60 Second Tip - Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Business on a Shoestring Budget

A general belief among many is that starting and growing a business can be an extremely costly affair. However, with some creative solutions, this start-up and growth period can be attained on a shoestring budget.

1. Choosing a business carefully is the first step. There are some businesses which inevitably require large capital and large budgets. Choose wisely.

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2. Choose a business that has enough demand. This is especially important on a shoestring budget.

3. Set realistic goals relating to growth and profits. Although it is possible to grow your business on a shoestring budget, ambitions that are too high may not get realized very soon.

4. A lean budget means that you cannot spend on fancy office space. Home offices are a great alternative, since you can then focus more effort, time and other resources on your business needs.

5. Save on items and services like stationary, phone, electricity and other expenses that can easily be curtailed. Make your own office marketing and communications products (letter head, flyers, postcards, etc.). And use energy efficient products plus cut back on usage of them; turn them off when not in use, for starters.

6. Looking like a professional business is the key to attracting and keeping clients. Make efforts to look professional.

7. Be creative to extend your resources as much as you can.

8. Inexpensive marketing strategies like referral incentives, newsletters, flyers and coupons can help ensure good business and low expenses.

9. Providing great personal customer service can lead to your existing clients bringing in new prospective clients and repeat sales. Word of mouth can take your business to new heights plus it is free.

10. Have a rule of putting a certain percentage of your profits into a savings account. This can help ensure you always have extra money saved for any kind of emergency.

60 Second Tip - Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Business on a Shoestring Budget

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Overview: Doing Business on eBay - Part 2

As stated in Part 1, because eBay is an open marketplace -- meaning that anyone can go there (eBay.com), and buy or sell items, eBay has created a feedback system. The purpose of this system is for users to grade fellow-users, as individuals. You will grade other eBay users as either positive (good), or negative (bad) -- based on their personal business reputation. The more positive feedback that you receive, the more reputable you are, as a business owner. Your feedback score (designated as a number between 1 and 10, with 10 being the best) is your publicly, worldwide-viewed, report card. If users see that you have a high feedback score, they will be more trusting of you, when it comes to buying and selling products, which can lead to get rich fast.

What is the Feedback System?

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There are two important components to the feedback system. The first part is your feedback score; the second is your feedback rating. Your feedback score represents the number of different/separate eBay users, who have had a positive transaction while doing business with you. The second part is your feedback rating. Your feedback rating represents what percentage of your customers left you positive feedback, after you've bought or sold an item within the past twelve months. You want to first, reach 100%, positive, and then maintain that percentage.

Naturally, when you first get started working on eBay, your feedback score will be zero. But, it is critical that you build your feedback score as high, and as quickly as possible. By doing so, buyers will trust you as being a reputable dealer. The fastest way to build and maintain your feedback score, and to develop a positive reputation, is by purchasing items on eBay -- especially inexpensive, one-cent digital (downloadable) items.

What are one-cent digital items?

Examples of these one-cent digital items include: recipes, coupons, pictures, images, etc. Digital items are those products that can be shipped through email. These items are ideal because the seller is able to email the item for free, and all the buyer has to do is eBay download the product. My first product purchased was A Cajun Cookbook; I paid 16 cents.

Bidding on products

The bidding process is an online auction. The majority of these digital items cost less than 50 cents. Login to eBay.com and search for the above items. Preferably, you want to find an item that cost one cent, with free shipping, and no prior bids. If there are no bids, then you will be the first bidder. Since this shopping online involves cheap items, that you're probably aren't even interested in, you should bid less than 50 cents per item. The idea is to start creating your feedback system. After bidding and winning the cookbook, I subsequently purchased several more digital products: store coupons, pictures, wallpapers, etc. I was having fun! Using the bidding method, I purchased different products from different sellers, for a total price of less than five dollars. I watched my feedback score rise from 0 to 7; then I was off to doing something else. (I used my credit card.)

If you get outbid on an item -- that's not so important, because you are going to repeat this process several times, while building your feedback scores. After you submit your bid, you'll see the "Review and Confirm Bid" page. Make sure that these details are accurate; you wouldn't want to submit a bid for 50 dollars, when you intended 50 cents. After you've reviewed all the details on the "Review and Confirm Bid" page, then click on the "Confirm Bid" button. Next, you will be taken to a confirmation page that reads "Congrats, You're The First Bidder. Hope You Win". The main focus here is to repeat this bidding process until your feedback score reaches 10. This is very important: when you're bidding on additional items, make sure that you bid on items from different sellers. Your feedback score will increase only by one point, for every different user that you do business with on eBay. Stay tuned for Part 3.

