7 Strategic Moves That Boost Your Profits
Marcia Yudkin

Work smarter, not harder, by making small but significant shifts in the way you do business. Simple adjustments, clearheaded analysis and two minutes here and there may be all it takes to boost your bottom line. Carefully consider these options, and you should be able to implement at least one or two of them right away.

1. Drop your least profitable offerings and concentrate on your most profitable ones. Note that I said "profitable" - not those bringing in the most or least money overall. You can sort your products and services by their profitability if you analyze your expenses according to which sources of revenue they support. " Most small business owners lose sight of precisely where they are making money and where they're not," says David Shepherd, author of the book, Your Business or Your Life. By getting rid of the offerings that require the highest percentage of costs in order to deliver them, you can see immediate improvement in profits, says Shepherd.

2. Send "difficult" clients or those you simply don't like to your competitors. In a survey by David Maister, a consultant for top professional firms around the world, only 30-35 percent of respondents said they liked their clients; 50-60 percent said they tolerated their clients; and 5-20 percent didn't like them at all. "Why spend the majority of [your] life working on tolerable stuff for acceptable clients when, with some effort in (for example) client relations, marketing and selling, you can spend your days working on exciting things for interesting people?" asks Maister. You'll feel more enthusiastic about your work and get more done when you send unpleasant or troublesome clients to get their needs met elsewhere.

3. Pursue customers who can or will pay more. A consultant once told me that she'd come to the conclusion that people starting a small business simply wouldn't pay the fees she felt she should charge. I didn't agree, because I'd had clients ready to spend big on launching their new business. They were in their forties and fifties and either had a budget to spend from a company that was laying them off, or they were willing to raid the retirement fund they'd accumulated working for a large corporation. It would be possible to target others like them and make multiples of what she'd be earning from those just scraping by, but I think she just didn't believe what I was saying. Almost always, your existing market includes people who have more money or are willing to spend more of what they have for your stuff, and by marketing to people like them, you earn more for the same effort.

4. Reuse everything you create in different formats or for different purposes. If you've taught a seminar, turn your handouts into an article (that's how what you're reading came about). If you collected industry data to direct your marketing, sell your research to colleagues. If you regularly interview experts about what's new in the field, incorporate their insights into a product. And so on. "Do once, sell three times" is a shrewd money-making mantra.

5. Create an untiring army of sales reps through an affiliate program. Colleagues who don't have their own products or services, or whose offerings complement yours may be happy to promote your wares in exchange for a commission on the business that they refer. On the Internet, so-called affiliate programs make that process easy. You decide on the terms, find marketing partners who agree to them and give those partners a link to use that keeps track of leads or sales coming through that link. I use FusionQuest.com for my affiliate program because unlike most such services, they themselves take no commissions from sales coming through the program.

6. Cultivate and reward your referral partners. Two ordinary words work magic when it comes to nurturing relationships with people who regularly send you business: "Thank you." If they send you sales with a particularly high value, a gift, such as a book, a fruit basket or tickets to a show might be appropriate. How do you initiate such relationships in the first place? This can be as simple as inviting professionals out to lunch and asking them what they do so that you can refer business to them. Only an idiot would not reciprocate by turning the same question back to you.

7. Invest more to get customers who have a high lifetime value. Keep in mind that when done properly, marketing is not an expense but an investment. Correspondingly, you need to know how much you can afford to invest to acquire a customer. The smart way to think about this question is not in terms of an amount for your marketing budget that you think sounds reasonable but in relation to how much you can earn during the whole time someone remains your customer. For instance, spending $100 to lure each new customer may sound outrageous until you realize that each one spends $4,000-5,000 with you over the course of three years. With that profile, it might be smart to spend much more than $100 per customer to lure them into your fold.

Why slave away doing things the way you've always done them when you can earn more by using some of these strategies? Please let me know when you try any of these moves, with extraordinary results!

********************************
Marcia Yudkin, marcia at yudkin.com, is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10 other books. She runs a private member site, MarketingforMore.com, which supports business owners who are growing their businesses. Learn how to avoid the most common pricing mistakes in her free report, "Charge More & Get It," available from
http://www.marketingformore.com/survey.htm

Join Shared Vision Network!
Get After 12 Years, It is proven that communities provide excellent marketing environment for growing business and learning as well. Now you have the opportunity to join Shared Vision Network and give your business the right professional boost.

