Moving to Beta Blogger

Just moving my blog over to Beta Blogger today.
Looks like it's all pretty cool - and it has labels for categorising. I'm happy.

Money Saving Tips

I thought I would share with you, dear reader, some of the tips I have learnt on this journey so far about saving money:

• Invest in a good accountant. There might be cheaper ones available but a good one will help you save money.
• Use Skype - it's an internet telephony service which help you save money on call costs. And using a headset for phonecalls feels much better!
• Haggle with suppliers. You don't have to be pushy. Just saying the words "Is that the best price you can give me?" will often get an instant discount.
• Make a packed lunch. Buying lunch at a cafe or shop near work can cost me £3-£5 a day. I nearly always have the stuff at home to make a sandwich, it's just a case of making the effort.
• Use the internet for price comparisons. When I wanted some flyers made, I phoned a few local firms and wasn't that impressed. Then I looked online and starting phoning companies further afield. I got a much better deal from a company in Milton Keynes even after postage.

Gumtree Timewasters

I've been trying to rent out a spare desk in the office by placing an ad on Gumtree. It gets a good response but I really can't believe the number of time wasters there are out there. It's depressing!

Advertising: What Has Worked And What Hasn't

I thought I would just reflect on how much money I have spent on advertising, and consider for a moment what has worked and what hasn't.

Flyers
I had thousands of flyers printed up last year and distributed in local newspapers.
Reponse: 0

Yellow Pages & Thomson Directory
I thought it was be good for my company image to have a presence in these high profile directories. Unfortunately it generated only a few enquiries and they were mostly from nut cases.

Google Adwords
This keyword advertising has worked a treat in generating leads as and when I want them. The only draw back is that its easy to create lots of campaigns with their own budgets and before you know it, you've spent quite a lot of money. But it does get results.

Local Newspaper
I tried a couple of local newspapers and the ads came out nicely but the response was very disappointing.

Ads I didn't, and wouldn't, touch with a barge pole

Anyone from a "charity business directory". They mostly all seems dodgy and I've heard of people being invoiced for entries they never consented too.

Anyone from a really pushy sales outfit like UFindus. They called me up and started the conversation by telling me that people weren't using Google any more to find stuff. I knew from that point that this conversation wasn't going anywhere so I just had to spend a few minutes trying to get off the phone which the guy really didn't want to let me do. Note to self: just hang up in future.

Make Big Money in your Own Small Business

Found this book, How to Make Money In Your Own Small Business by Jeffrey F. Fox, on a little mooch through Waterstones in Picadilly. It's a perfect little read with loads of fantastic advice on how to make a success of your small business.

It's a simple read - you'll get through it in one or two sittings - but really is packed with great stuff.

Definitely recommended.

HSBC and US Cheques (Checks)

What is it with HSBC.

Everytime I take a US Dollar Cheque into their branches, they have got some different procedure from the last time and more times than not I get a blank look from the staff anyway. I really hate that kind of inconsistency and expect the same process everytime I perform a routine task.

New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year all!

I hope 2006 will be a fantasic year for anyone that happens to be reading this.

My own personal goals are to further develop the business of course and to do that I am going to have to work hard to improve my sales skills or bring in a temp or sales professional to help me hit the sales targets I have.

I also need to buy a new computer because my current PC is falling to bits literally. And I must buy myself a USB backup device because I don't want to be one of those people who only think to buy a backup solution when I've already lost everything :-)