Dear Friend of Coffee News. Here’s introductory information on the Coffee News opportunity in South Africa.

Here’s most of the information that you will need today.

If you need more information then please use the contact form.

The cash flow scenario is not included and is available when you contact Coffee News South Africa.

Many people want to know what Coffee News looks like. This is what it looks like. Printed on both sides. Click to enlarge it.

Below the sample  copy of Coffee News please find a video on Coffee News and various documents that you can read on the Coffee News opportunity.

Coffee News Video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rrU6kcQZ4A

Download now or preview on posterous

3FOLD BROCHURE.pdf (734 KB)

Download now or preview on posterous

BASICS_OF_A_COFFEE_NEWS.doc (31 KB)

Download now or preview on posterous

cafe_flipchart.pdf (493 KB)

Download now or preview on posterous

Coffee News Basics.doc (29 KB)

Download now or preview on posterous

CN Manual Intro For New Enq.doc (86 KB)

Posted via email from The Fisherman’s Secret

onlinemarketingforlocalbusinesses-thefishermanssecret.pdf (102 KB)

About The Author: Johan Horak is a South African based WEB 2.0 Marketing Expert helping local and small businesses to create online marketing and cultivation pools to ensure that they, as fishermen, become trusted expert. In order to achieve this, he helps small business to adapt, expensive and wasteful offline advertising into effective relationship marketing, using free online marketing tools and easy-to-accomplished techniques. He combines, off line advertising with websites, blogs, twitter and other social media… to create long lasting cultivation pools of willing spenders. Johan also provide – one of one – remote support and he teaches small business people on how to use these free online tools. His objective is to ensure  that small businesses are equipped so that they become independent of these so called web experts. Contact Johan at +27 21 786 4028, email johan horak @ gmail . com or read more at his blog.

Posted via email from The Fisherman’s Secret

Image by Sailing "Footprints: Real to Reel" (Ronn ashore) via Flickr

Today I read this request, from a small business person, on cold calling. And I thought that you may be able to help.

I was wondering if some of you could help me out. When you have to go out cold calling what do you say to get the best results? I guess what are some of your lines? I have trouble sometimes not getting to make contact with a decision maker and only hand off information to a receptionist behind the desk. I am not sure if the focus should be on going in to get an appt with a specific decision maker on advertising or if you just go in and try to start selling them on coffee news. Just need some help with boosting sales.

I had a look at the request and though I may be able to help with the last part of the request, therefore I did not address the issue of getting past the gatekeeper.

Here’s my proposal on how to handle the cold call when you got trough to the main Mac:

Cold calling is like asking for the kiss on the first date.

There’s nothing wrong with asking for a kiss on your first date as long as you can handle the smacks you’ll get.

Mostly these smacks are 90 people saying no and 10 saying yes.

It become pretty painful at the end of the day as you feel personally injured because of all the nos.

But you know that.

My point is that when we expect the sale or appointment (the kiss) when we cold call (ask for the kiss) we miss the point.

By the way: Most Coffee News ads also expect the kiss on the first date and we will have to change our approach to ensure more success for our advertisers. But that’s another related story.

Getting back to your question:

What should you say when you cold call?

Here’s what I do:
————————————————————————————————————————————
Say you call and the potential advertisers answers you then start
"Hi Jane here I am from Coffee News.
I am sorry…. did I interrupt you?…………….(give it some time)
I am calling because I want to share a FREE small business marketing book with you called "Learn Why Jean Daum’s 17 Marketing Secrets Rocked The Small Business World"

Would that interest you?
————————————————————————————————————————————-

This approach means that you are not selling anything

You are pre-selling…..

You are giving and the floor is open for easy discussion

You can now ask for the contact details to send the free ebook

(You can have an ebook or a hard copy)

Then you should try and get an appointment

If you don’t get the appointment you have the email address and hope the free ebook will do the selling for you.

If you have an appointment see that as the bonus.

This is what I do:

1) Set up a blog with free tips

2) Make my cold call and offer the free book

3) Get the email address, name and phone number

4) See if I can get an appointment

5) Add the email address to the blog/newsletter

6) As soon as the email is added to the blog newsletter an autoresponder dispatch ebook

7) Once a week I publish more tips on my blog that gets emailed to all my subscribers

8) Now I can cultivate them and after some time of cultivating they will give me the kiss because they now no and trust me.

You’ll notice that the process is not focused on selling but on designing a system to create trusting relationships.

I have written many articles on the subject but this one may be the most relevant as it covers cold calling.

