45 Ways for Entrepreneurs to Save Money in Recession

Whilst every entrepreneur likes to focus on making money, it is just as important to make sure you are keeping your costs as low as possible.

This checklist will help you greatly reduce costs with little effort.

Communication

There are many excellent online services that are either free or cheap, which can knock thousands of dollars off the cost of setting up an online business. Some of the ones I recommend you consider are:

1)    Skype (www.skype.com) Communicate with colleagues by voice or video. PC to PC calls are free. I don’t think the quality is good enough for using it for all customer communications, but it is certainly good enough for colleagues, friends and established suppliers

2)    Jajah (www.jajah.com) Cheap landline calls. Calls are up to 98% cheaper than telco charges

3)    Truphone (www.truphone.com) - Cheap mobile calls between friends

4)    Sim4Travel (www.sim4travel.com) - Cool service if you travel a lot and want to use your mobile phone whilst overseas. Get a sim card which allows you to receive calls for free whilst travelling and make calls at rates which are much cheaper than normal roaming charges

5)    DimDim (www.dimdim.com) Web conference call service where you can share your desktop, slides, videos, etc for free with up to 20 people

6)    Google Sites (www.google.com/sites) A great way to store and share files and collaborate with your team and clients. A free instant intranet

7)    Google Calendar (www.google.com/calendar) Plan and share activities with your team (and family!). Free to use

Stay Productive for Less

8)   OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) A great alternative to buying expensive Microsoft Office. It’s free and should meet all of your needs. It is compatible with Office if you need to share files

9)   FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) A good mind mapping tool for capturing all your thoughts on a subject on one page. Free

10)    AVG Free (http://free.avg.com/) - Open source anti virus solution. It is as good as most of the commercial software products, but free!

11)    Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) Excelelnt online backup service. It costs $49 a year for unlimited data. A small price to pay for peace of mind

12)    KeePass Password Safe (www.keepass.info) - Manage all your passwords in one place. Free

13)    CutePDF (www.cutepdf.com) - Create PDF documents rather than spend hundreds of dollars on Adobe software. Free

14)    Freshbooks (www.freshbooks.com) - A cost effective solution for invoicing clients

15)    Photoshop Express (www.photoshop.com/express) - If you are a light user of photo editing software use the free online Photoshop solution. It has all the most popular tools and features in an easy to use interface

16)    If you do need to buy software have a look if the manufacturer offers discounts for students, teachers, or education. The savings can be huge. However be aware that these discounted versions cannot be used for commercial purposes

17)    Consider becoming a software beta tester to get free versions of the latest software

18)    Always search for a voucher or promo code when buying online services. For example do a search a on “GoDaddy promotion code” or Godaddy discount code” and you will immediately find codes that will give you up to 25% off domain name registration

19)    PayPal (www.paypal.com) - If you need to take payments online PayPal is now the most cost effective solution and it is much easier to get approved for an account than going to your bank

20)    Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) - Great tool for free audio editing

21)    Jumpcut (www.jumpcut.com) - Webservice for free online video editing

Website

22)    Wordpress (www.wordpress.com) Flexible free blogging solution

23)    SubHub (www.subhub.com) - An advanced hassle-free website building and content monetisation service. Easy for beginners, flexible enough for advanced users

24)    Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) - A free and easy way of monitoring what people are saying about you, your company and your competitors on the internet

25)    Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) - An excellent free webs stats package which will enable you to track all of the visitor activity on your website

26)    FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) - A free FTP solution which enables you to easily manage files on your server

27)    Get images for your site from the micro-stock photo sites including iStockPhoto (www.istockphoto.com) and Fotolia (www.fotolia.com)

Marketing

28)    Focus on building organic traffic through publishing regular, good quality articles. This will avoid you having to spend money on Adwords and other expensive online marketing

29)    Blog. If you haven’t started a blog, it could be the right time to do it. A good blog can build traffic which can be directed to your main online business

Managing Your Customers

30)    SugarCRM (www.sugarcrm.com/crm) for managing your customer information. For a simpler but paid solution try Kayako (www.kayako.com)

Hardware

31)    Buy hardware that is one generation behind the curve. The improvements in each new release are getting smaller and the out-of-date versions are always heavily discounted. In most instances you’ll never notice the difference.

32)    Upgrade your old PC rather than buyin  a new one. By simply buying a new processor and a bit of extra memory an old PC can spring back into life

33)    Consider one of the new low cost Netbook laptops which are selling for £200/$399. They are capable machines that are ideal for working and surfing on the road

34)    Buy multifunction devices where possible. There is little point in shelling out for separate printer, scanner and copier when a single machine like the excellent Canon Pixma IP610 will take care of all these tasks

35)    Keep your old monitor. Screen technology is changing slowly so you’ll probably see little improvement from upgrading your monitor

36)    Sell old kit immediately. If you have old hardware sell it on eBay as soon as you stop using it. Hardware values depreciate very quickly

Outsourcing

37)    Many simple tasks can be outsourced. If you have simple repetitive tasks that need to be regularly undertaken such as data entry or outbound calls, consider outsourcing them via websites such as eLance (www.elance.com) and oDesk (www.odesk.com) . Be wary of outsourcing big and complex software development projects. Most go horribly wrong!

Other Cost Cutting Techniques

38)    When any contract is coming to an end – mobile phone, broadband, insurance, etc – phone the supplier and threaten to cancel. Many companies have special offers to retain existing customers

39)    Turn off devices on standby. According to research 10% of all energy consumed in the home and offices is from devices on standby.

40)    Save paper and ink by printing on both sides of a sheet of paper in draft mode. Most modern printers have a duplex option which will automatically print on both sides of a sheet of paper

41)    Haggle on all major purchases. It goes without saying that you should negotiate on all major purchases you make. There are a lot of discounts and reductions to be had in a recession

42)    Offer customers longer contracts for a discount. Lock in your revenue streams for as long as possible

43)    Identify which countries are still prospering and target your sales at them. At the moment all oil producing countries are worth looking at

44)    Avoid cutting your prices; instead give away more value e.g. online businesses giveaway a free downloadable ebook to all customers. It costs you nothing, but can provide customers with significant value ( if the book is good!)

45)    Focus on keeping your existing customers happy. It is much easier and cheaper to look after existing paying customers than continually having to find new ones

Conclusion

Despite the fact that we are in a recession, internet entrepreneurs should always remember that online business is projected to keep growing year-on-year for the foreseeable future.

Be wise with how you spend money, know that establishing an online business can take time and always look for ways to make multiple revenue streams. This is the time for entrepreneurs to take some risks. A business established in recession is usually lean and mean, and very well placed to boom as the economy improves.

To misquote Rudyard Kipling:

“If you can keep your head whilst all about you are losing theirs … you’ll be wealthy, my son!”