Keeping costs down is as good as securing more investment
If you want to start a business with minimal investment, there are ways you can keep the costs lower. Saving money in certain areas frees up some of your cash to invest it where it’s really needed.
In this article we will:
- Give you ten ideas for saving money when you’re launching your business
So what are the ten tips?
1. Start by setting up at home
The beauty of running an online shop is that you can do so from anywhere and when you’re starting off – why not save some money and do it from home? If you need to have meetings you can use one of the many co-working spaces up and down the country which offer meeting spaces or of course you could just go to your local cafe.
2. Drop Shipping
If you are manufacturing and selling your own goods this doesn’t apply to you but if you are selling wholesale goods made by someone else drop shipping could be a great way for you to save on initial investment.
With drop shipping, you offer the drop shippers goods on your site and when someone orders them, the drop shipper packages them and sends them out for you. It means you don’t have to invest in buying up stock, you only buy what you sell. It also saves you money on shipping and prevents ‘dead stock’.
3. Outsource
When starting off outsourcing certain tasks can help you to keep the headcount low. Hiring people is an expensive task and and are locking yourself into a long-term contract. You might only need certain skills some of the time so outsourcing makes your workforce more flexible.
Outsourcing also means you can get top expertise without forking out for a top salary.
4. Use social media for marketing
Hiring a PR company to work with your brand or taking on someone to work specifically on marketing is costly. Social media is an in-expensive way to get your brand out to your audience. It is time consuming and you will have to factor your time into the costs but it is certainly cheaper than a lot of other options.
5. Use Google Docs for office management
Most businesses use Microsoft Office to set up emails and create spreadsheets etc. But buying the software is a large initial investment which you might not need. Google Docs is largely free (there is a premium version) and you can create your email account and share documents with your team online for no cost.
6. Choose a low-cost shop platform package to start
If you are building your online shop using one of the many existing shop building platforms you can start off with a basic model and upgrade later if you need to. Services such as Shopify and Moonfruit all offer low cost models which can start as low as £8 per month. As the business grows and you need more functions you can upgrade to the next level.
7. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing means that a publisher will advertise you shop and goods in return for some commission if someone buys through their marketing efforts. It means that you can reach larger audiences and don’t pay a penny unless you have won some business. It’s a great way to save some money when you’re starting off.
8. Hire through LinkedIn
When you decide that it is time to hire someone for the business – why not use LinkedIn instead of a costly recruitment agency. There are some costs associated with hiring via LinkedIn but there comparatively small and the platform has great reach with some 200 million users.
9. Use HuddleBuy to get good deals
There are hundreds of costs that go into running a business from printing to CRM software – HuddleBuy is a site which collates a number of local business deals which you can take advantage of to lower some of your costs.
10. Use MailChimp to send out customer emails
Email marketing is an important part of customer retention and cross-selling. MailChimp is one of the most popular options when it comes to creating, sending and managing these email campaigns.
It offers its services for free for up to 2,000 emails a month which is perfect if you’re just starting out and building up your mailing list.
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