1. Barter
If you have a business you should be bartering goods and services with other businesses. You should try to trade for something before you buy it. Barter dealsusually require little or no money.
2. Network
Try networking your business with other businesses.You could trade leads or mailing lists. This will cut down on your marketing and advertising costs. You may also try bartering goods and services with them.
3. Wholesale/Bulk
You'll save money buying your business supplies in bulk quantities. You could get a membership at a wholesale warehouse or buy them through a mail order wholesaler. Buy the supplies you are always running out of.
4. Free Stuff
You should try visiting the thousands of freebie sites on the internet before buying your business supplies.You can find free software, graphics, backgrounds, online business services etc.
5. Borrow/Rent
Have you ever purchased business equipment youonly needed for a small period of time? You could have just borrowed the equipment from someone else or rented the equipment from a "rent-all" store.
6. Online/Offline Auctions
You can find lower prices on business supplies and equipment at online and offline auctions. I'm not saying all the time, but before you go pay retail for these items try bidding on them first.
7. Plan Ahead
Make a list of business supplies or equipment you'll need in the future. Keep an eye out for stores that have big sales. Purchase the supplies when they go on sale before you need them.
8. Used Stuff
If your business equipment and supplies don't need to be new, buy them used. You can find used items at yard and garage sales, used stores, used stuff for sale message boards and newsgroups etc.
9. Negotiate
You should always try negotiate a lower price forany business equipment or supplies. It doesn't hurt to try. Pretend you are talking to a salesman at a carlot.
10. Search
You can always be searching for new suppliers for your business supplies and equipment. Look for suppliers with lower prices and better quality. Don'tjust be satisfied with a few.
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Top 10 Ways To Reduce Your Business Costs
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Are You Using The Four Letter Word?
The most powerful word in the marketing dictionary is made up of just four letters: F-R-E-E.
It doesn't matter what kind of product or service you're promoting, if you can use the word FREE in your advertising and marketing, then your response rates will shoot up.
People like FREE stuff. In fact, many people simply can't resist the word FREE!
The problem is, you can't use the word FREE unless you actually have something FREE to give, for example:
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These are all effective ways of introducing the magic word. However, the best FREE idea of all is the FREE ebook. It doesn't matter what kind of product or service you sell, you can use FREE ebooks as a promotional tool to carry your advertising AND build your reputation. By creating an ebook that is related to your product or service, and by giving that ebook away for FREE, you achieve three things in one go:
- You give yourself a legitimate reason to use the word FREE in your advertising and promotion.
- You generate FREE publicity for yourself by promoting your product or service from inside your FREE ebook,
- You build your credibility by making your book useful and relevant to your target market.
To get the most out of this great FREE promotional tool, keep these points in mind:
The ebook must be more than just a blatant ad for your product or service. This could damage your reputation rather than enhance it. Keep your self-promotion present without being 'in your face'.
The content of your book must be useful and relevant to your target market. There's no point in giving away a FREE ebook that contains Internet marketing articles written by other people, if you're promoting guitar lessons. You'd be much better off doing a bit of research online and creating a short ebook on the history of guitar playing. After all, the primary aim of the FREE ebook is to build your reputation in the eyes of potential customers.
Encourage other webmasters/e-zine publishers to freely distribute your book to their visitors/readers. Be sure to state this clearly inside the book and anywhere you make the book available for download.
Offer to create customized versions of the ebook for those webmasters who want it. For example, you could place an ad for the webmaster's site on the cover page. This will encourage him/her to work harder at giving it away, thus spreading your message to more people.
Promote your FREE ebook by listing it on shareware sites and in ebook directories as well as on your own website and e-zine. So, get busy. Ask yourself what it is that your target market is interested in.
Make a book that feeds that interest and then start giving it away!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Hopkins is a successful Ebook Publisher and author of:
'Your Step-by-Step Guide to Success on the Internet'.
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