I am at this moment creating such an ebook for the South African small business people like the Coffee News Marketing agencies. If you want a copy subscribe to our free tips newsletter (see top right for the subscription box).

Regards

Johan Horak

Image by textile fetish via Flickr

It’s when I read stories like the one about the stay-at-home mom, the the home executive with a six-figure salary, that I realise, “many of us need to go through desperate times before we have the courage to start a home based business. Sometimes we have to be pushed. And difficult times may just be the instigator … the pusher”.

With fewer jobs available and more people feeling shut out of the labour market, many would-be 9-5ers chose to go out on their own.

Challenging economic times can encourage entrepreneurial capitalism, according to a recent study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. More than half, or 51%, of the companies on the Fortune 500 list this year began during a recession or bear market or both, according to the study.

Read the rest of this stay-at-home mom who had more to loose than most.

The day I was pushed to start my own home based business in South Africa was the day my life started. It was the day I left corporate world ——- with all it’s bells and whistles…… illusions designed and clothed to make you believe you are secure —– was the liberation I was searching for.

If you are a stay-at-home mom, a retired person, a frustrated corporate employee; may you find the home based business you are searching for.

Regards

Johan Horak

Let’s consider the new process (see diagram):

1. You have identified the target population you want to attract to your business.
2. You have designed a two step advertisement that invites people to your website to get the free report. (See Get Your FREE Report in the green box). Your ad is designed to attract people who are interested in your product but not ready to spend money yet. Instead of allowing them to pass-by you give them an opportunity to make  a small commitment that will not cost them money. They have to give you their name and email address in order to get the free gift. 
3. As soon as they give you their contact details you can cultivate them in your cultivation pool; you can now send them regular free tips giving them advice on your product/service until they are ready to take out the money and buy.

In order to use the cultivation pool you need to:

1. Agree that all people reading your ads are not ready to spend money today and that they must be brought into your cultivation pool.
2. Design all your promotional material so that it invites potential clients to your cultivation pool.
3. Create a blog/newsletter/auto-responder but you can also do it manually with a fax or answer machine.
4. Create free gifts, free reports and e-tips that you can publish on your blog from where it can be sent to your clients and potential clients.

May you cultivate those people who want to do business with you but who are not ready today. Because if you do they will not end up with your opposition.

Regards

Johan Horak

P.S. Coffee News South Africa local marketers provide a fully inclusive marketing solution for small businesses. Contact us today if  you want to take control of your marketing efforts using these ideas. Not only will we help you with the design of two step ads we will also create your cultivation pool and teach you how to use it.

P.P.S. Do you like cold calling? If you do then you are one of a few. If you don’t like cold calling then read how the cultivating pool (two step marketing) can help you become more effective when you cold calling.

Why Did We Opt For A Professional Affiliate Solution?

We wanted:

• To be able to automatically associate purchasing of a Coffee News license with the referrer. JAM will do that.
• A tool that can generate various automated referral tools for you and I will discuss them below.

Marketing Tools For The Coffee News Affiliate Program:

We have included a variety of marketing tools that you use. These should make it easy for you to go out and generate more business for you.

• Coffee News Affiliate Banner Ads
  As you may know; banner advertising is one of the most common ways of advertising online. Normally, this comes in a small graphical image format that advertises products or services. Website visitors can click on to go to a web site using your tracking code. To utilize this marketing tool we have created some banners for you upload it to our own Coffee News Affiliate Program. This will make it available for you in the affiliate members area to just copy and paste the HTML banner code onto your respective web pages. By doing this, our affiliate program would have dynamically generated your affiliate URL to be built in to the HTML banner code, giving you the proper credit for any referral that clicks on that banner from your site.

[Note:  Banner ads are impressive  but they don’t have the same conversion as Text Ads]

• Coffee News Affiliate Text Links Text Link ads are similar to regular HTML links that you click on. With our affiliate program, you can use text links that have your affiliate’s URL, so that you can copy and paste it onto any HTML document you want. This also includes Word and Acrobat (pdf) documents and links as part of your email signature.

• Coffee News Affiliate Text Ads

Text Ads are small HTML table boxes that advertise your products and services. If you’re familiar with Google’s AdSense, this is the same thing. Text ads give you the ability to publish text ads describing Coffee News.

[Text Ads has the highest conversion rates, no wonder Google use Text ads extensively]

• Coffee News Affiliate Hover Ads

Hover Ads are the new replacements for pop-up ads. These are ads that "hover" on top of your web page to grab the visitor’s attention before they browse the rest of the site. You can copy and paste the hover ad codes onto your website to advertise your Coffee News affiliate.

