When Losing Money is a Good Thing
Did you know that you don`t always have to be earning your maximum amount to be doing the best for your business? We tend to focus on profit above all else with our home businesses. This is understandable since most work at home moms get started just trying to make ends meet a little better each month, but the immediate promise of cash is not the only thing to look for. Sometimes, it`s actually good to lose money.
Let`s take a look at an example. Over the past few months, I`ve been sent emails asking if I would be interested in receiving a copy of a book to review. These are books on things that would interest my readers, usually about business, but sometimes about parenting or other wahm related topics.
At first, I thought no one would want to actually send me a book . . . after all, it costs money to print each one and then to ship it to Guatemala can cost $15-20! The publisher would be losing money.
Wrong. This is a case where we can learn something from the big businesses. They know that if they send out a book and it costs them $20 to print and ship it, that`s lost money. BUT, if I review it on my blog and several readers buy the book . . . they instantly make money off what appeared to be a loss. Now, At Home Mom is not a big blog, I get around 300 visitors a day, but $20 for a personal recommendation to an audience of 300 a day is still far cheaper than spending thousands on an ad campaign designed to reach people who might not even care about some business telling them to buy a book. Personal recommendations are priceless in the world of marketing.
What does this mean for you?
Don`t judge every opportunity by how much money you might make directly. Look at the big picture and think about it in terms of publicity. Getting your name and your brand out there is often worth losing a little money up front because the gains are bigger in the long run!
great post. what happened to your other layout?
i totally agree, that’s why it’s important to do freebies too. you never know where the next big job will come from!
I don´t know why, but my blog keeps reverting to the basic Wordpress template. It´s very frustrating . . . not sure if it´s a hacker or an internal error. If anyone has any insight on this, I´d LOVE to hear it. The actual code changes, since the template says it´s still my newer version, but the code reflects the basic WP theme as though someone has copied and pasted. This is the second time it´s happened now.