Overview: Doing Business on eBay - Part 2

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How to Build a Home Business With Incentive Vacation Certificates

Incentive vacation certificates- also referred to as free travel vouchers- provide an excellent opportunity for both experienced and aspiring entrepreneurs to build a home-based business with little to no investment required. In fact, because the market for these no-cost coupons is still virtually untapped, there exists real potential to achieve significant success by distributing these products. Formal training or education in marketing or sales fields is not needed because any person with a little ambition and part time availability can earn a respectable income distributing free travel vouchers.

Not many people understand what incentive vacation certificates are; let alone that they can be used to start a home-based business. This is because it's hard for most to imagine why an airline company or hotel would possibly want to give away free tickets or reservations. However, what many don't realize is that these companies still profit when they give these coupons away: the recipients will still probably buy additional services or upgrades from the airline or buy merchandise and food from the airport. Hotels know that free guests will almost certainly spend money in their gift shops or eateries. Therefore, it makes sense to give these otherwise-unused seats and rooms away instead of earning nothing. After all, the vast majority of seats and reservations go unsold except during peak times.

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How do you get free travel vouchers? It's actually quite simple. Airlines and hotel companies contract with certain outside companies who are permitted to offer these coupons to the public under very specific conditions. These companies in turn offer printing rights to consumers. Buyers can elect between free airfare vouchers, free hotel stays and complete combination packages, although each has different terms and conditions that must be met. Once you buy the printing rights (very inexpensive, typically $10 to for unlimited rights) your name or company information will be printed on the coupons along with a unique code that identifies you to the issuer.

Once you've printed some vouchers you can give them away for free or sell them- either way you'll earn money when your customer redeems. Some people find little value in free things and so marketers actually sell the vouchers to their clients, while other people can't resist the thought of a free vacation and so redeem certificates in droves. Generally speaking this is a product that is appealing to any demographic, so targeting consumers is relatively easy. Whether you charge for your products or not, you'll need to market them using one or a combination of the following marketing tactics:

*Your own travel-related website or blog
*Blog commenting and social bookmarking
*Article directory submissions
*Email campaigns
*Print
*Direct mail

With an initial investment cost of $10 or less, capital can be retained for any of these marketing methods. However, you can also market free travel vouchers at next to no cost simply by purchasing a.info domain and using free software to build a website hosted on a free server. You can then write articles yourself and submit them to article directories and drive traffic to them with blog commenting and social bookmarking- all of which can be done for free.

A home-based business distributing free travel vouchers is completely scalable. You can start off by only purchasing printing rights to airfare coupons and experiment with marketing those. As the number of consumers redeeming your certificates increase you can use the money earned to purchase additional printing rights- like a two-night hotel stay. Over time, you can offer both the airline seats and hotel reservations as part of a package. You can even buy rights to 8 night resort vouchers.

Distributing free travel vouchers is one of the few home-based businesses that anyone can get involved in that actually works. Even if you're already a successful internet or affiliate marketer, you can use no-cost vacation certificates to diversify your income streams with little investment and passive efforts- especially if you already have article marketing or other strategies in place.

If you have for printing rights and a cheap.info domain name, you can get started immediately with your own home-based business.

How to Build a Home Business With Incentive Vacation Certificates

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Benefits of Discount Coupons to Consumers and Business Owners

Promotional discount coupons are beneficial to consumers and business owners. For consumers, the primary aim of using promos is to save more on purchasing a product or service. Marketers use discount codes to interest new and existing clients, convert them into sales, and increase profit by spending less. These are the benefits of using coupon codes:

Why Coupon Codes Are Beneficial to Consumers and Marketers?

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1. Consumers can have the opportunity to try out new offers. Some consumers are hesitant of trying out new products and services. However, with promo specials, people might consider trying out new brands by spending less. People will have an opportunity to try out and purchase new products and solutions offered at discounted prices.

2. Consumers can have a significant amount of savings using online coupons.5 to 25 percent off on products and services will interest people who like to save more on purchasing items. Businesses can offer big discounts, free shipping for items, and freebies. Promo specials will make customers feel that they are valuable to a business.

