Starting Your Business on a Shoestring Budget

About 10 years ago it was expensive to start a business – any business. Marketing meant you had to print something and probably also buy space in printed publications. The cheapest marketing you could do by yourself probably involved printing business cards and flyers and handing them out to everyone you came in contact with. Decent business cards and flyers cost a lot of money for a one-person business trying to get off the ground.

Now marketing alternatives for your business abound. There are many ways to market your business online and reach hundreds, thousands of people easily, effectively, and cheaply. I’m big on Pay Per Click advertising to bring quality traffic to your website. For as little as a few cents you can bring someone to your website that may well buy something.

Here are some of the ways you can cut down your spending when starting a new business.

1. Pay Per Click – as I said, this is one of the most amazing ways to market your products and services for companies of any size. You can have a small account and spend $10 per day if you want. Or $2. Up to you. If you can make $30 per day as a direct result of your $10/day PPC spending you can call it a success on some level. Or, you might ramp up and be spending a couple thousand dollars per day to make $10,000 or more. Pay Per Click is something every business should become educated about. We have an online training program in PPC for you if you want to learn more.

2. Do your own marketing. Marketing is a major percentage of any new business’ costs. We will have a number of marketing courses to help you learn how to go about doing everything you can do and save yourself money. Even if you end up outsourcing the job later – at least you’ll learn what there is to it – and be able to better manage those you’ve trusted to do it for you.

3. Learn the basics about everything you have to do. Graphics, SEO, Marketing, copyrighting, lead generation and growing your business. If you’re not already up to speed on these things it will pay you both figuratively and, over time – literally to learn the basics of everything involved in getting your business ramped up. Again, we’ll offer many training programs here to help you out – some will be free and some paid. Take advantage of them!

4. Work in the cloud. Google applications mimic Microsoft’s Office suite of software and yet there are a couple of distinctions. They’re free. They’re in the cloud and accessible from anywhere you can login. There’s no need to take files with you on memory stick or send files via email – just send links to where to find them online.

Starting a business need not involve a lot of expenses that most business owners take for granted. Go out of your way to learn pieces of the puzzle so you can either do them yourself or better manage others that will do them for you. Training yourself now will save you considerable money down the road!

Starting a Business and Planning Steps

Plan Your Business

o Get Ready – mentally, physically, and getting together all the resources that will help you get started.

o Write a Business Plan – yes it’s necessary. The business plan will give you a realistic outlook and show you where a lot of attention needs to go.

Start Your Business

o Find a Mentor – ideally you’ll have another business owner in a parallel industry to help you get started. Small Business Administration in your area can help. Online forums can also help.

o Finance Start-Up- Talk to friends, family, banks and credit unions. Figure out realistic amounts of cash you need to get started and continue your new business until you get over the hump.

o Buy a Business – you might want to buy an existing business as part of your strategy. This can help in many ways!

o Buy a Franchise – Franchises can give you almost everything you need to get started – but they cost money. If you have money to invest this might be the best way to go.

o Name Your Business – don’t forget corporate name checks in your state, domain names and trademark searches on the name and words you use in your business name.

o Choose a Structure – LLC? Subchapter S? Our website has everything you need to make a decision… or you can talk with an accountant – just be sure to tell them you’ll register your corporation yourself here at this site to save yourself a few hundred to a thousand dollars or more !

o Protect Your Ideas – if you have something patentable or trademarkable… apply!

o Get Licenses and Permits – see county, state, and federal websites to see what you need.

o Pick a Location – You might be better off incorporating in another state. Florida has great aws to help small business owners get started.

o Lease Equipment – better than owning might be leasing. Look into it.

Manage Your Business

o Lead

o Make Decisions
o Manage Employees
o Market and Price – the internet is a great place to test prices.

o Market and Sell
o Understand Fair Practice
o Pay Taxes – again – your accountant can help keep you current on what you need..

o Get Insurance – health, workers comp, liability…

o Handle Legal Concerns
o Forecast
o Advocate and Stay Informed
o Use Technology – SEO, Social Media

o Finance Growth

How Long Does it Take to Incorporate?

For those visitors that fill out one of our incorporation forms on our site to incorporate their new business we’ve found it takes them an average of just 5 minutes and 40 seconds to complete the form.

That’s not much time to incorporate – to actually complete the form that incorporates your whole business empire – is it? It’s easy, but of course there is some background work that must be done before you get to the point where you know what type of corporation you want to start – and who to name as officers or members of your new business.

The choice of corporation type often boils down to choosing between LLC and S Corp (Subchapter S) corporations because these two are geared for small businesses that have a small number of employees.

Of these two – we do more of the LLC type incorporations.

Please research which type of corporation is best for you and realize, you can switch later, but it’s better to do it right the first time and save valuable time and money.