• Coffee News Affiliate Email Ads

Coffee News Affiliate Program allows you place email ads/articles promoting Coffee News, or send a promotion to your own respective mailing lists. These articles are populated with your own affiliate link.

• Coffee News Affiliate Tell-A-Friend

We have a built-in Tell-A-Friend option that is enabled. This is accessible through the members’ area, and allows you to send a quick note to 10 of your friends about the program.

• Coffee News Affiliate Offline Marketing Option

You also have access to an Offline Marketing Module that you can utilize for promoting Coffee News outside the Internet. This generally works by giving you an offline code that you can print on promotional  offers. When Coffee News operators redeem these offers to Coffee News SA HQ, we enter them to give the proper affiliate his / her commission.

Conclusion

As you can see, Coffee News Affiliate Program allows you to have multiple marketing tools to promote Coffee News. Leverage them consistently, and you’ll start building a nice income.

And you are invited to join this free affiliate program that will pay R5000 ($500 US) for each successful sale of a South African Coffee News license.  

Regards

Johan Horak

Do you think someone else can benefit from Coffee News? Why not register for the Coffee News Affiliate Program and send them a quick note with your affiliate link and get them to visit CoffeeNews-4u.com?  When they do and decide to buy a  license, you’ll make some easy cash, up to R5000 ($500).

Credit To JAM’s Ryan Roxas

Image via Wikipedia

Many online businesses generate huge incomes from affiliate marketing. But what stops an off line publication, like Coffee News,  making money by promoting these same affiliate products?

What is Affiliate Marketing? 

It’s an online form of marketing where you get paid to promote a product or service. In other words it’s a marketing practice where a business rewards affiliates for visitors or customers brought about by the affiliates’ marketing efforts.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Online businesses who want to sell products or services can start an affiliate program. People sign-up for the affiliate program and get an unique affiliate link (unique website address). When they share the product with their readers they give the readers the unique affiliate link to click on. When the reader buys the product the referring affiliate gets paid a commission.

How Do You Take Affiliate Marketing Off Line?

I will discuss this in more detail using three examples. Here’s the simple steps; you create an offline ad that you publish in a newspaper and ask interested readers to go online and visit your unique affiliate link.  And when they visit the link and buy you get paid.

What are the problems when you take affiliate marketing off line?

The most common issues are; affiliate links are long and ugly. But I’ll show you a way to make them short and nice.

Let’s get started with the idea to take affiliate marketing off line.

1. Do your home work and sign up the better affiliate programs.
2. Create great ads
3. Make your affiliate links short
4. Send interested people to your affiliate web sites using your unique affiliate link.

Below are three affiliate products that will explain how you can convert the online affiliate process and use it for an off line publication.

Example Number One:

One of the best affiliate programs or at least a highly recommended affiliate program is David Frey’s Small Business Marketing Best Practices.

I bought two of his products and found them invaluable. Let me use one of David’s products to introduce how I will take affiliate marketing off line:

The Small Business Marketing Bible

This is how David introduce product: …Attract More New Customers, Sell More to Existing Customers, and Bring Back Your Customers More Often, With Less Effort — No Matter What Product or Service You Sell.

When you sell one this products you will make $65 (about R600) per sale.

How do you do it?

1. You signup for David’s affiliate program here.
2. You’ll get an email with all your affiliate links and David calls YourIDNumber.
3. The affiliate link for the the Marketing Bible will look like this http://www.marketerschoice.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=YourIDNumber&u=www.TheMarketingBible.com
4. You need to replace the YourIDNumber with your own.
5. You’ll agree that the link is long and ugly. This long link will not work off line and we need to shorten it. This is what we do:
6. When you have replaced or added your ID number with your own, highlight the link, and copy it.
7. Now go and make it shorter. Visit www.bit.ly where you can do it. (You can also use the optional custom name). After I have shortened my long ugly link a www.bit.ly became http://bit.ly/mbible. This is a nice short link and will still give me credit when the sale is made.
8. Now that you have a short affiliate link you can create your off line ad and publish it in off line.

Let’s look at a possible ad for an off line publication:

How To Attract More Customers

Attract More New Customers, Sell More to Existing Customers,

and Bring Back Your Customers More Often, With Less Effort —

No Matter What Product or Service You Sell.