3. Businesses can earn more while spending less on introducing promos to interest clients. Business owners don't need to spend more on using expensive ways of marketing their products and services. The strategy of offering benefits and rewarding customers using online deals is more effective than just having printed tools to promote your offers.

4. Business owners can maintain existing customers and gain more potential clients. Offering discounts, rewards, and freebies is a great way to maintain and establish positive connection with your audience. Provide promos and special coupon codes to reward loyal clients. Offer discounts to new clients for repeat purchase.

These are the benefits consumers and marketers can gain from online coupons. Business owners can provide special offers to increase client base while consumers can use online good deals to save more.

Benefits of Discount Coupons to Consumers and Business Owners

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Why Coupons Are Bad For Your Business

Offering coupons are a common and easy way to attract new or old clients to your salon, day spa or medical spa. But what kind of client are you really attracting? And are you profitably providing that service once the coupon is redeemed?

Your ideal client is not a coupon-cutter. While everyone loves a great deal, those that ONLY come to your spa or salon because of your promotional coupon are not likely to come around the second time. Sure, you tell yourself that you provide an outstanding service and if they like you, they'll come back. And that is logical thinking -- but it is a tad flawed. And doesn't often come true, sadly. If you are retaining more than 10% the clients that first see you with a coupon, you are way ahead of the rest of us. [To calculate this percentage, divide then number of clients who came back a second time to pay full-price by the total number of clients who used that coupon.] If you don't track your retention rates, or how many coupons are being redeemed, you should be. Measuring the impact of your marketing is the only way to can be sure that money spent on marketing is growing [and not hurting] your business.

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Every single service you do should be profitable. If you are offering a 20% or 30% off coupon, do you make any money? My guess is no. While offering a $10 or coupon might seem like a better choice, they too need to be calculated whether you are profitable. The simplified calculation for service profitability is PRICE minus LABOR COST minus SERVICE COST minus OVERHEAD equals NET PROFIT BEFORE TAXES. Labor cost is what you pay your staff (or you) to perform that service. Service cost is the cost of the products used in that service [your product supplier should be able to help you with this.] Overhead is everything else like rent, utilities, insurance, marketing expenses, etc. that you have to pay even if you don't do any services. To calculate the overhead by service, you could simply guesstimate it as 40% of your price. But to a bit more accurate, you would total your average monthly overhead costs and divide it by the average number of services you provide in a month to reach your average overhead cost per service. You'll probably find that your profit margin is 10% or less for your services -- which doesn't give you much if any wiggle room on offering motivating discounts.

There is another way. You can still attract new clients with promotions that do not require you to pay them money when they receive a service. Upgrades and add-ons are great solutions here as they don't have to add time to the service, or much cost. Some examples:
Free skin or hair consultation with first service Free deep conditioning with hair coloring Free eye creme with Botox injections Free lip or eye treatment with facial Free brow wax with your high-end facial Free shoulder massage with mani/pedi Free foot reflexology with 60 minute massage

Notice the word "free" is common in all of these promotions. Free has to be one of the most powerful marketing words you can use (but that is just my opinion). Do be careful with the giveaways however. As a general rule, they need to cost you less than 10% of the price of the service in order to maintain your profitability.

Why Coupons Are Bad For Your Business

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Building Your Postcard Mailing Business

Postcard mailing has become a lucrative online business that many people are finding easy to start up. It is also proving to be a great source of income, especially since the start up cost in minimum at best. Just as with any other business, wealth will need to be built up over time. When you enter into this type of venture, you will probably be building your wealth from the ground up. Because of this, you will want to budget and market carefully.

One of the best ways to insure a business succeeds is to put hard-earned money back into it. This means taking the money you make and using it for various business expenses. If you are starting this as a full-time business and will be depending on the money you make to pay the bills, you may choose to only put a portion of it back into the business, If, however, it is not necessary to keep all the money you earn, you may decide to put it all back into the business. Here's how it works with postcard mailing.

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You pay to mail out postcards. This is usually done in increments of 100 postcards a day which equals 1,00 postcards every ten days. It will cost you to mail the postcards, but this cost will be minimal when you factor in the expense of getting other businesses off the ground. You will make money from interested customers who visit your website and choose to take advantage of your offer. Though the response rate won't even come close to equaling 100 percent, (it doesn't in any business), the results you receive may surprise you. Even if the percentage of people who respond favorably is relatively low, you will still make a profit. That is what makes postcard mailing such a lucrative business.

