This article is about the importance of lowering your business expenses in all areas. Lowering your business expenses is the easiest way to make more profit with your business, but many times it's overlooked. Many business owners would be surprised how much they could save if they started cutting back and shopping around for better vendors. And the reason I say it's the "easiest" is because any business can do it, its risk free and doesn't cost anything, it just takes a little time.

The two biggest problems in this area that I've found are owner contentment and lack of knowledge. If a business owner is making $30,000 a month and they're satisfied with that, they may not want to spend the time trying to lower costs, thinking it won't add up to much anyway. Or many times the business owner doesn't even know that they could be making $50,000 a month instead of $30,000 if they switched to a new vendor. On several occasions I continued to buy maybe a shipping box or a general item from a vendor for years, later to find out that a new company came up online that sells the exact same thing for 1/2 price.

Sometimes technology changes and an internet hosting service you're paying $1,300 a month for you can now get for $500 a month. That happened to me. I could have been saving $900 a month for a couple of years if I would have switched, but the company I was using was great and I had no reason to look elsewhere. Why switch?

No matter how good the vendors or companies you work with are, you always have to be looking for better ones that charge less. Don't wait for the slow months to start looking. ALWAYS be on the look out! It's very easy to go with the philosophy, “don't fix what isn't broken.” But it could, and probably is, costing you thousands of dollars if you don't.

Here a few areas where I found you can save money in your business:

YOUR PRODUCTS

This is BY FAR the biggest area where extra profits can be earned. This is basically finding a vendor who sells the same or comparable products that you sell for a lower price. In 2000 my fashion acessory business sold over $4,000,000. We bought our products primarily from a popular wholesale U.S. company. They told us they had their own manufacturing plant in China and were giving us the best price possible, which I later found out, was a lie. Well, we later found the company "they" were buying from and we were NOT getting the lowest price possible. Far from it! Since we were wholesale the profit margin was low, but buying from this new company from the start would have made us millions more in profits! We didn't have to do anything other than order from someone else and our profits almost tripled! But many business owners don't know this game. I honestly didn't know it when I started. I call this "the lie and say anything to get your money" game. Beware of this, the vendor will continue to lie saying that you're getting the best price possible, that all other vendors are sub par compared to them in service, product quality, etc., and they may even offer you credit. Credit? I'd rather have the millions of extra money in profits!

ADVERTISING

If you spend a lot in advertising, there are certain times of the year when you should cutback, or if it's not effective stop it immediately.

YOUR EMPLOYEES

I'm not saying to give all of your employees a paycut, just make sure they have enough work to realistically make it through the entire day. You rarely, if ever, have an employee come up to you and tell you they don't have enough work for the day. 99% of the time every employee tells you they're swamped with work and they can never catch-up. But if you ever spent a day doing their job, or watching them, you'd find out that you could do their eight hours of work in five or less. My suggestion is to personally see exactly how long it should take for each employee to perform their job and require the work to be done at that pace. Then eliminate the extra employees that are no longer needed. This may sound kind of straight forward, but when you go out of business because of all of these extra employees, you'll never see ANY of them again, so don't worry if you have to let a few of them go. They wouldn't think twice about quitting on you if they found a better job out there.

PHONE BILLS

Here's something that if you never checked on it, you'd never know about it. The new digital and voice over ip phones could save you 50% or more on your phone bills, especially if you make international calls. At the very least, make sure you're getting the best plan with your dial-up phone provider. There are so many plans and they change every few months. I was paying $900 a month for a while and a little research and a plan switch would have dropped it down to $500 a month. Not a huge savings but that's $5,000 a year.

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER

We were using an expensive but highly reliable internet service provider that was charging us $1,300 a month for two servers. We were with the company for seven years and the service was great, so I saw no need to change, until I found out that at least 50 companies were offering the same thing for under $500! That was a $10,000 a year savings!

CREDIT CARD PROCESSING

The more you sell the cheaper the rate you can get. Plus the market is very competitive and many companies run specials. Even a half percent savings adds up in the long run.

SOFTWARE

There are different types of software packages that are offsite and charge you a monthly fee. Often new programs are created that you can add to your website that will cost you a fraction of the price in the long run when you drop the software you were using with the monthly fee. Always keep your eye open for this.

SHIPPING COMPANY

For the best prices, use USPS (U.S. mail) for low value light items, use UPS for all U.S. shipments and FEDEX for all international shipments. Check the prices yourself but we found the best rates if we did it this way.

Also, be sure to use the smallest boxes and lightest envelopes possible for all of your mailing.

Remember: Savings = more profit instantly. ALWAYS look for cheaper vendors and where you can cut costs, without compromising your quality of goods or services.

Prices change every week. New offers are given every week. New companies with better prices open every week, but you won't know about any of this if you don't search it out.