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.
==
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
Why not share your expertise with our readers and be our next guest author?
Can’t visit Small Biz Bee on a regular basis? You can stay up to date by having the latest Small Biz Bee news delivered to you for free via RSS or Email.
For exclusive Small Biz Bee content and offers, sign up for our free newsletter:
Stop Twittering Your Life Away Trying to Figure Out Social Media
The following guest post is from Jimmy Vee & Travis Miller the nation’s leading experts on attracting customers and the authors of Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers. Together they have leveraged over $96 million dollars in marketing into $12 billion dollars in profit for their clients.
Here are their tips on using social media make more money and keep you business growing. Be sure to check out their free report, the Social Media Success Blueprint to get your business up to speed on social networking in 37 minutes or less!
Creating Authentic Relationships
There’s one thing you need to do if you want to make more money and keep your business growing even when things are tough. In fact, if you do this consistently, you can keep your business from feeling the effects of a slowdown in the future.
You may be asking yourself, "What’s this magical thing you’re talking about?" It’s not revolutionary. It’s an old thing. It’s something that used to be commonplace but now is a lost art.
What we’re talking about is simply creating more authentic relationships with your prospects and customers — a connection, a friendship.
We all enjoy going somewhere we’re recognized and appreciated. We frequent the places where people know our names and value our patronage far more often than those that don’t.
The better your relationship with your prospects and customers, the more money you will make and the less susceptible you will be to feel the effects of an economic slowdown.
Leverage Technology
Today this is easier than ever. Technology allows us to connect with people from all over the world and connect with them like they were coming into our country store every single day.
The explosion of social media sites on the web gives you an even greater opportunity to create a connection with prospects and customers. If you’ve never heard of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter then you are certainly behind the times.
More than likely, you have heard of social media and these sites. You probably know someone who’s on them. Heck, maybe you’re on them yourself but don’t really know why you’re there or what you’re doing.
Don’t Worry – We’ll Get You Up To Speed
Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. It is intended to facilitate communications, influence interaction between peers and with public audiences.
That definition sounds complicated and convoluted doesn’t it? Let us break it down. Social Media is basically water cooler chitchat going on 24/7 between a whole bunch of people regardless of geographic location or time of day.
Think about the kind of relationships that are formed by the water cooler, in the break room, golf course or at the Starbucks in the morning before work. Now these same relationships can be formed without leaving your home or office by "hanging" out with others on social media sites.
We’re aggressive implementers and testers. Especially when something can potentially be used as a cheap/free lead source. With that being said, we’ve been testing and researching to find out if social media can be used to generate leads and make sales.
As of right now our belief is yes it can… but there are some pretty big butts. Because these sites are about building and leveraging relationships it’s not fast. It takes time and work to build quality relationships, friendships, confidence and trust and that’s what you need to be doing on these sites to get them to work.
Depending on where you are in your business, how much time you have available to invest and other resource issues, social media as a traffic source or business tool may or may not be right for you.
Social Media Success Blueprint
With that being said, here are some short cuts we’ve discovered by using and testing social media sites. Download the free report to get all the tips, tricks and hits on getting up to speed on social media fast.
Author Bio:
Jim & Travis help entrepreneurs attract more customers and get the FAME & FORTUNE they deserve NOW by "leap frogging" traditional hurdles and positioning them as the RECOGNIZED EXPERT in their field. Using both online (video & social media) and offline (radio, print & direct mail) they help their clients double their customer base in as little as 6 months with NO STRESS and ZERO MARKETING WASTE. Start Attracting More Customers Now by getting their FREE Customer Attraction Starter Pack at http://www.GravitationalMarketing.com
Why not share your expertise with our readers and be our next guest author?
Can’t visit Small Biz Bee on a regular basis? You can stay up to date by having the latest Small Biz Bee news delivered to you for free via RSS or Email.
For exclusive Small Biz Bee content and offers, sign up for our free newsletter:
