plans...

So, I've just completed the "competition" and "market research" aspects of my business plan and, as it turns out, it's a hell or a lot more complex than I originally thought it would be.  I really shouldn't be surprised, I feel like all semester we've been learning about how starting a business is never as straight forward or simple as we think.  I was especially confused about the market research, even after reading the Forbes article (which was really helpful by the way).  After doing some of my own research, I called my Dad because he has to do this stuff all the time for his job.  Now, I'm not sure he gave me the right information but he told me to look at the problem I want to fix, show how it's a problem and then explain how I can solve that problem using statistics and such.  I did A LOT of research today on internet use in the past twenty years, especially looking at where people get their news from.  Not surprisingly, people are increasingly getting their news from online sources and they are increasingly using their cell phones to access the news.  I thought it was hard to get information on the market because the internet is so broad and expansive it's kind of hard for me to quantify who uses it and for what in my brain.  I fell like it would be easier for me to think "oh, how many people use..." or "how many people have..." than "how many people go online for news".  I don't know, for me, I'm a "seeing" person, I like to see examples because it helps me picture what I'm dealing with.  However, I can't picture the massive amounts of people using the internet.  Maybe it's just me but it's harder for me to visualize millions of users logging on to google than it is to imagine the hundreds of people with boats, for example.  As my idea is primarily internet based... I should probably figure this out!