A Blogger’s How-to for Saving Money in the Office (Freelancers and online sellers/marketers can also learn from this.) In the current economic gloom or downturn, small businesses to large corporations are trying ways and means of saving money by reducing expenses.  Micro-businesses (usually freelancers or one-man businesses with no employees) to large corporations are cutting down on things they don’t need.  If you are scratching your head on how to save money for your business or employer, read on.  This blog entry teaches you several ways to save money in “bad times”, including why you may want to dump Aweber.com

1.  Find Service Alternatives

Many people use Aweber.com (or similiar) to manage their email lists (they email newsletters, etc to subscribers and customers via Aweber).  This means paying month after month for newsletter-management services.  But if you install a Mass eMailing Script (on your own web server) like poMMo (a free GNU-licensed PHP script), you’d be paying just once for it to work the “rest of your life”.  poMMo is one of the most versatile Mass eMailing script you can ever find online.  Download poMMo here.

2.  Find Software Alternatives

If you’re starting to review software that you need, make a list of software that you need to use for your business.  Find similiar freeware versions of software that would do the job for you.

For example, instead of using the commercial version of Winzip, you can use 7-Zip from http://www.7-zip.org or the free open-source Tar from http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/

Another example, instead of using Adobe PDF Maker you can use one  from PrimoPDF.com (Pc need to be connected to a real printer) or OpenOffice suite of software from http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

3.  Pick up a New Skill

Review what you really need!  (NEED, not “want”.)    For example, instead of hiring ghostwriters or copywriters for your brochures or advertisements, you can learn how to write/make your own ad copies.  In the long run this will also save you a lot of money.

4.  Automate Manually Time-Consuming Work

Productivity can be vastly improved if your blog’s or website’s content is outsourced (written by people you pay to write for your content).  But you can save quite a bit if you buy and use an article-rewriting software that re-writes your articles, so they do not appear as duplicate articles (Google penalises for duplicate content).  A good article-rewriting software always guarantees your articles pass “Copyscape”.

What other manual work can be replaced by automation?  Prepare a cost-analysis to sort out expenses “before” and “after” automation (eg.  customer relation automation, payroll automation, affiliate management automation, etc).

5. Save on Appliances or Furniture!

This is often overlooked.  For example, instead of buying 3 office appliances – fax, photocopier, printer – get a 3-in-1 for your office.  And instead of dumping old stuff, re-sell them to students etc.

6.  Negotiate or Re-Negotiate by Bartering

Smart CEOs will continue to terminate inefficient staff even in this economic gloom while retaining good staff.  This is a “principle” bloggers (and freelancers) can learn from.  What is it (service or people) you can REALLY do without (or lesser of)?  What contract can you re-negotiate upon?  Are you using barter to get what you want done?

For example, a copywriter can be of service to someone who’s good in designing WordPress blogs.  The copywriter gets the blog he wants and the WordPress-designer gets the web copy he wants.  It’s a win-win situation for both without involving any cash.

Bloggers can help one another in similar ways – you can start by reviewing your relationship with others in the blogosphere.

Okie…I know what you’re thinking – that once blogging gurus highly recommend you to use this and that.  The fact is, times are changing. You can’t always be sticking to what worked years ago but that does not or may not work for you now.  Real gurus do not use nor recommend “tips and tricks” that do not or may not work for you NOW.  Ultimately you decide what you can be doing without or lesser of in terms of services, software, etc.  Think out of the box balloon!

Related Info:

Swap books, ditch cars and more money-saving ideas by Guest writer Abhijeet Mukherjee

Have more tips you can add?   Share them here by commenting!  I’d really love to know what you think!