Category: News & Trends

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How Has The Economy Affected Your Business?

Has the blow-back from the US economic crisis affected your business yet?

If so what pull-back approach are you taking?

Are you cutting advertising as a result of efforts to trim costs?

Have your client account payments been affected?

These are just a few of the questions that small business owner such as myself and my clients are discussing. I had one client tell me that his own client base had just simply stopped paying on time. We have experienced several client situations where we have had to turn client accounts over for collection for the first time in eight years.

In a tough economy, such as ours, it is important to keep a cool head and focus on your business longevity. Many of us will be able to weather this storm and come out stronger, unlike some industries such as the real estate and the mortgage industry, where the crisis is so deep that some firms are being driven out of business.

So what do you do when times are tough for your business? One quick comment, it is not the US alone, but a global issue. I have chatted with several contemporaries in Spain and the United Kingdom who are experiencing many of the same issues that we are in the US in regards to draw-down and pull-back.

This is what my firm is doing:

1. Getting very proactive with slow payers to bring them into line with our payment terms.

2. Working with a collection agency for the first time in eight years to collect accounts over 90 days old.

3. Reviewing carefully our spending history. This is not necessarily a time to just routinely upgrade software. I have purchased some upgrades but made very careful selections, but others, I will defer to later or indefinitely.

4. Carefully reviewed my business profitability. If I cannot offer a service profitably, I have dropped it or realigned it to be profitable; factoring in the cost of credit card processing and overhead has been extremely important in some of my most recent decisions in regards to pricing models.

5. Stopped doing business with clients that simply will not pay on time and sap my available time with collection efforts.

What have you done to keep you business afloat in these trying times? Click add your comment below and leave me a note. I would be most interested in hearing what you are doing to move your business forward.

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AdWords Escalating Costs Force Advertisers to Yahoo

With the cost of Google AdWords for some markets and business escalating since the AdWords September 15th update, Yahoo is looking better all the time.

Here’s just one example of the many changes that we have seen happen this week since the September 15th AdWords update:

1. For bed bug extermination and bed bug related keywords in 2006 we paid around $1.25 per click, now to be competitive in the New York City market we are over $4.00 a click. Yahoo is still serving quality converting clicks for this account at about $1.65.

2. Here’s another example of the competition on AdWords since the update. For a dentist in the Washington DC metro area, Google states their account control panel that to appear in the firs page of search results they should now pay $57 per click for the phrase family dental care. Mind you, this is not to be in position one, but rather in position 11. What I don’t understand is that this same client has been getting clicks with Google showing the average ad position to be over 6 in the data and he is paying around $7 or so per click – so why the $57 note in the control panel?

3. Some accounts that we manage are totally being hammered with the update. One client who typically gets 70 to 80 conversions from Google each month is down to 20 so far month to date and we upped his cost per click twice since September 15th! Yahoo has brought in 16 conversions for him so far this month and at a significantly lower cost.

Yahoo is looking better all the time. In fact if you are not seriously contemplating advertising in Yahoo and trimming back your advertising in Google AdWords while this shakedown is occurring, it may be a good time to give it very serious consideration. I think that Google may have gotten too greedy in this last change and will be chasing out advertisers with these new cost per click figures to retain their desired average ad position.

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Peachtree Complete Accounting 2009 – A Winner

I have been using Peachtree Pro 2008 since April. I love the software and find it easy to use. By implementing an automated accounting and billing product I have streamlined my operations and have gained much more time to grow my business.

Just this week, I upgraded to Peachtree Complete 2009. I opted to upgrade to 2009 so that I would have the ability to run reports from any year range that I wanted instead of only a two year period. I opted to upgrade from Pro to Complete because with the $140 discount I got from Staples on the Complete version I was within dollars of just upgrading to Peachtree Pro 2009.

The reason for this post is to let you know what a time saver for me one of the features that Peachtree Complete has that Pro does not – Time Billing. Now I can track, notate, document, and bill my time without using a timer, a log sheet, or even creating a new invoice. I can do it all from the Time Billing interface.

I have to tell you that for my business web services – which is built around billing customers for time I expend on projects, this is a huge time saving improvement. I believe that I will be able to even increase my profitability by accurately logging my time on phone calls and email correspondence for clients with the integrate timer. But it is the integrated time logging and then customer billing that really has me going. Wow, I just cannot begin to state how effective this will be for again streamlining my business billing processes.

If you are like me, the majority of your income comes from time you bill clients, you need to automate this very important part of your business. As for me implementing Peachtree Accounting software was one of the very best things that I did this year. Not only do I have a better handle on my business and its profitability, but I have been able to minimize the time I spend on accounting and paperwork to run my business to doing the things I love which are selling and providing my services.

One quick note, I am not being paid for this review in fact Peachtree doesn’t even know I am writing it. I just wanted to share with you one of the great features that I have found and why I am so glad that I upgraded from Peachtree Pro to Peachtree Complete 2009.