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| How much do you pay yourself? | Views: 763 |
| Aug 09, 2006 10:10 pm | | How much do you pay yourself? | # |
Jerrilynn Thomas, Founder WomenPartner Int'l | | Even though most of us have virtual businesses, we have to think like small businesses. Everyday we have to drive enough traffic to our site to ensure we generate a daily profit to pay ourselves a salary and cushion for the slow times. Most times marketing consumes our business day. It's a vicious cycle that we all need to break.
Direct sales companies have found a way to reduce their marketing hours and boost their sales. They farm out their marketing activities to consultants who receive a small piece of the business pie in exchange for their marketing prowess. Regular online businesses have the option of setting up affiliate programs to create a virtual workforce. It's a slow process that doesn't always yield great results.
The smartest marketing method is to build a large personal team of noncompetitive business people you ACTIVELY network with who can refer customers to you. Passively linking to people and adding friends is completely useless. Are you earning enough money to pay yourself a salary? If not, you need to find a way to generate more referrals.
Jerrilynn B. Thomas, Founder
Uptown Women's Club Referral Network
Stop beating the bushes for new clients!
JOIN NOW: http://www.ivwcc.org/4773319_30891.htmPrivate Reply to Jerrilynn Thomas, Founder WomenPartner Int'l |
| Aug 09, 2006 10:57 pm | | re: How much do you pay yourself? | # |
Scott Allen | | I did an article along these lines a few months ago:
Time Is Money: How much is your time worth? Private Reply to Scott Allen |
| Aug 09, 2006 11:15 pm | | re: How much do you pay yourself? | # |
Robb Zerr | | I couldn't agree more. From day one I not only thought of myself like a small business, but a medium sized one. My verbiage reflects this in all aspects of my work. My clients, some of whom I've known for 10 years or more now, still don't know I work out of my home or that I've even moved it 3000 miles. They do know I refer to my kitchen as the cafeteria. And when I go get the mail I had to go to the mailroom. And when I used to sell product the warehouse (read: garage) was the Fulfillment Center.
Billing has to factor this in as well. If you're too low your pricing screams hobbyist. Too high and you'll have to defend it with a solid track record of success and great work. I pick the middle of the road and have had great success over the last years.
But just because you're a virtual, one person shop doesn't mean you need to act or price like one. And be careful to factor in all the overhead in your costs, tangible and non-tangible, or soft costs.
- RobbPrivate Reply to Robb Zerr |
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