Once you begin earning money, you can then put it back into the business by using it to pay for the cost of mailing out more postcards. You will then be able to afford to mail more postcards at once if you choose and will have money to use on other expenses such as additional supplies. A good rule of thumb is to pocket less than you put back in and eventually you will see your income increasing. This is a perfect example of how a little can really go a long way and will most definitely pay off in the end.

Building Your Postcard Mailing Business

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12 Ways to Make Your Mortgage Business More Money

If you want to bring more customers to your business, you have to give them a reason(s) to buy from you. And there is no better way to provide that reason than a personal invitation through the mail, fax or e-mail (you can call them too). Here are 12 ways to make that invitation special, easy and inexpensive.

1. Hold a private sale - Show appreciation of your best customers by inviting them to take part in a private sale. The sale can take the form of an extra discount, or a chance to get special rate a day before everyone else. Good customers not only appreciate the exclusivity, they take you up on it. Remember, it's all about positioning.

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2. Hold a drawing to win something - "Win a Free ______." Fill in the blank with anything you sell. For a chance to win, a customer fills out a form and mails it back to you, drops it into a fishbowl or send it you via fax/email/website. This technique will drive people into your business and helps you expand your mailing list for future promotions. Don't forget to make it easy to enter - you can let customers use their business cards or enter online.

3. D.R.I.P. on your customers and prospects often - Most professional marketers say that any direct contact program takes time to build momentum. That's why you want to contact your database regularly and often (go to our website and request a copy of our D.R.I.P Marketing Report). Your pieces can be fun and involving. A mortgage professional, for instance, can mail picture postcards of a new home every month. The more you contact your database, the more top of mind you become. Statistically, the National Association of Realtors found out that Real Estate agents who contact their database 12 times a year vs. 8 times a year can double their business. Why such a high ROI? You are on top of their mind at the right time. Hmmm. . .why do you think we send out our newsletter so many times during the year?

4. Start a birthday or anniversary club - Imagine you own a mortgage brokerage firm. A customer gets a mortgage from you - about two weeks before their anniversary date, you send two coupons; one for $XXX off a mortgage and one with the same dollars off they can give to a friend (they'll need to sign it - it's a nice touch). What about a staffing company. Let me think. How about sending a special $ off coupon because it's their birthday? Reward, reward, reward. Are there any special days of the year that are more prone for people to buy what you sell? Build a program around these days (but send it out well before the "event" takes place) and invite your customers to sign up.

5. Get behind a local charity - If there is an organization or cause in your community or industry that is popular with your target audience? If so, send a letter announcing that a percentage of all sales on a certain date will be donated to that cause. Want an example. See our website link below and click on Sponsored Charities.

6. Send a coupon calendar - Send your database a calendar where each day/month is a coupon. Offer $X off on any purchase of $X amount purchased. You'd be amazed at how many sales a single calendar mailing can produce. Remember, certain times of the year trigger buying events. Stay in tune to changes in your industry.

7. Start a newsletter - Feature new products, ideas for using products that you sell, even upcoming sales/offers. A newsletter can be great for loyalty and business. Existing customers get more involved with your business, and new customers do too. Not only that, but once you develop this tactical tool, people will contact YOU when they are ready.

8. Guest speakers, demonstrations and seminars - Ask an industry expert to help demonstrate something that your business sells. Whether it is an interior decorator to speak at your mortgage office or a Real Estate agent to speak at a mortgage seminar. Put together an event like this and invite everyone on your mailing list. The speaker would be a great joint-venture for you and gives added exposure at very little or no cost to your business.

9. Get an endorsement - Is there someone in your community or industry that is well-known and does business with you? Ask him or her to write a letter endorsing your store or a product you sell. Then send a copy to people on your mailing list with a short note. You would be surprised to find that people will call you with a question or product information request. Order our 10-CD set for an example of this type of technique.

10. Remind customers to buy again - "You're due for a rate reduction or credit check." "It's time to bring in your mortgage for a ___________." "It's time to check your _______________." Customers not only respond to reminders like this, they appreciate them. Again, tie this into a timed specific event like the changing of the seasons. We've create a one-page letter for a client last year and it generated ,000 in sales. Why was it successful? They embraced the MYM Marketing Equation (see previous newsletters for what this is) followed our directions by making a telephone call to the primary contact person.

