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Make More Money Using 3R

Nicole Price — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:19:34 +0000

Management consultants all over the globe stress on having good Customer Service policies and practices. Naturally when so many of these experts harp on the same point there is bound to be some good in the advice. As the profitability of the company is what essentially counts let us see what good having a well established customer service process can do to a company.

The three main benefits that a company will get from improving customer satisfaction by using good Customer Service practices are retention, related sales and referrals. Let us see how each of these factors can be a major contributor to the profitability of the company.

Retention

The first sale is the toughest to achieve, ask any salesman and he is bound to agree. However once the level of trust is established by having sold a quality product to a customer it is easier to make the second sale to the same customer. This is a natural human tendency. You stick with a product or service that has been giving you consistent performance.

For example if the cab company that you call to pick you up from the airport always has the car waiting for you when you come outside you will be a satisfied customer. You will not decide to pick up the phone and call their rival on a whim, as you are already happy with the service being provided to you. This is called customer retention. A business contact management software allows your company to trace patterns in your customer’s purchases.

Related Sales

A free online CRM allows your company to contact the satisfied customer with a product. This makes it easier for you to make related sales to existing customers. The trust is already there between the company and the customer making it that much simpler to have the customer buy another product which is related to the first one from the same company.

For instance a hotel will note that a particular customer visits them each year for a week in the summer. They also notice that the customer uses the hotel spa regularly during the visits. If they decide to give the customer an option to upgrade to a better room with some free coupons to the spa in the hotel there is a good chance that the customer may take them up on it.

Referrals

If you are happy with your product or service and find yourself in conversation with a friend who is not it is human nature to tell him about your product or service. In the above example of the cab airport pick up imagine that the satisfied customer is talking with a friend. The friend complains about how difficult it is to get a good cab service he is bound to give him the number for his own cab company.

A web contact management system allows your satisfied customers to give you names of friends who would be interested in the same product or service which they bought. These kind of referred clients already come with some kind of expectations and trust. So it is easier to sell to such customers.

Internet Scams You Should be Aware of

Nicole Price — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:48:47 +0000

There are all these cleverly worded, enticing adverts and other links on the net that lead you to pages that promise you “Easy way to work from home”, to make “hundreds of dollars a day” which you can do “working from home “ or “working Part time” etc. All of this is promised to you for some seemingly nominal sum or by asking you to pay only for shipping and handling. All this sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? Well that’s because it is! It is too good to be true; it is not true.

There is this Craiglist scam doing the rounds; when you list something to sell on Craig’s List you will receive an e mail that presumes you are making a distress sale and are in real need of money. A typical “Sob to Success Story” will go something like this: I know what you are going thru; I was in dire need, had to sell my child’s X box to make a house payment; broke my heart, had to do it or we would have been on the streets, but I never will have to do something like that again thanks to this new scheme, this simple sure shot way to make lots of money sitting at home… blah blah blah…. You get the picture.

Check the carefully worded website name my net cash blog success and then the many pictures of wads of cash a fancy new car, a check for $5000 from Google etc. Comments below also show people with similar checks but comments are now closed because of spam. Whatever.

Similar scams on Facebook: lots of little adverts in the side bar that tell you about success stories and clicking on them will lead you to a similar website where you have to pay some amount for a ‘Google starter kit’ which will have you ‘working for Google’. So you pay the 99 cents or one dollar or whatever and they have your bank details. The small print says that after 7 days a ‘membership fee’ of over $50 (approx) will be taken from your account which is non refundable. Read more about it on this Facebook page.

This site about online scams is a very interesting read indeed. There are Wal-Mart scams, Youtube scams, credits card scams. So really you need to read everything, and be very aware when you click, it could be a trick! And just remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

Make Money Online Scams

Nicole Price — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:52:57 +0000

I was thinking about all the many make money online schemes that offer you money for basically doing nothing or for doing some extremely simple and basic jobs. There are so many out there, it is fascinating how fertile and corrupt the human mind can get.

Get Paid to fill surveys, read emails, review sites: The scam works like this: they ask for an initial investment or payment and then repay you only a small part of the money. For example a site offers $15 per website you review. Reportedly it works by asking you to do an initial review of the website then never contacting you again, letting all new members earn them money from mortgage and credit card companies by free initial reviews. They only needed to pay out initially for publicity.

Make money stuffing envelopes: You of course pay an upfront fee for which you get a package containing nothing but a letter which asks you to make your own paper advertisements based on the list of sponsors they have. You send them your advertisements for approval (if they bother responding), then ask you to flood all possible locations that you can, legally with ads like malls, parks, craft shows.

Chain emails: This is the classic pyramid scheme: you get an email with a list of names, you are asked to send X dollars by mail to the person whose name is at the top of the list, add your own name to the bottom, and forward the updated list to a number of other people. The author of this scam letter painstakingly explains that, if more and more people join this chain, when it’s your turn to receive the money, you might even become a millionaire! The list of names is of course manipulated to keep X name on top…

Nigerian Scam: I found this story fascinating: You get an email from a member of a Nigerian family with wealth that is in trouble and they want to use your bank account to transfer funds. It is a desperate cry for help in getting a very large sum of money out of the country. A common variation is a woman in Africa who claimed that her husband had died, and that she wanted to leave millions of dollars of his estate to a good church. You’ll get a portion of it, they’re desperate. If you do contact them, you are asked to send across some initial sum of money in lieu of bank charges or other documentation work charges to facilitate the transfer. After you send across this sum of money (if you really are that naive!), you never hear from them again. Or if you do, it is only to ask for more money stating some reason or other.

