Pro-Business Tip: Help People Save Money
There are a lot more people that want to be entrepreneurs than ever will be entrepreneurs. It’s a sad fact.
There’s no one issue that keeps people from achieving the dream – it tends to be a mix of different factors. Maybe you’ve got a full-time job, a couple of kids to raise and a sick hamster to look after. Maybe you’re torn apart by inner-demons and other vices that stop you from doing it.
Most people don’t pursue their entrepreneurial dreams because of one or two issues though, when we get down to it. 1) They don’t know what to do. 2) They don’t know how to do it.
If that’s you, then you’ve stumbled upon the right site. Check out my archives for an exhaustive list of pretty-much everything you need to know about starting up a freelance business.
With that, I could probably end the article. But I’m not going to.
Let’s assume that you’re interested in freelancing or starting a business of some kind, but like the above, you don’t know what to do or how to start your first freelancing venture. Maybe, you too have a couple of sick kids, a full-time job and a hamster to raise too.
I’m going to present you an easy solution that’ll get your mind rolling, regardless of the practicalities or technicalities of being a businessperson in this article.
If You Think Business Is Too Complicated…
If you’ve ever floated the idea of starting a business around, then you’ve probably heard a few renditions of the phrase, “If it were that easy, everyone would do it!”
Starting a business isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but that’s not what stops people from doing it. What stops people from doing it is a) the fear of failure, and b) there’s loads of effort involved. People hate putting in effort, especially when they don’t know that they’ll succeed.
The hardest thing about business are the questions you have to answer for yourself (nobody can really do this for you – another thing that keeps people from taking the entrepreneurial plunge.)
Questions like these:
- How do I price my service?
- What about if they can get it cheaper elsewhere?
- How do I know I’m good enough?
- I don’t know what to sell!
- Copywriting, marketing and all that stuff is tricky!
Assuming you have a decent idea, there are a lot of hurdles – like the questions above – that’ll make you hesitant to take the plunge. Luckily, I’m going to address all those things with my next piece of advice.
It’s not quite a business-in-a-box promise, but it’s a nice simple way to get your brain working and get some money flowing into your bank account.
Find Out How To Save Someone Money
As a bootstrap-business starter (i.e. I started my business with practically no-budget and I’ve tried to keep it that way for as long as possible,) I had to find loads of ways to cut costs.
You can cut costs in pretty much any industry or application you can think of. Think about your job or your life. There are probably countless examples of wastage that you see every day and think, “Why doesn’t someone do something about that.”
Even people with no business experience find ingenious little ways to save money. Those ideas are valuable if you put them into action, and they answer all the questions I posed above.
You price your service at a fraction of what they save. Depending on the market, your overheads and what not, you might charge 50% of their savings rate.
This also means that it’s not about you or your branding – either the money-saving solution works (and provides a tangible, immediate benefit) or it doesn’t. There’s no ambiguous middle-ground.
You don’t have to worry about marketing, because your marketing message is simple. You also know that you’re providing a quality service (their profits increase) and that there’s value in what you do (everyone wants more for less.)
Let’s talk more about that.
Selling A Money-Saver Is Easy
This site is dedicated to all those evil salesy tricks that convince unsuspecting readers to part with their money. Depending on what you’re selling or how you’re trying to sell it, this can be a lengthy and complicated process.
When you’re helping someone save money, you don’t have to engage in much salesmanship. Your sales message is basically, “If you’re currently using X, I can save you $Y.”
The message is simple, and your potential customers can decide whether they want it or not based on a few key points.
For instance, I could say something like – “If you pay for an email marketing service, I can save you your monthly subscription fee with a one-time purchase of less than $100.”
I mean, you could wrap that up in copywriting dazzle, but you don’t really need to. Nor would you if you found some simple and easy way for any company or individual to save money
This cuts down on the time you have to spend worrying about marketing. It therefore adds to the time you can spend figuring out other hacks and opportunities.
Final Thoughts
The most lucrative thing you can do is to guarantee that you’ll make someone money. If you write an advert that guarantees a company will make a million pounds, then they won’t hesitate to pay you a lot of money to do that.
But that sort of skill comes with experience, knowledge, confidence and probably a bit of luck.
On the other hand, you can approximate the skill as a complete beginner – by taking expenses away from your clients or customers.
If you can charge a one-time fee for something that a company is paying monthly for, then you’re putting more money onto their bottom-line. If you can save a company $100 a month, then they could pay you up to $98 and still have more money at the end of it.
This is without doubt the easiest method to ensure you have a service that’s valuable, easy to promote and easy to establish quickly and with low overhead.