11. Hold a block party - Get other retailers on your block or commercial strip to join forces for a block party. Bring in rides, games, clowns or other attractions. Make a big sidewalk sale part of the event. Advertise it. And before the big day, mail special offers to the best customers on your mailing lists. Oh that's right, you're not a "retail" business so this probably won't work for you. Wrong. You can still hold a party - do it at a trade show, at your offices or even rent a place - don't forget to set up your trade show booth (take pictures of the event and send in your email newsletter).

12. Start a referral program with your customers - Ask your customers to provide you with the names and addresses of friends and business colleagues who they think would be good customers. Then send these referrals a promotional offer. If a referral becomes a customer, reward the original customer with a gift. Visit Our Website For Your FREE Reports at http://www.DoTheDrip.com

No matter what -evaluate your results on your tactical marketing campaigns but please, don't forget to use the right strategy in your campaigns. And keep testing until you get the results you want. Then start again.

12 Ways to Make Your Mortgage Business More Money

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PPFE - A Simple Small Business Budget Formula

Are you an entrepreneur who's afraid of budgeting? Do you believe that you don't have the qualified skills necessary to perform the budget process for your small business? If so, you're not alone, in fact most entrepreneurs feel this way. However, rest assured that YOU can do this! In fact, you must have a budget as it is vital for planning the future of your business. It is the foundation in which to build upon to determine the need for mark ups, expansion, growth, and for providing the required gross profit to sustain operations, etc.

There is a simple formula that small business owners, network marketers, and entrepreneurs alike can follow to make the budget process less daunting. That is the PPFE (Past, Present, Future, Estimate) Small Business Budget Formula.

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Past

Sometimes the past is a very good indication of what may happen in the future. Take a look at your past financial statements. We recommend examining the last two years of income and expenses (however, if you only have the prior year's statements that is fine too). Look for trends, percentage increases/decreases in certain areas of income and expenses (variable expenses), and new expenses.

Tip: A quick way to locate prior revenue and expense information is by using your prior year's income statement as well as budget-to-actual comparison reports. If you keep everything on Excel spreadsheets use the last month of your fiscal year's income statement.

Present

Run a year-to-date income statement to review revenue and expenses from the beginning of your fiscal year to the present. It's important to have a current understanding of your business to be able to have a forward look into operations for the years ahead.

Review for changes and evaluate if the percent of change is similar to prior years. Since you're reviewing year-to-date information, this is a good time to create a forecast for the remaining months of the year. This will be really helpful for ensuring that next year's budget is as accurate as possible.

Future

Evaluating your past and present financials will provide a great basis for next year's projections. You are able to determine educated assumptions to provide you with solid and substantiated revenue and expense projections for the next year's budget. Additionally, you take in account major expenses and income that you believe will occur in the new fiscal year, upcoming changes in insurance fees (and other areas that usually fluctuate from year to year).

Estimate

Budgeting can be overwhelming for some, but if you keep in mind that it's not going to be perfect, it will ease the frustration a little. Budgets are estimates based on what you believe your business will do in the future. You determine these estimates by reviewing the past, present and future operations. In addition, take into consideration goals and objectives of your business, resources, market, etc. Then provide justification for your assumptions.

Note: This is a simple basis for introducing entrepreneurs to the budgeting process. Please remember that before embarking upon doing your budgets you must first establish goals and expectations.

PPFE - A Simple Small Business Budget Formula

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Ways to Use Coupon and Discount Codes in Your Website - Drive Sales and Learn About Your Business!

If you have a website and you sell products, you will want to consider using coupon codes and discount codes. The proper use of them can teach you a great deal about your business while also driving sales.

1) E-Commerce Sites

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Coupon codes and discount codes are a must for e-commerce sites. Consumers expect them and look for them. You should create these codes with definite expiration dates and with specific goals in mind.

