Home
>
Strategic Planning
>
8 Ways to Earn More Without Working Harder

8 Ways to Earn More Without Working Harder

Conventional wisdom has it that there are only three ways to grow your business: find new customers, increase the amount of each sale to existing customers or get customers to buy more frequently. But I've seen business owners go blank when presented with those three options. So here is a more useful list of ways to increase your total revenues without in most cases having to put in more hours at the office.

1. Charge by the project rather than by the hour. Hourly fees are a death trap for the experienced professional. You get penalized for being able to zoom right in to the nub of the problem and its solution. If you are good at what you do, instead provide customized quotes for each whole project. Most clients prefer this anyhow, so that they know in advance what they will owe you. The exception is when you can't nail down the scope of the project before getting started; in that case alone, revert to hourly fees.

2. Boost your exclusivity and perceived value. If you emphasize that you don't sell to just anyone who shows up at your door, but you have certain criteria for the clients you choose to serve, people become more eager to engage your services. Likewise, if you drive home the value that you provide with testimonials, case studies, client lists and specific results you have achieved in the past, you'll get a greater return from all the marketing you're already doing.

3. Create higher-end, higher-priced programs and options. A photographer friend of mine learned that people enjoy options to select from, and they most like to select the next-to-most-expensive option. So to increase her income from framed family portraits, she simply offered a larger and more expensive frame as the biggest option. Customers were then more likely to choose the second biggest, which cost more than the previous second biggest frame.

4. Create a repeat-billing product or service instead of selling one-shot products or services. Get clients to sign on to some sort of ongoing service plan, and you get a longer, larger return from each of your marketing efforts. For the photographer, this could be a plan for enlargements tailored for a number of holidays spread throughout the year, such as Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas and Valentine's Day.

5. Revise your current products and services for a specialized market and charge more. Whatever the industry, people believe they have special needs and therefore they will pay more for products and services specifically for them. By making small and in many cases insignificant changes in your offerings, you can increase people's willingness to pay more for your items or your knowledge.

6. Sell related products and services - your own or someone else's - to current and past customers. Hair stylists easily sell mousse and conditioner to their clients, who want to look as great when they're on their own as they do when walking out of the salon. When people buy from you, what else do they typically need to enjoy a complete solution to their problem? Mark up the offerings of other service or product providers along with your own, and your total revenues go up.

7. Make it possible for clients to prepay and "stock up" on your services or products. I pay for the next winter's fuel each summer and get a lower price per gallon, and the fuel company gets lots more money earlier. Similarly, offer a slight discount for six months or a year's worth of your consulting services, and your cash flow can instantly improve.

8. Simply raise your prices. Most entrepreneurs charge too little and are thereby earning less than they could with every sale. Raise the price of your book from $17.95 to $19.95, or of your fee for cleaning teeth from $90 to $99. Usually there's little or no resistance from your market. Sometimes with a significant raise in prices, you lose some customers but revenues increase overall. That's the goal!

Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10 other books. She runs a private member site, MarketingforMore.com, which supports business owners who are growing their businesses. Learn how to avoid the most common pricing mistakes in her free report, "Charge More & Get It," available from http://www.marketingformore.com/survey.htm .

elite cleaning services Bannockburn ...

In The News:

Uber teen accounts now feature live video streaming from the driver's camera, but encrypted recordings stay on Uber's servers for up to 14 days.

Router firewalls and software firewalls serve different roles in protecting your home Wi-Fi from unwanted traffic and suspicious connections.

A Chrome extension with 70,000 users and a 4.7-star rating began injecting fake update warnings after a threat actor acquired and weaponized it.

Amazon's Alexa+ rolls out free to Fire TV devices across the U.S., but hands-free microphones and stored voice data raise key privacy questions.

Meta's new teen accounts settlement sets a default two-hour daily limit on Instagram and Facebook, plus night mode and school mode restrictions.

The CareCloud data breach exposed Social Security numbers, banking information and medical records belonging to more than 3.75 million people.

Waymo reveals its custom 5-nanometer chip and dual computing systems designed to take over instantly if the robotaxi's primary computer fails.

Identity theft now includes account takeover, phone hijacking and payment card exposure. Here's what to look for in identity theft protection services.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

The FBI and Justice Department seized domains tied to QScan and QTRouter, tools allegedly used by China-linked hackers to breach NASA and other agencies.

Uber Eats drone delivery launches later this year through a Zipline partnership, starting in Dallas and Houston with a goal of one million daily flights.

Medicare Open Enrollment scams start with data broker targeting months before October. Learn why August is the time to remove your personal info.

The World Humanoid Robot Games' crashes show how far the technology still needs to go to be useful, "Survivor" reality TV star and robotics scientist Christian Hubicki says.

X-Humanoid's TianGong Ultra ran 100 meters in 9.32 seconds at Beijing's World Humanoid Robot Games, beating last year's winner by more than half.

A tap-to-pay charity scam is turning small $15 or $20 donations into charges of nearly $5,000, with victims losing thousands before they notice.

Kurt Knutsson shares seven emergency preparedness lessons from surviving Hurricane Katrina inside a New Orleans hotel as conditions turned desperate.

A contractor stored credentials in a Google Doc set to "Anyone with the link," and Google Search autocomplete eventually surfaced the password string.

New Orleans 911 uses Carbyne AI to triage repeat auto crash calls, but strict limits keep human call-takers in control of all other emergencies.

A single card skimmer can generate $1 million in stolen funds, and Secret Service video shows criminals installing them in under two seconds.

ChatGPT, Meta AI and Google now use memory, connected apps and past chats to personalize ads and responses in ways most users overlook today.

MagicalAuth by Glide.id uses cryptographic SIM credentials to verify bank logins without sending SMS OTP codes that scammers can intercept or phish.

A humanoid robot named Lightning Bolt ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, edging Usain Bolt's record.

An AI agent using Claude AI canceled another person's gym booking after finding a security flaw in the reservation system's authorization checks.

Trump signed a memorandum allowing vetted private U.S. companies to conduct cyber operations against foreign criminal organizations under oversight.

Your Social Security number appeared in a breach, but exposure and identity theft are not the same. Here's how identity restoration actually works.

8 Ways to Earn More Without Working Harder

Strategic Planning