Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

If you operate a business, then you are privy to what it takes to be conscientious of all your expenses. Each month, you are fighting to keep your bottom line in the black. Especially during a recession, it is necessary to cut back to make ends meet. Here are three great ideas that use can use as bartering tools that help you reduce operating costs and help your small business stay afloat.

1. Barter for Office Space

Leasing an office or retail space is one of the biggest expenses for small businesses. Rather than leasing a full office, why not offer to perform your services for free to a company with spare office space? Ask a company owner if you could take a spare cubicle or office room in exchange for doing the company’s bookkeeping, website design and maintenance, or even copywriting services.

If you already lease an office, ask your landlord for a reduced rent in exchange for performing maintenance around the grounds. It might serve the landlord better to agree to such a deal rather than risk losing you as a tenant.

2. Barter for Services You Need

You should also consider bartering for needed services for your small business. Say that you operate a website design business. Every business needs to file taxes. Offer to build and maintain a great website for bookkeeping and tax preparation services. Or perhaps you could re-design an existing website of a financial advisor in exchange for investment advice.

3. Barter for Print

You probably have many printing needs, including letterhead and envelopes, business cards, and other marketing materials. Choose a local printer and offer your services in exchange for these needed materials. Or perhaps you could agree to have the printer put his own advertising plug on your printing jobs in exchange for free or reduced printing costs.

Bartering is as old as time. Don’t forget this classic form of service exchange and get creative in how you can barter your expertise to save on your operating expenses.

Are you still feeling the crunch from the economic and financial crisis? Although reports say the economy is recovering as of the third fiscal quarter in 2009, many small businesses are still experiencing cutbacks and reduced revenues from previous years. As a result, many small business owners say they will not have a holiday bonus for their employees.

Holiday bonuses can be a big expense for small businesses. A small business with 100 employees could spend up to $10,000 on bonuses of just $100 to each worker. And even though employees may have come to expect a holiday bonus, some businesses are giving the news that it will not happen this year.

A poll conducted by American Express Small Business Division found that fewer small business owners were planning on holiday bonuses or gifts to employees. Only 31 percent of those surveyed said they planned on giving a holiday bonus, compared to 44 percent in 2008.

And only 35 percent of small business owners planned on giving gifts to employees, down from 46 percent last year. 42 percent of those that do plan to give holiday gifts said that they will spend less on each gift, or give fewer gifts in order to save money. Average total expense for employee gifts is expected to be about $455 in 2009, which is about the same as 2008. However, compared to an average $1,483 spent on employee gifts in 2007, we see that small business owners have really felt the crunch due to the economy.

Employees who miss out on the annual holiday bonus might be comfortable with that fact if they are compensated with a suitable raise. However, most employees will be disappointed in that respect as well. Only 16 percent of small business owners said that they planned on giving raises next year, compared to 30 percent last year.

Small businesses are certainly not immune to the economic effects of a recession. As a result, employees who enjoy working for small businesses need to appreciate the job they have, and understand that holiday bonuses are a form of profit sharing. If there’s little or no profit to share, then it’s time to continue focusing on the bottom line and keeping the business afloat.

Search engine optimization no longer simply involves publishing content on your website and building backlinks. Now both Microsoft and Google have announced that they will offer real-time search results to include social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook!

Twitter and Facebook users have the ability to create a free account and post updates. These two forms of social media have been a boon for small business in their promotional efforts. By collecting followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook, a business can keep in touch with customers by sending out promotional updates, offering special deals, or just stating what’s happening at the company lately.

Social media updates are usually only seen by the people who follow a business account. However, now with the announcement from the two online giants, updates posted to Twitter accounts can have an impact on a small business’s SEO efforts.

SEO is the optimization of a website, using keywords, descriptions and links to make it easier for a search engine to rank it higher for search results. A website can obtain a higher ranking if it updates frequently with blog posts and articles, uses keywords strategically throughout the site and in articles, and contains links to and from other pertinent websites. A high search engine ranking can help a website get free traffic from specific keyword search results.

Now small businesses can use frequent Twitter updates as a means to improve SEO rankings. In addition, Microsoft said its search engine product, Bing, has an exclusive partnership with Facebook to feature information from Facebook user status updates. This means a small business with active efforts in social media may have a better handle on online marketing and search engine results.

If your small business is not connected into social media, now is the time to get started. Create a free account. Collect followers and fans. And post frequent updates. It could soon earn your website more traffic and more business.