Sample goals:

- Move a specific line of products (product-specific codes)

- Increase overall sales (site-wide code)

- Pre-sell items (product-specific code)

- Clearance items (product-specific code)

- Announce new product line (product-specific code)

When you set up your coupon or discount codes, you also want to track where the person found the code. Set up different codes for each of the following resources:

- Your internal blog and website

- Your e-mail distribution list

- One for each of your social media accounts/sites

- External blogs (one per blog)

- External sites (one per site)

Setting up your coupon and discount codes in this manner will help you learn where your buyers are coming from. You want to know who is actually buying on your site and where are they coming from. Coupon codes are a good way to start to learn this.

You can even set up different coupon and discount amounts based on the resource. For example, you may negotiate with a large blog that you will offer their readers a bigger discount code than offered anywhere else in exchange for a blog posting about your site. It can be an effective bargaining chip because all blog owners want to reward their followers.

2) Brick and Mortar Stores

Your website may or may not sell directly online. Regardless of whether or not it does, you want to offer coupon codes and discount codes that they can print and bring into your store. This will help you start to see how much traffic is driven from your site to your store.

Auto dealerships and restaurants effectively use this to gauge how well their online marketing is going. Simply have a printable coupon or discount certificate that must be presented at your business and see the effect of your marketing.

Similar to the e-commerce sites, you want to have different certificates or coupon codes based on where they found you. This will help you determine which resources are driving the most traffic to your website.

3) Frequency and Discount Amounts

At the very least you should offer quarterly discount codes. Depending on your business you may consider monthly, weekly or even daily specials. If you are going to offer any discount codes you want to make sure they are real. People will read right through "fake" discounts and you will lose all credibility.

Some discount and coupon codes you can consider:

- Free domestic shipping

- Free overnight shipping

- 10% - 90% off (you determine the appropriate percentage off)

- Buy 1 get 1 free (or similar)

- Free gift with purchase

Again, the key is creating a real discount code or coupon code that has value. If you do this you can increase sales while also learning important information about where your business gets its clients/customers.

Ways to Use Coupon and Discount Codes in Your Website - Drive Sales and Learn About Your Business!

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Getting In On The Lucrative Coupon Business

