The Web Authority

Yes you can operate your business profitably even in a tight economy. The key is to understand your customers and to understand your marketplace. I have found that doing a market analysis is something that is well worth the time and effort before you consider raising your prices.

Several years ago when we restructured our blogging program, I did a market analysis. I priced out seven different blogging firms to identify what they offered, how they offered their services, and what their price structure was. What I found out was that our own services were so far below the market average that we had real room to not only pay our writers more, but to make a sideline business a core business for our firm.

Our approach has always been to offer great service but at an affordable price; one typically below the market average and when I restructured our blogging services I maintained this same model. Although we have had a few price changes and word count changes over the years, we have continued to show strong growth in this sector of our business.

Most recently one adjustment we have made is to move our older blog clients to blogging prices at a higher rate if they were not purchasing writing services for a minimum of three days a week. In this case, several clients have chosen to move back to a three day a week schedule instead of staying at the two day a week schedule at a slightly higher per post rate. Not only does this help the writer with more income and increased productivity, but helps to cover our overhead costs to monitor and manage client blogs with increased income.

By making sure that you provide great value and responsive service and are still priced below your competition you can increase your pricing to improve your own business profitability. Just make sure that you understand your marketplace and have differentiated your services clearly for the consumer so that your desire to improve profitability doesn’t end up chasing away new customers.

We operate globally and so to keep our costs down we have pretty tight control on our credit card payment processing. To pay us not only must you have a CVV code match with your credit card but an AVS X and Y match. That means that the street name and zip code must match what is on file with your credit card company.

For some global clients this has caused problems when there bank does not support AVS matching. This is where a wire transfer may be preferable. But how is a wire transfer different from an ACH or direct deposit transaction. A wire transfer is done by the paying party – the client. You the business owner supply your bank address, routing number and account number. The payee, the client, then goes to their bank and processes the transfer. The client will typically be assessed a currency transaction charge and other fees. Here in Maryland for me to send a wire transfer my bank charges me $60. For me to receive a wire transfer my bank charges a $12 fee even if the sending party has said they will pay all charges. Wire transfers are safe to do and my bank says that they are one way transactions into my bank account, meaning that the client cannot withdraw money from my account after I have shared my account information.

Now ACH is different. I am very careful who I allow ACH access to my checking account. I have one long term client and my credit card processing companies. With ACH it is possible for a party to remove money from your account tht you have not authorized. I found out however if you as a business report a fraudulent ACH withdraw in two days, you will get your money refunded to you and the bank where the fraudulent charge originated from will have to collect the money back from their client which originated the charge. Good reason if you allow ACH access to your checking to be vigilant in regards to reviewing account transactions daily or every other day.