If you own your own small business, keeping your costs low is crucial if you want to turn a healthy profit. Being financially smart and frugal is the key to success when you’ve started a new busines. Even though there are a ton of costs associated with running your own business, there are plenty of hacks for cutting those costs in half. Every business will have different costs associated with it, but there are some common expenses that most businesses have. Yes, you’ll need to hire copywriters, virtual assistants, social media managers, producers – the list goes on. Plus, you’ll have website costs, software fees, production costs and more. However, with the below 5 tips, you’ll save on some of these common business expenses.
1. Exchange your services instead of paying for a service, whenever possible
When you exchange your services instead of paying for a service that your business needs, this is called bartering. A barter exchange is a trade between two business-savvy people who both need the others service. By agreeing to a trade, neither party has to spend any money. For example, you might trade your website copywriting services with a tax accountant. The tax accountant needs their website polished, and you need help with your taxes.
2. Cut down on your website costs
Costs associated with website design, website hosting and website maintenance can get out of hand if you aren’t careful. However, by using a simple WordPress theme and limiting your customizations, your website design and maintenance can stay inexpensive. As far as website hosting goes, cloud hosting is very cost efficient compared to other website hosting solutions. Cloud hosting bills you only for what you actually use. The price of cloud hosting is determined based on factors such as the amount of traffic your website sees. Cloud hosting is a newer form of hosting that’s starting to appeal to plenty of business owners. It’s a great way of paying based on the demands of your website and only paying for what you use.
3. Utilize your home office
If possible, you should be using your home as an office (or a nearby coffee shop) instead of renting shared office space. This saves you quite a bit of money, and it is especially easy if your employees also work from home. Plus, If you use your home for business purposes, you’ll be able to claim a home office deduction when you do your taxes. Another great way to utilize your home office and save money is to go to thrift stores whenever you need something for your home office. At your local thrift store, you can find incredibly inexpensive desks, office chairs, power cords, notebooks, and more. You’ll want your home office to look nice, but it’s very easy to decorate on a budget, so don’t worry about the costs associated with this.
4. Hire an intern
There are plenty of eager, passionate and talented individuals who have just finished school and are willing to work for next-to-nothing simply because they need the work experience. These interns are very valuable for your business because they’ll work hard (they need good work references) and they’ve just finished their education, so their knowledge of the service is fresh. Interns know that they’re talented and deserve higher pay, but they also understand that they need to build a resume and get work experience (and references) in order to land their dream job. For them, working for you for cheap is only a means to an end, but that’s ok because when one intern moves on, there’s another one likely waiting to fill the position. Interns are great because they’re very malleable and you can train them to do the job exactly how you need it done. Whether you hire an intern for social media marketing, copywriting or blog post writing, you can rest assured that they’ll be eager to please and excited about the experience.
5. Utilize low-cost digital marketing
Digital marketing for your business, such as social media marketing and blog posts offer you high-result, quick-result, low-cost marketing. Social media is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get exposure for your business. For example, by simply using the right hashtags and tagging the right brands in your posts, your posts could get a ton of visibility – even if you don’t have a lot of followers yet. Having plenty of followers will help your social media marketing efforts garner more results, though. Luckily, it’s free to get followers because all you have to do is spend some time before bed every night engaging with your target audience on social media, following people, liking photos – and you’ll wake up each morning with new followers who may end up being brand advocates for you.
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