How To Keep Your Small Home-Based Startup As Streamlined As Possible
Not everyone dreams of starting a business from their home that turns into a corporate juggernaut. A lot of the time people start a business at home to make more income while not sacrificing time with their family. Regardless of what you want to do in the future it is important to keep costs low and profitability high. In addition to this you do not want to have multiple staff members occupying your home office or garage on a daily basis. Cash flow is important in some businesses especially when working with clients that might have a net 30 payment structure. The following are ways to consider when trying to make your home based business as streamlined as possible.
Outsource Menial Tasks
There are going to be tasks like data mining where you can be much more profitable by having others do it. This could be a freelancer or a team of freelancers for pennies on the dollar of what it would cost to hire someone domestically. Think about your hourly value and if you could be making more money writing web content or designing websites then your time should be focused on this. Spending money in these situations can actually lead you to make more money through more valuable productivity.
Accurately Value Your Services/Products By Doing Research
Do not overprice or underprice your services/products as this can lead to overwork and clients that might expect these prices for the duration of the business relationship. Take time to reach out to similar companies in an incognito fashion to see how they are pricing their services. This will give you a good range of prices as you will know if a company is offering a much better service than yours. Never be the most expensive but absolutely do not be the cheapest as people sometimes decline to work with cheaper options as they feel like they might receive a low quality service due to the price.
Enlist Family Members That Have Skills To Help
If a family member is quite organized then hire them to work from home doing things like invoicing or getting sales contacts together. This can be on a task by task basis or a full-time basis but a family member is much more likely to accept a lower salary especially if they did not have a job originally. College students can be great to hire on a part-time basis if you need something like blog content created or social media accounts managed. This not only will give them experience but also some extra cash in their pocket.
Drop Shipping
The Money Alert notes that not needing to host inventory can save on storage and you do not have to purchase a certain amount of inventory. Drop shipping is done when a person sets up an online store and works with wholesalers. Instead of needing things in stock the shipping is left up to the wholesaler and the drop shipper takes their markup. With this being said it can be difficult to find reliable wholesalers that will ship on time and not let your customers down.