Here is a business with true unlimited opportunity. "Everyone and their brother" uses coupons -- they are well known and well ingrained element of the American Way!
Basically, this idea is to sell coupons for services that merchants have agreed to honor with service or products as an advertising expense to promote their businesses.
A few ago, an experienced and highly successful entrepreneur walked into a neighborhood service station and announced to owner: "i can double your business in 30 days and it won't cost you a dime -- are you interested?"
Needless to say, the owner was usually interested. They signed a contract requiring the entrepreneur to pay all the costs for printing and distributing of 500 coupon books and receive all proceeds from their sales for his effort.
The service station agreed to honor 20 specific free service coupons (such as battery charge, tow-in, oil change, flat tire repair) on a one coupon per visit basis.
Most of the free services involved no out-of-pocket expense. In order for the customer to take advantage of all the coupon offers, he had to visit the station 20 times. This was good news for the station owner who was confident he could keep a good percentage of them as new customers after 20 visits.
The entrepreneur had coupon booklets printed and assembled, worked out a presentation (canned spiel) for sub-salesmen who sold them door to door for .95 each.
The salesman's presentation began, when a adult answered or came to the door. It began: "how do you do, sir. Do you have an automobile?"
This almost guaranteed the desired YES answer, since any car in the family counted. Then, "I'm (first name) from the Signal service station over on First and Main and I have some complimentary service for you!" The salesman then briefly describe each coupon and winds up by offering the booklet for .95.
After the salesman's commission per booklet and printing costs, the entrepreneur cleared 00 on that first 500 coupon booklet contract, and did even better on a repeat order the following year!
There are many possible variations to this type of business. The best part is that everyone (the buyer, the salesmen AND the customers), and don't do all that badly yourself. Here are a few suggested variations:
1. design and sell coupons for merchants to sell or give away themselves -- at their places of business or publish in the newspaper. Normally this is a one-time fee to design their coupons and promotion.
2. Work with community non-profit and fund raiser groups to sell coupons or books of coupons for donated goods and services. You can either charge a fee for your services or a percentage of sales.
3. Print local school sports schedules and sell advertising space (cut-out coupons) to merchants. Sell or give the schedules away or let the school sell them. Your profit is included in the cost of the coupons.
4. Design and offer a package of coupons from area merchants in a WELCOME KIT for newcomers or tourists. get their names from the water or electric company (connections), or from RV parks and motels (visitors).
5. Charge merchants to print and distribute freebie coupons that involve no out-of-pocket expense on their part, such as a half priced dinner with a full course one, a free roll of film with developing, or an extra gallon of gas with ten.
6. Charge merchants to print and distribute advertising specials with a guaranteed minimum distribution. For example, that to print and distribute 1,000 of their coupons to homes in the community. You can give these low rates because you can handle several different, non-competing orders collectively. You can print 10 or so coupons to the page and pay kids 10 each to distribute packets, booklets or sheets of 50 such packets, each operation could gross 41250 and net up to ,000!
One of the strongest selling points for coupons is that the customer must visit the place of business to redeem them. They can easily be restricted to the redemption of one coupon per visit to stretch the effectiveness of package offers.
Other limitations (such as "good until...") can be included in the fine print. The merchant not only gets the potential customer into his store, where he hopefully will buy something else while there.
When negotiating with prospective clients for coupon contracts, don't volunteer too many restrictions on your self. If the client is adamant about something, by all means include wording in the agreement to allay his fears.
You certainly aren't out to take advantage of your customers, but you also don't want to unnecessarily limit yourself.
For example, if a client does not want the offer to last more than 90 days or to distribute over 500 coupon booklets, include this stipulation in the contract.
If the client does not insist on limitations such as these, use your good judgment not to continue beyond a reasonable period or to distribute an inordinate number of booklets.
You may want to deal with this client again and your reputation as an ethical business person is too important to jeopardize it by taking unfair advantage of a client.
Coupons can be printed in quality color on fine paper, or they can be produced by the most inexpensive means available (including desktop publishing and copying).
It is their offer that makes them desirable, not so much their looks. Tis is not to say, however, that a little flourish is bad. If you can have them printed with fancy borders, illustration cuts, or on colored paper, by all means do so -- just don't make them so expensive they are hard to sell.
Coupons can be for free services, merchandise, discounts, or good only with a purchase -- any desired terms or conditions can be spelled out right on the coupon.
They can be distributed door-to-door, sold at stores, mailed out or given as premiums with purchases.
They can be offered in booklets, as certificates, printed as attachments (cut off or out) to other material or grocery bag stuffers at the supermarket.
Coupons are a form of advertising that is not offensive. People almost always look at them to see what they offer -- all of which are reasons why your customers should consider coupons as an affordable and highly effective form of advertising!
To start a coupon business, look around your community for businesses that you think could use some boosting (but keep that opinion to yourself).
Think of a plan that you think would achieve the desired result, then figure out how you can put it into effect. Locate a printer to work with and find out how much you will have to pay for different types of printing AND different sized orders (stress the fact that you hope to have many such orders in the future). Learn the different pricing combinations and be prepared to offer your clients different packages and prices.
For example, how much more (per 500 or 1,000) would it cost to use colored ink and/or paper; larger size print or to include a logo or border? What about larger orders -- where are the volume price breaks? Familiarize yourself well so you can tell prospective clients exactly what you can do for what price.
Place an ad in the local paper, but don't use the word coupons in your ad: use something like "business builder" or "profit expanders." The idea to convey here is that your will help your client build his business -- but not reveal your methods until you can present the entire plan in context.
During the planning stages of your first few orders, you might want to consult a lawyer to help with the contract wording and answer any questions.
Now, rather than just sit back and wait for the orders to roll in, start calling on businesses in your area and leave each one a card (and brochure, if you have one).
Tip: Get a Rolodex type punch and have your business name at the top of your business cards, Then, when secretaries put your card on their rolodex, your name will be prominent.
When you have worked out a tentative plan for a specific business, contact that business and ask for an appointment to explain your plan to increase their business.
Be ready to incorporate and additional specifications and if acceptable to you, adjust your prices accordingly. If they won't cooperate, (most will at least listen), you can still use most of the presentation (since it is still unused) for the next potential contract.
Don't be too surprised if that first job is a little difficult to get. After all, you are still an unknown commodity at this early stage. But just wait until the word gets around that their business increased (or other businesses think their competition might be gaining on them due to you coupon plan!).
Each successive contract will be easier to present and sign. Soon, businesses will ask for your assistance. That is when you can start thinking about hiring help or raising your prices.

LOWES 10 PERCENT OFF COUPON

Getting In On The Lucrative Coupon Business

LOWES 10 PERCENT OFF COUPON