Get Your Copy Today Visit Us Online At www.Bit.Ly/mBible

Example Number Two:

Learn Why Jean Daum’s 17 Secrets Rocked The Small Business World

1. This is the Coffee News Affiliate program
2. You can make $500 or R5000 per sale with this affiliate program
3. You can sign up here.
4. Your affiliate link  will look like this one http://www.ilocals.info/affiliate/jrox.php?uid=YourID_1
5. Change YourID for your own unique ID that you get when you join.
6. Copy this link and go to www.bit.ly and shorten your affiliate link. You can also use the optional custom name. For this example I did not use the option, and my long affiliate link of became  http://bit.ly/2Y00n

Let’s look at a possible ad for an off line publication:

Learn Why Jean Daum’s 17 Secrets Rocked

The Small Business World

Never did she realised there will be 1100 small business

operating in 52 countries 21 years later.

Join this Proven Small Business

Get Your FREE Ebook Today On How It’s Done www.Bit.Ly/2Y00N

Example Number Three:

Are YOU Sick of Trying For Jobs in Dubai?

1. With this program you promote an eBook on how to get jobs in  Dubai http://rsaclick.nikengroup.hop.clickbank.net
2. You can make $17 for each sale
3. You need to first signup with ClickBank to get your account name. You can sign up here.
4. Now go and find your Dubai affiliate link here.
5. Your affiliate link  will look like this one http://xxxxxx.nikengroup.hop.clickbank.net and you need to replace the xxxxxx with your ClickBank account name.
6. Copy this link and go to www.bit.ly and shorten your affiliate link. You can also use the optional custom name.

Let’s look at a possible ad for an eBook:

Beat The Recession With A Dubai Job

Do You Want a 100% Tax Free Job?

Then Get a Job in Dubai.

Here is How to Start

Learn How Today By Visiting Us Online www.Bit.Ly/jKOOX

Here are a few more affiliate programs you can have a look at and take them off line as suggested above.

1. If I look at all the  money SiverSandsCasino is paying out to TV and online they are obviously making money and that’s why they also have an affiliate program. What I like about them is the fact that South Africans get exposed to this product a lot and an off line ad can ride on the back of all this exposure. There affiliate program is here.
2. One of the oldest and best affiliate programs around is Internet Marketing Tips. You can join them here and take what you need to market their products off line. They pay up to $65 per sale.
3. Mantality is “South Africa’s only one-stop online shop for the urban man”. They have interesting products to promote and comes highly recommended. Join them here.

These products may give you a head start and can add five income generators to your off line publication. Try them.

Regards

Johan Horak

P.S. A note of warning: Using affiliate marketing offline my seem to be a easy and lazy option to fill excess advertising capacity. It is. Therefore an off line publication can fill the excess capacity with affiliate products but it should never be the core income generator.

How can you sell advertising with an off line marketing medium, like Coffee News, if your advertisers cannot measure the response they get? You may ask if it’s your job to teach them or even your job to worry about it…… because they advertise all over the show and they don’t measure anywhere.

I suppose nothing stops you from selling your services even if your advertisers don’t measure response. But when your advertisers start asking questions about distribution and poor response rates then it means they want out. They want to stop paying you. And it’s all because they have no way of knowing how to measure – and you have not told them how to measure either.

Before we get to the list of possible off line advertising measuring tools lets have a look at a few loop holes. Loops that are difficult to track off line.

When you measure off line advertising response rates you have many people who could potentially bypass any of the measuring control points, listed below. It’s therefore critical to create a measuring system that caters for this. 

How Do You Improve the Confidence And Integrity of the Measurement?

Well, this is a complicated story, which we only will touch now, but will discuss in detail in another post. The summary has two angles;

1. Give the responder (person reacting to the ad) a compelling reason to reveal the source where she saw the advertisement. This can be done by offering a free gift in exchange for the revelation (sounds like a line from a soapy). 
2. Have a system in place to collect the data, analyse that data and present the data in a useful form. 

