Oh, the dreaded ‘B’ word! No, not THAT ‘B’ word I’m talking about the BUDGET ‘B’ word. The formula for determining profit is a really simple one and the one that all budgets are based upon. Income – Expenses = Profit.

It isn’t complicated and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that there are two ways to improve your profit; (1) increase income or (2) decrease expenses. If you can figure out how to both simultaneously, please let me know how.

It would be really nice if we could just crank up the burners and make more money, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately increasing income is much harder than decreasing expenses when it comes to improving your bottom line.

Fortunately, working at home comes with some built in savings right up front. You don’t have to buy that expensive gasoline to get to and from work. You don’t have to keep your working wardrobe up to date.

You can eat a PBJ sandwich for lunch in your own kitchen. And all of these are good money-saving things that just come with the territory when you work at home.

There are, however, some other measures that you can take to help decrease your work at home expenses. Here are some money saving ideas:

•    Idea #1: Don’t buy every piece of software that comes down the pike. Most of us who work at home are software junkies. We LOVE software….all kinds of software…and before we know it we have software on top of software and more software than we need or even can use.

•    Idea #2: Don’t buy bigger programs than you need. Often programs that help us accomplish the necessary tasks are offered in various sizes. You might be planning on having a hundred employees next year but you don’t need software to manage a hundred employees this year. You can always upgrade when the time comes. Today you need to save the bucks and go with only what you need today.

•    Idea #3: Don’t spend unnecessary advertising dollars. So many times new entrepreneurs will start out running PPC advertising with absolute abandon. They will choose every single key word and phrase possible and then let the PPC advertisements run 24/7. This is a huge waste of advertising dollars.

You need to learn to read the statistics that are provided to you by search engines and gear your advertisements to only appear in search results under very controlled circumstances and only during specific hours. It isn’t hard to run up a PPC bill of several thousand dollars in a very short period of time and not make a single sale in the process.

•    Idea #4: Take full advantage of free advertising to build your business and your credibility. There are free ways to advertise that are almost as effective as PPC advertising and paid-for advertising in E-zines and newsletters. Some of these free advertising methods are:

1.    Write E-books and articles and submit them to E-book repositories and article banks for others to use free of charge. (These articles and E-books are accompanied by your resource box and includes your name and your website address.)

2.    Post to blogs and forums that are related to the products and services that you sell. You post above a signature that includes your name and your website address.

3.    A banner exchange with another website owner who promotes products and services that are complimentary to the products and services you sell is yet another method of free advertising.

4.    Build a long and impressive opt-in list. Email advertising is free but you need the recipient’s permission to send advertising emails.

5.    Learn to make your email advertisements viral. There are a great many techniques that can be used to encourage the recipients of your advertising emails to share them with friends and family.

•    Idea #5: Sign up with a good flat-rate long distance telephone service. The internet is a worldwide place of business and it isn’t hard to run up a long distance bill of several thousand dollars pretty quickly. A flat-rate long distance telephone service can save you a lot of money over time.

The bottom line here is to remember the formula for determining profit; Income – Expenses = Profit.

It’s great to increase income when you can but you can always find ways to decrease expenses if you look for them. When you spend less, you make more and that will blow your competitors away!

Posted in Posted by Mark at 9:45 AM