And you should always be working to push down your suppliers and get the lowest prices you can for all your products that you buy from them.  And the best way to do that is to play them off against other suppliers.  If you’re buying from one supplier, go to a competing supplier.  Just go to those guys and say, these are the prices we’re paying.  Possibly even push down those prices for the purpose of trying to get them to be even more competitive.  And just keep playing the suppliers off against each other so you end up with the lowest possible price you can get your products.

There’s of course lots of other different places that you can save money, not just from buying products cheaper.  Credit card processing.  If you’re starting to do hundreds of transactions per month through your store.  Then just saving half a percent off your credit card processing fees can add up to hundreds of dollars or pounds a month.  So credit card processing. That’s definitely one of the first places to look.

Banking.  Banks can be pretty expensive, and they charge you for writing checks, direct debits, standing orders, you name it. And quite often, if you go to another bank, they’ll be willing to offer you free banking for a year or 18 months.  So you can save money with  your banking.

Utility suppliers.  Even if you’re working from home.  You can still save money.  Because you can go on the internet, use the comparison engines to find the cheapest deals on utility bills for gas, electric, broad band, telephone.  There’s many companies now that will offer you a discount for putting your broad band and telephone and your TV as well all through the same company.  They’ll often give you a good discount.  All these things can add up to a fair bit of money at the end of the month if you chip everybody down.

Insurance.  Hopefully if you’re storing products you’ve got them all insured and your home or office is insured for stock.  But there’s always some room to save some money with your insurance.  Get at least 3 quotes from different suppliers.  And again, play them off against each other until you get the lowest possible price.

If you are renting an office or a unit, perhaps you could get a bigger discount by offering to pay for 6 months up front.  Or maybe for signing a contract that says you’ll rent the place for a year.  And try and chip down your rent.  Commercial waste disposal.  If you are selling physical products, you’ll find that you need a large bin to get rid of all the packaging and empty boxes you build up.  So make sure that you get the best deal there by again getting 2, 3, 4 quotes and picking the lowest.

Packaging.  Again, once you find you’re packaging things and sending them out, you’ll find you do go through a fair bit of packaging.  And if you can go on Ebay, that’s where we used to go to get all of our packaging.  You get some great deals on there.  It’s very competitive on Ebay and most people are importing their stuff from China.  So their prices are low.

Accounting.  Once your business does get going and you’re making some money you’ll find you’re going to need yourself a decent accountant.  And accountants have been the bane of my life.  They cost a fortune.  And it’s only recently we’ve been able to find a decent accountant that is saving us a fortune a year.  So try to go with someone that’s been recommended to you.  I recommend trying to go with a company that will allow you to do a fixed monthly fee for everything.  That way there’s no horrible surprises halfway through the year, and they suddenly give you a massive bill for dealing with your tax, your bookkeeping, whatever else they do.  If you do a fixed fee and a standing order every month, you know exactly where you are and there’s no horrible surprises.

hosting we will be very much involved with if you’re running an ecommerce website. Although you don’t want to be thinking about always going for the cheapest host, because sometimes the service can deteriorate as a result of that.  You still, if you can, want to save some money.  So look around for hosting details.  I would try to go with someone that’s recommended to you by a friend.  And see if you can save some money with your hosting.

Of course the hosting company we recommend at Net Sales Trainer, host Monster, is extremely good value.  But if you do require, for example a dedicated server, or a Virtual Private Server, then host Monster are going to be no good for you.  Because they don’t offer these services.  So have a look around on the net and see if you can get yourself a deal.

Shipping.  Once again, if you’re sending out lots of products, you can really push down your shipping costs.  It’s a very competitive business shipping.  There’s obviously lots and lots of companies doing it now.  And even if you can save just a pound or a dollar per parcel that goes out, that can add up to hundreds of thousands of pounds saved per month.  If you’re sending out an awful lot of products.  Again, try and get the best possible quote you can for shipping.

If we look at all of these ways you can try and save a little bit of money, I’m very sure that you’ll find at the end of the month, if you’ve managed to knock down everybody, you could actually wind up saving in a year absolutely thousands. But it’s something we don’t often think about.  And we just get on.  And just concentrate on making the money.  But you can also save money, and that adds to your bottom line.

So have a little look through.  All the different ways you can save money.  All of this list here.  Maybe there’s some things which we’ve missed which you think perhaps you could save some money with.  That’s module 14, lowering costs.

Thanks for watching!