Top Ten Money-Saving Tips for Your Business
Not wanting to miss out on the cost saving fun we’ve been having around here, Barbara Weltman offers her Top Ten Money Saving Tips for Business in this guest post.
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In today’s current economic environment, finding new and creative ways to save money while obtaining the things your business needs, can help your business survive and thrive. Here are some great products and services that you can explore in order to save money and increase profitability.
MyFax lets you send faxes online, saving paper, ink and more. Faxes can be sent domestically and to over 40 different countries worldwide. You don’t even have to set up an account if you send no more than two faxes (ten pages each) per day.
Add It Up™, a new online shopping portal recently launched by Bank of America, allows small business owners to earn up to 20 percent cash back from more than 270 retailers when they shop online with their Bank of America check card. Participating retailers include top names such as Staples.com, HomeDepot.com, Walmart.com, and Costco.com.
SCORE provides free business counseling through its 11,200 volunteers nationwide. Find an in-person mentor by zip code and schedule an appointment to critique your business plan, review your marketing plan, or discuss start-up or expansion plans; or, ask a question online.
Small Business Development Centers, like SCORE, offer free counseling and training from a network of more than 1,100 service centers.
Work.com offers nearly 3,000 free how-to guides about e-commerce, legal contracts, sales and marketing, business plans, or other subjects. These guides, which are rated by viewers, are concise articles on the topic, with links to resources. Particularly helpful are the guides of regional interest, including state-by-state guides and guides for those doing business internationally.
Refund-Retriever and Refund Technology can get you refunds on shipping costs. You may be overpaying because of packages you send that arrive late (an estimated 10% do), third parties use your account without permission, or the shipper erroneously charges you for items you didn’t send. They keep 50% of any recovery.
Business.gov can help you over regulatory hurdles by connecting you with the federal agency that can help. Also cut through red tape at the state level by finding the right person (go to www.business.gov/contacts/state and then click on your state and the rules you need help with).
Avery Dennison Office Products gives you access to low-cost and royalty free photos and illustrations that you can use for business cards, brochures, post cards, catalogs, a website or other marketing materials. (FYI: If you download an image from the web without permission, you risk legal exposure for copyright violations.)
Guru.com is the world’s largest online service marketplace (a database of more than 100,000 freelancers) where you can find experts to work for you. Hire by the project and you won’t incur payroll taxes and other costs related to employees. Ensure your satisfaction by paying the freelancer through Guru’s SafePay Escrow; if you’re not completely satisfied, Guru refunds your money.
Health savings accounts is a website from the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration to provide small businesses with information about HSAs. HSAs can be a perfect solution for health coverage. The site contrasts HSAs with other health care options and suggests ways to save money through HSAs.
Author Bio
Barbara Weltman is a top selling author and has written the titles “The Rational Guide to Building Small Business Credit” which features a foreword by Dun & Bradstreet, “J.K. Lasser’s Small Business Taxes” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Home-Based Business.” She is also a contributing writer for Inc.com, PINK magazine and New York Enterprise Report. Barbara has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Reuters, Forbes.com, Marketwatch.com, WABC-TV, Fox News, CNNRadio and CNBC.
Photo Credit: yoppy
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These are all great resources. I have used another electronic fax service in the past, and it really is a great time and money saver.
Matt,
This is a nice round out to the money saving theme.
Barbara, Thanks for this list of sites. It’s nice to know that we don’t necessarily need to travel this road all by ourselves.
Heading off to check out some of them right now.
Cheers
George
@Electric
I use e-fax as well, and it’s a great service. Also the information you can find for free at the SBA and Business.gov is invaluable – really good stuff there.
Thanks for coming by,
Matt
@Tumblemoose
Yeah we’ve been on a bit of a “miserly” kick here lately (a sign of the times), but I think we’ve provided some solid cost saving tips over the past couple weeks. Hopefully they can help some people out.
Matt
Tips on saving money weekly can be done easily. There are many ways to save; buy doing some of the following item.Saving money at what time you visit the grocery store by going weekly instead of two or three times a week.
Cobb County
I think most people would agree that saving money is something “easier said than done”. Personally, I believe it’s a mind-set that needs to be developed by creating good money-saving habits.
Here are some things I’ve done to help change my spending habits:
- Cooking more at home ? Eating out is very expensive especially if you do it a couple times a week
- Shopping online ? You can find better deals than in the store and you save on gas (I recommend http://www.shoptivity.com)
- Paying the full balance on credit cards each month ? Interest charge is like giving away free money
- Don’t forget to pay yourself ? Set up an online savings account (they pay higher interest than a normal savings account)
- Setting a budget and goals ? It’s good to have your goals written down so you see them everyday and don’t lose focus on your ultimate objectives
Again, saving money requires a lot of patience and hard work. However, you’ll thank yourself later on in life. Good luck everyone!! =)
A small business usually cannot afford to spend a large amount of money on advertising and it becomes important to save money on ads in order to increase the efficiency of a business entity. There are numerous ways in which money can be saved on advertising and at the same time increase the profits and help in the growth of the company.
Excellent tip on the shipping refunds. So many small business owners don’t perform a shipping audit, but it can really help your bottom line. We shared the reasons a shipping audit is important on our blog.
http://packagefox.com/blog/why-a-shipping-audit-is-important/
Shipping Refunds´s last blog ..FedEx vs UPS – Who’s Best at Shipping Your Stuff
Small business has benefited significantly with e-commerce and the maze of software now available on line. One area that I am conscious of is the fundamental business planning that must be in place prior to start up. Often small business side step important aspects of reflection, formal review and adjustments as market share shifts and changes.
I love your blog and I use a rss reader thingy on my ipad but for some reason I can’t seem to get yours to work with it…
Any ideas, I really enjoy your articles so it would be awesome to be able to get this to work, please reply to this if you can help me!
@Stuffy,
We’ll look into it.
Thanks,
SBB