Like I said, the inventiveness of the human mind, and its potential for corruption is seemingly endless!

Make Money Using Credit Cards

Nicole Price — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:52:17 +0000

Did you know that using credit cards can be a good way to make money? Or at least save money if you would prefer to look at it that way. Surprised? I was too until I delved deeper into the topic. Now I am not talking about just the 0% interest credit period that you can avail of when using your credit card. There are a lot more bonuses involved.

There are Cash Back credit cards that return a fixed percentage (ranging from 1% to 5%) of your purchases amount back to you! That would in effect mean availing a discount to that tune. Now if that doesn’t want you to shop more, what does?

Then you can have the Frequent Flyer cards. Your account gets credited with miles as and when you use your card. These miles can then be converted when you wish to travel. So in effect you will save on ticketing costs later.

The there are the Gasoline credit cards. These will give you a fixed discount on your gas bills and maybe other auto maintenance charges as well. With rising gas prices, this sure sounds like a good option.

If you are the sort who loves to eat out, the Hotel Rewards cards are a good bet. Every purchase adds points to your account which can be converted at various hotels and restaurants.

So with so many offers and so many banks and so many credit card companies, how do you go about selecting the best one for you? I found this site that has all the information neatly categorized so it becomes extremely simple for anyone to find the card that suits their needs. You need not visit individual banks’ websites to get the details. You can find all the options here – Juniper Credit Card, Citibank Credit Card, Capital One Credit Card, Advanta Credit Card, HSBC Credit card and more.

So guys, build up your credit score, get yourself some good credit cards and enjoy the rewards along with some 0% interest credit! If you know of any other ways to save (or make) money using credit cards, please do leave me a comment.

Need Help With Your Tax Planning?

Nicole Price — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:09:11 +0000

Spring is a lovely time of year, but it is also about this time that you have to file your taxes. Doesn’t sound all that lovely now, huh? I have been trawling the inter-web trying to find the best ways to pay the taxman as little as possible. Because, remember it is OK to manage your income in a way that you avoid paying taxes as far as possible, so you should try and get every tax advantage you can. So I thought I’d share with you any pearls of wisdom I came across on the net.

This CNN money article, is a real useful ready reckoner. It gives you information about the new tax breaks, like those for mortgage insurance and mortgage debt forgiveness. Unless you are in a really high income tax bracket, you are probably entitled to a one time stimulus tax break this year. This article has a very useful list of exemptions so check it out.

This article by William Perez talks about how one couple were able to eliminate paying taxes altogether. This article talks about how you can substantially reduce or eliminate your income tax by saving for retirement, owning a home, sending your kids to college. William Perez has compiled a comprehensive list of ways to lower your taxes with links to more details on each point, so that you can get more information of any of the basic topics he has covered.

On the official IRS site there is a tax topics index where you can seek out detailed information about whichever deduction you need for instance Topic 451 deals with IRAs. Here you will find articles about general information, IRS procedures, collections, alternative filing methods, Filing Requirements, Filing Status and Exemptions, Adjustments to Income, Itemized deductions, methods of computation and pretty much everything you want to look up.

Did you know (I suppose you did) that The Energy Policy Act of 2005 of encourages you to be green? This is how: there are tax benefits for energy-efficient homes, vehicles and equipment. Earlier you could get tax credits for buying and owning a hybrid vehicle, but that provision is now no longer in force. Apparently the government does not want to encourage you to lower emissions and gas consumption or want you to reduce your gas bill. Ah well, in a year’s time we will see a new US president, perhaps a woman or a black man (or not, who can predict?), and then there will be a bunch of new stuff to contend with!

And just to put a smile back on your lips, here are a couple of links to some tax related humor:

http://www.offthemark.com/tax/tax.htm

http://www.martybucella.com/taxtoons.html

Enjoy!

Trying To Earn Some Extra Cash

Nicole Price — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:28:22 +0000

I have written plenty of posts about how to spend money – more like how to save while spending. So how about one on earning real cash. In a moment of desperation for a shopping trip, and feeling the guilt for having been spending too much, I started to look for ways to make some extra cash off this blog. I came across Pay Per Post on another blog. After a simple signup procedure and registering my blog, I had to wait patiently for 3 days for my blog to get approved into the program. Sure it did get approved. So now I begin my quest to make some money while I continue to bring you handpicked deals and discounts.

The system is really simple and convenient. There is a marketplace where advertisers post their requirements and you can choose to write about whatever catches your fancy from amongst the opportunities available to you. You need to have the post up within 6 hours after accepting; else it is opened again to for other bloggers following your failure to put up the post within the time frame. Every post goes through an approval process to make sure it meets quality standards so as to provide good value to the advertiser. The advertisers hope that these posts across the blogosphere will help drive traffic to their sites and improve their rankings in the search engines. I am yet to check up the monthly earnings limit. They pay monthly via Paypal.

So here I go, all set to try making some extra money to fund my shopping itch from time to time. Wish me luck!