Here’s A List of Ideas to Measure off Line Marketing Response Rates:

1. Generic Phone Number: This is a radical idea. Or should I say an idea to be expanded on by a marketing mind who wants to become the marketing hub for a community. You advertise a central (call centre) phone number on all ads. Depending on the size of your advertising business you receive the calls yourself or you ship it out to a professional call centre. When you get the call you do the entire ad source checking, and provide the caller number to the advertiser who will follow-up. This can be an added benefit service to your advertisers and if you package it well you may even get a premium rate. Read this story on becoming Yellow Pages for your community.
2. Fake Extension: Your advertiser includes a non existing telephone extension on the ad that relates to a specific advert or publication. The caller does not know this but the person answering the phone makes a note of the advertising referral.
3. Bogus Name: You advertise “Call Gerty for the special”, again  Gerty does not exist.  One suggestion from previous experience is using a contact name that helps the advertiser remember which source the lead came from. For instance for Newspapers you could use "Nate", for TV advertising you could use "Teresa", for magazines you could use "Molly" and for Coffee News you can use Cathy. That way there are less data errors because the first letter of the name helps people remember.
4. Promotional Code: Try using a promo code when people contact the advertiser. Example: "Mention Coffee News to receive X". Then use different promotion codes for different ads.  
5. Coupons: If you use coupons, put a coupon code in small print at the bottom. Same idea as above, count up the coupons which have different codes for different ads. If you do direct people to a website: Give different web addresses for different ads and then replicate the page you want the person to land on at that address. Ex: www.yourwebsite.com /coffeenews.html. Using your web analytics (Google Analytics is an excellent free option and highly recommended) you can get an idea of the response for each ad. This works well for print advertising, but also can be used in many different vehicles.  
6. Online Tags: Again, if you are using Google Analytics or a similar software and sending out any electronic communications, you can "tag" the links by hyper linking a URL which sends data as to the source, medium, and ad version. Check out Roirevolution’s analytics URL builder for an easy tool which will help you build the tags.
7. Questionnaires: If you use any customer response forms or customer service questionnaires: (Which can also benefit any e-mail marketing campaigns by helping to generate your e-mail lists.) Include a question on how they heard about your business. This is a tried and tested method: 
   • Train your first point(s) of contact to ask. I have seen this be incredibly effective, but it depends on the situation. Also, remember the follow up, if possible survey past contacts for customer service, and remember to include how they heard about you. Not as good as getting the info at point of contact, but can give an additional data point.
   • In the end however, the data is only as good as the analysis. A few suggestions:  Enter all of this information together in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. Personally, I really like Salesforce.com, but there are plenty options out there and even some good free open source solutions. At minimum, excel will do in a pinch. [For another simple and effective tool consider a blog with an integrated and automated newsletter.] 
   • Data is only as good as how you use it. Many people use data for reporting, but really successful marketers use data for optimization. i.e. Where do I put my ad spend? What copy worked and why? If I A/B split test headline 1 and headline 2, what works better? etc.
   • Be careful about data integrity. It is important to be honest with how accurate your data is… the worst thing that can come about is to have bad data direct your marketing efforts.

I sincerely hope that you found this post useful. If you did, please leave a comment and if you want to add to the list feel free to do so.

I want to thank one of my friends Nicholas DeGraff at Linked for his contribution to this article. Nicholas DeGraff is the Marketing Manager, Pacific Business Centers. He provided me with the great ideas; 3 to 7. 

Have fun

Johan Horak

Author: Johan Horak is the South Africa owner of www.SA.CoffeeNews-4u.com a small business opportunity publishing a newspaper in local neighbourhoods. They also provide a marketing consultancy and training service for business who wants to adopt online marketing techniques. Tel: 0860 COFFEE (0860 26 33 33)

Image via Wikipedia

I am advertising Coffee News online using Google Adwords. And noticed that Coffee News is one of the zillions of “Work At Home Business Opportunities.”

I used all my skills to select the applicable “home business” keywords for my ad campaign. I wanted to pay a reasonable rate per click until I know what works.

Never did I realise that the keyword phrase “Work At Home Business Opportunities” is so competitive that Google can push the cost per click to R213 (about $20) just to be on the front page.

Yes.

Not the number one position, only making it to the front page. What makes this more extraordinary is the fact that I am only advertising to the South African market.

Let’s put this into perspective:

• A Coffee News ad in South Africa will cost you R200 per week and you can get between 5000 and 7000 people reading your ad.
• Google are asking R213 per click-through to my website for this small business keyword phrase.

What is the risk when you bet on “Work At Home Business Opportunities” using Google Adwords?

Online you don’t have a salesman giving the sales spiel. You only have a web page waiting to relay the message and if that message is confusing — not to the point you’ll loose the visitor and the R213. An expensive click! 

That’s why I have created a squeeze page with only one intention in mind – I want people to ask for more information. Nothing else. Not one link. Just one option. Give me your name and email address because I want to cultivate you. Now, tomorrow and the day after – until you are ready.