What is the Shared Vision Network?

1. Shared Vision Network was formed to meet the challenges of the successful entrepreneur. The company was founded in 1991 by Judy Avila Foster; on the principal of improving the personal and business lives of its communities, customers, and business partners.

2. Shared Vision Network is a membership organization that supports business owners to meet, network and share knowledge, products, services and leads on the Internet and at live events. Members are professional business entrepreneurs that want to contribute, as well as benefit, from the Membership.

3. Member activities include Networking Events, Social Gatherings, Fundraising for Local and National Charities, Shared Vision Library, Shared Vision Health, and Educational Events with a group of high-energy men and women who are making a positive difference in our communities.

What are the benefits of Shared Vision Network?

Shared Vision Network is more than a website that is to be used for posting, it's real communities. Each Shared Vision Network community has a life of its own where members are encouraged to use each others products or services, pass sales leads, share industry expertise, meet at local networking events.....

Check it here and see how you can enhance your business by joining and starting to use these valuable resources:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/sharedvision.html

Today's Tip On the Book worth having

Dating Your Money!

Learn How to Build a Long-Lasting Relationship with Your Money in 8 Easy Steps by Jennifer S. Wilkov

Most people want to make more money, try and work hard to get a better lifestyle but don't care about the money they already earn and property they already own. And in most cases, the trick is in their relationship with money and in the way they manage their money. Learn more here:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/ImportantInfo1.html

Today's Tip On the Software worth using

Forgetting What's in Your .pdf-Books? Get .Pdf Explorer!
PDF Explorer is a PDF file management software and image extraction tool.

It allows you to easily gather and add all your .pdf documents to a database file, that displays an overview of Filename, Title, Subject, Author, Creator, Producer, Creation Date, Modification Date and #Pages. You can then search through all the files, view them, batch rename them and more. PDF Explorer can also scan within ZIP, RAR and ACE compressed files.

It's definitely a very useful tool I use quite often. You can download it free here:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/WebLions/PDFExplorer.zip

Note: PDF Explorer beta 1.5 for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003

Today's Tip On Learning

Get Free Publicity for Your Home Business
You will definitely agree with me that your online business needs constant publicity. However, how to do it?

There are millions of 'gurus' around giving you myriads of 'guaranteed' secrets, strategies and advice. You apply it all and not much happens. So what now?

Visit Bill Stoller, a professional publicist and learn his simple secret to publicity. Enjoy Bill's splendid website and learn as much as you can....
http://www.publicityinsider.com/freesecret.asp

Today's Promotional Tips

Your Ads delivered straight to client desktops for free!

Get this ENORMOUS Marketing and Wealth Building Membership for FREE from FREE Desktop ADS
PLUS

• Blog, Your Heart Out for FREE! Content is king and you can make a fortune with it just by blogging. Use Freedesktopads.com Free Blog service to create massive content on the fly.
• 105 Products with Master Resale Rights
• Auto Content Site Creator
• Place your link on our highly trafficked Home Page for FREE!
• Make Money over 14,000 ways with the FREE Desktop Ads Clickbank Mall!
• Let our Squeeze Page Build Your Opt In List
• Earn Passive Income Easily
• And much more....

Check it here:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/freedesktopads.html

Today's Useful Tip

Could Your Business Survive Without You?
Your Business Survival Kit - How to Prepare for the Worst Learn how to prepare your business for survival in this FREE live webcast!

Mark Joyner presents Derek Gehl, the past President of one of the most successful Internet marketing communities on the Web — The Internet Marketing Challenge Online Community. Under his guidance, this community grew to over 5,000 paying members and over 100,000 subscribers in just two years, generating profits of $492,500.

More recently, Derek has played a key role in leading the Internet Marketing Center through hyper-growth — and generating $60 million in online sales. What was once a one-man operation is now a thriving company with over 100 employees, generating over $19,000,000 per year.

Not long ago, the Internet Marketing Center faced tragedy and possible disaster in losing Corey Rudl. Fortunately, because of particular structures put in place, Derek Gehl was able to take control and continue it's legacy.

Learn more about how you can prepare for the worst too by clicking the link below:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/derekwebcast.html

Today's Special

How Can You Boost Your Website Credibility?
Consult Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility!

10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included over 4,500 people. Check it for yourself here:
http://www.webcredibility.org/guidelines/