As a small business operator and service provider to small businesses and nonprofit organizations, keeping costs low is always very important to me not only because of tight budgets generally associated with start-ups or even current economic downturns but mainly because keeping my costs lows helps me provide affordable solutions which makes my client happy which keeps me in business!
In my line of work, a good part of my investment is associated with software, software upgrades and maintaining and expanding my skills set to be able to handle a wider range of jobs for a wider range of client base and let me tell you, certified training and buying licensed software programs/upgrades costs are no joke! For example Microsoft Small Business Office suite goes for about $500; Adobe’s Photoshop goes for about $700 etc. At the end of the day, these can add up to a pretty healthy expense account balance – not good.
At the same time though, delivering quality work using the best possible tools is also very important to me and it can be difficult reaching the optimum balance.
With my constant drive to seek ways to keep my costs low, I have been using the following services and solutions to help me in reaching my optimal balance of cost vs quality:
- Free software – I use free or very low cost open source software as much as possible – for example WordPress (for this blog) Mozilla Firefox browser, OpenOffice, PrimoPDF etc. There are a lot of free or low cost versions of most software a small business or start up may need with no adware or spyware and sometimes no download necessary. Open Source Windows and Open Source Mac are good places to start looking.
- Skills training and enhancement – as I mentioned in our last newsletter, we will soon be adding Bookkeeping and Grant Writing services to our offering and one of the ways I am financing my training is by using the barter system. I was very fortunate one of my clients, who is an expert Grant Writer with over a decade of experience agreed to teach me the program in exchange for my working for him. I also use free skills testing available at communities such as oDesk to sharpen and refresh my skills.
- free marketing – since my budget for marketing is almost non-existent, I very much rely on word-of-mouth and referrals by family and friends but as one cannot afford to completely overlook marketing, I have been finding ways and means of getting my business profile out there for free using:
- Facebook and Facebook Pages – (see our most recent Newsletter)
- free classified ads – in addition to the usual local Yellow Pages etc, Yahoo Business etc. etc, I recently came across GuideStar, a non profit research resource which offers free basic membership and free classified ads on their website. One of my business partners, Laura Wheeler of Firelight Web Studio has also put together a helpful free ebook on effective free marketing tips
If you have any tips or shortcuts you use that you’d like to share, we welcome your comments and contributions and please feel free to contact use with any questions. We are always happy to help.
Until next time,
Sirra.
sirrandow
0 Responses to “Don’t be Cheap but be Frugal, be Very, Very Frugal”