(Feel free to use this article in your ezine or on your website as long as you keep the entire article including all website links intact.)
Here are 5 tips to help you increase your profits.
All 5 work for any business and they won't cost you anything to implement.
1. Joint Ventures
Joint ventures offering unlimited profit opportunities for your business. The idea of a joint venture is to partner with a business owner that is not in direct competition with your business.
For example, let's say John sells a book about how to save money at the grocery store. John could partner with certain grocery stores to sell his book at their counters for a cut of the profits.
Joint ventures are perfect for people with limited funds for their business because most ventures can be set up on a profit share basis. In other words, no up front money is spent by you on advertising in exchange you give the business advertising your offer a cut of the profits.
2. Upgrades
Commonly overlooked by business owners, the upgrade is a powerful profit producer. When people buy from your business they demonstrate trust in you and your product. Why not offer them another related product or service and gain those extra dollars for your business.
Upgrades help you service your customers by delivering valuable information they more than likely want from you.
Some businesses use upgrades as their main profit point. They sell lower priced products to get people to buy from and trust them, then offer a higher priced product (this is where they make the large profit) later on.
3. Using unused resources
As a web user you've probably come across the dreaded 404 file not found pages while browsing around the web.
These pages are a perfect example of tapping into unused resources. Almost all of these pages can be customized to redirect people back to your web site or make a direct offer.
In other words you can place a web page there that says, "Oooops! Either the page you are looking for has been removed or the URL you visited no longer exists. Use the following link to get back to our main web site.
Your Link here."
Simple, you gain traffic that would have been lost to your 404 file not found page.
Another great use for these pages is to rent them out to advertisers or you can rent out other web sites 404 file found pages and advertise your web site on them.
(HINT: Joint Venture with other sites to use their 404 pages for your sales offer.)
4. Leverage someone else's ezine
People are selling off their ezines left and right.
One way to get around the buying of an ezine is to offer to run the ezine and in exchange you will split the profits produced from it with the owner.
Once you have control of the ezine you can place advertisements for your product in it. Send offers to the list for your product etc...
It may take some time to find the right ezine and an owner who is willing to work with you on this type of arrangement. But the wait is worth the reward.
5. Use your competitors
Approach your competitors and offer to take their inactive customers off their hands. Make a note that these people are wasting their resources and costing them money by not being used.
Offer to send a letter to them offering your product and in exchange you'll split the profits with your competitor.
Again, you may have to approach quite a few of your competitors because most will not be interested in offering competitive products to their database.
Stress that these people are not making them money at the present time but rather are costing them money.
Ask to make your offer to customers who have been inactive for 4-6 months. This will help you make your point of lost profits for your competitor and the need to gain some of that money back.
About the Author
Jason Mann is a profitability consultant who works with small online businesses to increase your profits using unique and powerful strategies. Visit: http://www.majorprofitmargins.info