Without elaborating:

Paying R231 per click for the keyword phrase “Work At Home Business Opportunities” is nothing when you can convert the visitor from being an observer to being involved. If you don’t know what you do the risk is high.

Clate Mask from Infusionsoft sends me an email today: 

“After all, one of the greatest benefits of marketing is the ability to measure your efforts. And, for a business owner, this is a valuable ability.”

This reminds me of the lesson that off line advertisers should learn:

• They should measure the response to an ad
• They need to measure the conversion rates of their ads.

If not they are wasting their money.

I have seen big and not so big business waste money on TV advertising without being able to measure the number of new clients or the number of old and current returning clients.

How do you measure online marketing conversion rates?

I will discuss it in a new post.

By the way: I am not paying Google R213 ($20) for “Work At Home Business Opportunities”.

Why not?

Until I have measured all my sales tools (from the ads I placed to the final word people read and making a sale) I will not. Because I need to know how much I am spending before I make a sale.

Have Fun

Johan Horak

P.S. If you have some great ideas to share on measuring off line marketing let me know using the comment area.

Image by publicenergy via Flickr

My dad used to say, “It’s the framers eye that keeps the cow fat.”

Meaning you must have your finger on the pulse. This is where I believe a program like QuickBooks is the answer to the success or failure of a small business. You cannot run a business without being in control. You need to weigh the business, measure and drive it from a cockpit and that cockpit can be QuickBooks.

Let me share with you why I decided to investigate QuickBooks:

• Our South African small business opportunity, Coffee News, sells advertising space to small to medium neighbourhood businesses. The ad rates are calculated on a weekly basis. And the advertiser can pay monthly or weekly for periods of more than thirteen weeks. A serious time waster is the time spend collecting advertising payments.
• And then when paid in cash, it disappears before it’s recorded. Well, not in all cases but it’s easy to just spend cash in hand.
• At the end of the month you have no idea what happened to all the collected payments.
• Also, the re-sale of a small business depends on a proven record to establish the value of the business.
• The professional will keep strict records of income and expenses.
• Experienced business people will tell you that keeping records and paying your taxes is better than not knowing whether you are successful or not. 

There is more than 1 100 Coffee News businesses worldwide therefore making it easy to do research on the pros and cons of QuickBooks:

This is what they had to say:

1. “I find it to be a great tool for keeping my accounts organized and doing my bookkeeping & billing, and ability to take credit cards too. It is great that I know what the current status of my business is at all times- but I also find that I am spending at least 1/2 a day per week reconciling”.
2. “My husband does my books and he only spends about 15 minutes a night doing them. We then send just a flash drive to the accountant who makes sure we did it right. Just do it each day when you are making your list of to do things for the next day.” [I suggest spending 15 minutes everyday rather than once a week]
3. “I find it to be a great tool for keeping my accounts organized and doing my bookkeeping & billing, and ability to take credit cards too.” [QuickBooks can take not only credit cards but you have many debit options and that’s what I suggest it for South African Small Business]

How Easy Is It To Get The Hang Of Quick Books? 

This is what our Coffee News experts had to say:

“Might be worth taking a Quick Books class… They are pretty reasonably priced by Quick Books Pros in your area. Reconciling is simple and takes minutes to do on your QuickBooks.  Once you perfect the program… like anything else… it will save you money and time and you’ll be the expert!  You can find the Quick Books pros in your area on the Intuit website I believe.  HMMMMM…Maybe you could barter a lesson or two and book her for an ad?”

Some Will Tell You That You Need To Focus On Your Business

“Keep Coffee News enjoyable and farm this out. If you love accounting then by all means do this. Also, think about the extra time and energy and motivation you will have to sell the additional ads to make up for the cost of the accounting service.” [There’s a lot of truth in this statement and many people will agree but others will tell you that you need to be very disciplined and most small business owners I came across need a cash flow cockpit and the time it takes to update QuickBooks is nothing compared to the time wasted collecting money].

Another Coffee News Licensee:

“I will say there is something to be said about doing the books yourself to see where the money is going, QuickBooks gives very good reporting that can give you several snapshots and trends of your business.”

For Small Businesses, Like Coffee News South Africa, I propose:

1. Get QuickBooks Pro. The last time I looked it was R2490.
2. Get training if needed and set-up your structure.
3. Get advertisers to agree to a debit order via the bank or their credit card.
4. Offer them a small discount and extra value.
5. Make the debit order open ended.

Let’s watch the cow become healthy and fat. Measure, weigh and tweak the levers that will make you a success.