Diversifying your income stream as the way to make more money is old advice, but in tough economic times, it’s advice well worth taking. The key to successfully increasing your business income is to be sure the cost of diversifying isn’t making your profits negligible or nonexistent. All of the ideas below are ways you can bring in more revenue for your business without spending a lot of money to do it.
How to Make More Money
1) Rent out part of your business premises.
If you own or lease physical business premises, do you really need all of your current space? If not, you can make more money by renting out some of your space to another business.
There are a lot of small businesses that only need a corner or a kiosk. Or maybe you have an unused room that another business could use as office space. And you can further increase the revenue from your rental space if you’re able to throw in some add-ins, such as shared secretarial services or computer workstations.
You can gain even more advantage by subleasing space to a business that is complementary to yours, giving you the opportunity for cross-promotion. For example, if you own a vehicle repair business and sublet a bay to an auto detailing company you can cross-promote each others services and attract more customers.
2) Package services as products.
If your business primarily involves selling services, you can make more money by packaging your services as products rather than charging clients an hourly rate, says C.J.
Hayden. This will increase your sales, she says, because it goes a long way to overcoming clients’ reluctance to sign on for what they view as open-ended projects and makes your work appear tangible.
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3) Shift your sales focus.
One of the easiest ways to make more money is often overlooked; getting your current customers to buy more of your products and/or services.
Shifting your sales focus to your current customers rather than attracting new customers makes excellent economic sense because your current customers are already converted prospects. They know your company and your products and are easier to sell to. Learn how to entice your current customers to buy more by reading 6 Sure Ways to Increase Sales.
If you want to increase sales to existing customers, though, you have to make sure you treat them right; see 8 Rules for Good Customer Service.
4) Lend out your employees.
Do you have talented, marketable people working for you? Then maybe you could sub-contract them to other businesses. For instance, if you have exceptional managers, you could hire them out to other enterprises to run exercises in team-building and management skills.
Another twist on this idea is to lend out employees to avoid having to lay them off, loaning employees to another company for a set period of time and then getting them back when you need them. (Definitely an arrangement to be made by contract only.)
5) Add value-added services or products.
A carpet cleaner selling bottles of spot remover. A store selling kitchenware offering cooking lessons. A seminar on investment strategies in tough economic times. A farm that sells produce offering a vegetable delivery service. These are all examples of adding value-added products that customers and clients might be willing to pay money for.
Make more money by examining your products and services and brainstorming services or products that your customers might be interested in. Then choose the one you think will make the most money for your business and test it.
6) Make more money by getting more from your assets.
Your business premises, your intellectual property, your products, your services, your customers, your employees are all assets that may or may not be producing as much income for you as they could. With the five “how to make money” ideas above in mind, take a hard look at your business and see if some of your assets are being underutilized. Often the ways our business could make more money are right in front of us; we just have to recognize them.
7) Increase profits by cutting expenses.
One of the other ways you can increase profits is to cut expenses.
Source: The Balance