Smart Ideas For Your Small Business

There are more get-rich-quick schemes on the Internet than you can count. We’ve looked into many of them, and frankly, we’re amazed that people still fall for such baloney.

Yes, there are some worthwhile businesses you can get into, but they’re few and far between. We’ve been impressed by John Carroll, who developed a program to tap a very real opportunity — taking pictures of homes, cars, real estate, businesses, boats, and other property. The photos are for national lending, leasing and insurance companies, who need them to document information about their clients.

Can you get rich taking photos for them? No, you can’t. But you can make yourself 200 bucks a day — often more. All you need is a decent digital camera, a computer and a car. And it’s a business you can run full or part time.

John has a continually updated list of over 100 big companies that need photos taken in your area. And he guides you through the assignment process.

It’s an honest, straightforward opportunity that’s we think is worth looking into. You can check it out by clicking here.

As the boss, you just may be the most competent, hard-working person in your organization. You can do any job in the place better than anyone else. So you end up doing practically everything yourself.

You want everything done perfectly, and you figure that in the time it takes to teach somebody else to do a job, you could simply do it yourself. You may be right, but you’re simply trading long term efficiency for a short term fix. A dumb idea, if you plan for your company to be around for awhile.

If there’s a lower level job to be done, give it to somebody else to do. If you did it yourself, you’d give it a low priority and push it aside to get the big stuff done. Result: the job may be late, or poorly done, just because you ran out of time, and couldn’t give it your best shot.

But when you, as the boss, give it to an employee, it becomes a high priority for him/her to get it done right, and on time. Maybe you may have done the job better yourself, but now it’s done – and your world moves on.

That’s what employees are for.

Depending upon your business, chances are you have to extend credit to customers. Which means you have to send out invoices to get paid, then rely upon customers to pay in a timely way.

Make sure your credit customers understand that your terms are net 30 days. Then stay on top of your accounts receivable, sending out statements and other reminders so the customers don’t stall with their payments. Studies have shown the longer you allow a customer to avoid paying a bill, the less likely it is that he or she will ever pay you at all.

You don’t have to extend credit to everybody. Remember that it can cost you big time having a customer who’s a deadbeat. Deadbeat customers strangle your cash flow, and can ultimately sink your business.

If you do find yourself with a customer who doesn’t pay, negotiate to get what you can. Tell him you’ll settle the debt for a discount, provided you get the money right now. Yes, you may take a loss on the deal, but it’s still better than suing, which always costs more than you think.

If you’ve looked into radio advertising, you know that morning and afternoon drive-time commercial spots can run into big money. That’s when stations get their biggest audiences, so they charge accordingly.

But you can still run a low budget campaign by buying overnight spots, which are cheap to start with, and are often sold at deep discounts. Sure, the overnight audiences are small, but your campaign can still be effective. Listeners who are up till all hours seem to be very attentive to what comes out of their radios. Many direct response marketers rely heavily on overnight radio, because their return on investment is better here than on the high-cost radio hours.

Make sure you have a compelling advertising message, and that you have enough in your budget to maintain ongoing frequency. Just a few spots won’t do much for you.

I don’t know about you, but I got tired of climbing into my car and driving to the mall to get office supplies. Now I’m doing our office supply shopping on line, and getting the stuff delivered to our door.

Shoplet.com handles our needs very well. They seem to have about a zillion items in their inventory, with good prices. They ship right away, and they pay shipping.
Their website is Shoplet.com