Rules of buisness

Starting a new buisness brings great excitement, but also can bring frustration. Personally i think any new buisness which can break even or run at a small loss for the first six months is doing ok. Basicly you have no repeat buisness to start off with, and word of mouth advertising is limited to your first successes, both of which are vital in turning over a prophit. In my opinion the groundwork you are building, ie happy clients , is worth it's weight in gold.

You can spend lots of money advertising, but advertising has it's limitations, it's when mr blog recommends his friends about you, thats where money is to be made.

Take for instance the printed yellow pages, it has cost me $1100 for a year, and i have yet to receive a paying job from it. The yellow pages representitive went through the speil that it was vital to any buisness to advertise in it, that you will be missing out on huge amounts of work without it. And yet 2 months after hitting the streets it has failed me. The funny thing is that i am not alone in my critisism. Recently a landscaper called me { ironiclly he found my number in the yellow pages} when i got to the job site, he too said that yellow pages doesn't attract much work at all. in fact he gets maybe five or six calls a year, from a similar investment, a couple of which may turn out to be a paying job. His main income is found by letterbox drops.

Which asks me this question, if he knows yellow pages is not worth the $1100, why doesn't he invest that $1100 in more letterbox drops each year?

In hindsite, i would not have advertised in yellow pages. My main source of income is the internet, followed by letterbox drops.then word of mouth, followed by yellow pages. And yet yellow pages has cost me the most amount of dinero. I spose it's in people physci {sighkee} that yellow pages is a must have for every buisness. I think most people who use yellow pages are looking for a Branded buisness or retail outlet. To me, i dont see a lot of people would pick up the yellow pages and say, " um, which one should i choose?" Their are just looking for the number of a buisness they already know of, or a buisness someone has mentioned to them.

Recently the same yellow pages rep contacted me regarding yellow pages online. He knows i have an ad in the yellow pages book, he knows i am a sole trader, and he also knows i have didley squat from the yellow pages book, so now he thinks i should invest another $1000 in the internet side of things.

I know understand the tactics used by yellow pages, and although not illegal, i think it is morraly corrupt. They know more people use the internet these days then flicking through a book. So their first concern { especially to someone new to buisness} is to sign you up for the printed version of yellow pages, so once you pay your money it takes you a few months to realise it's not a great source of income, then when you tell them that they say " Well you should try internet advertising aswell " and hound you to sign up. At that stage most buisnesses would say to themselves " well shit, i need jobs somehow, heres another $1000 for yellow pages online.

I beleive the online version is the only one that should be regarded as logical and beneficial, but the tactic to sign you up for the useless printed version is unfair to small buisnesses like myself.

But hey, they are cashing in on it, making lots of money, employing a lot of people, so if i owned yellow pages i guess i would employ similar tactics.

My old boss had a great saying, whenever a costomer would compliment him or the buisness, he would say to them "please tell a friend" and the amount of people that would actually do it was amazing. I remember hundreds of costomer over the seven odd years i worked there saying

" My friend said to come here" and all it cost him was a mothful of oxygen and a smile. And then they too would become a regular costomer. So although i havent made a million dollars as yet, i have made some friends, who i know would not hesitate to recomend me to their friends.

For example, the following are a few emails i have received recently from costomers, i didn't ask for these comments, but they made them because they are happy with my services

costomer 1

"pls ring Di about an ongoing maintenance program for our home
Di has been very happy with your work"

costomer 2

"Again Thank you for your time – the house would look rubbish without your work."

Both these costomers have employed me for a job, then called me back to complete another one, and have suggested my services will be used next time. So the 40 cents it cost me for them to look at my website has paid me well,

so when you look a the big picture, advertising for small buisness isn't about forking out thousand of dollars to big companys to "not" promote you, promote yourself, look after every single costomer, because they may earn you hundreds of dollars by passing on your number to a few friends.