This time of year, so many of us are focused on the big money goals, BUT this is also a great time to identify areas where you may be spending more than you need to. It’s easy to become complacent and let business expenses go unchecked, but there is potential for real cost savings by performing regular check-ins in these areas.
Join me as we discuss six areas where you may be able to trim the fat and free up money that can be used in a better way (like reinvesting in your business, or treating yourself to a nice cup of coffee.)
Listen now!
We’re at the start of a new year, and right now, a lot of us solopreneurs and small business owners have big, lofty plans and money goals for 2022. That’s great!
But, I will say, sometimes when we are so focused on these flashy numbers, it’s easy to let little things slip through the cracks…things like COST SAVINGS.
Sometimes, when we don’t deal with these things in our face day-to-day, we forget just how much we are spending. We see that annual or monthly fee on our credit card statement and we’re just like, “yep, that’s a business expense, can’t help it, gotta have it, nothing to see here, let’s move it along.”
But there are areas where you can trim the fat, cutting the spending and freeing up money to be used on other things. Here are six areas I recommend performing regular audits on to ensure you aren’t spending more than you need to!
#1: Audit Your Email List & Email Marketing Service
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I once was paying close to $1000 year on a premium plan with my old email marketing provider because I had so many subscribers. Like many other email marketing service providers, this company based their pricing on the subscriber count, and as my list contained thousands of subscribers, I wasn’t eligible for any lower tier plan and paid a premium each month to keep all these people on my list.
Now – this would have been fine, if I had been properly utilizing my email list and was making that money back and then some.
But I wasn’t. (In fact, I went months without ever logging into the email marketing thing. Big whoops.)
Make sure you’re growing your list the right way, with the right people
I had made the mistake of growing my email list really quickly, with opt-in incentives that weren’t 100% aligned with my business…so I got a lot of people subscribing to my list that weren’t really my target audience, and they had no business staying on my list because they were never going to be interested in what I was going to be selling.
Make sure you are growing your email list in a smart way. Giveaways can be good, but they also can attract the wrong crowd sometimes too, as you can attract people who are ONLY looking for free stuff and are never going to be interested in making a purchase or spending money on your service.
Slower growth is fine if it means your subscribers are more in alignment with what you do.
Don’t be afraid to delete your list
In my case – I pretty much deleted the whole dang list and started from scratch.
It sucks.
It’s a slow growth process.
But I was able to downgrade my plan with my email marketing service provider, and I was able to pay a whole lot less.
Now is the time to audit your list.
If you haven’t emailed your list in ages, maybe it’s time to start over.
Or, run a re-opt-in campaign, so you’re sure the people who are on your list do indeed want to be there.
It’s a good practice anyway, and it will weed out the people you don’t need.
Also, be cautious of spam subscribers bulking up your list. These spammy subscribers can be hard to identify if you aren’t sure what you’re doing because they look like normal accounts sometimes, at surface level. Some email marketing providers now have tools to help you with this.
You can also usually identify who hasn’t opened one of your emails in ages and just get rid of them so they aren’t clogging up space.
If all of this makes your subscriber count drop drastically — don’t worry! You can rebuild! And in the mean time, you may be able to downgrade your account and save money.
#2: Examine Your Website Plan Or Web Host
For Squarespace, Showit, Kajabi, Etc. Users
If you use Squarespace, Showit, or anything like that – you probably know that most of these platforms have different plans you can choose from.
If you’re using a higher tier plan, for whatever reason, are you fully utilizing the features that come with that plan?
Now is a good time to check and see!
If you aren’t utilizing the higher tier plan’s features and have no plans to do so in the immediate future, why not look into downgrading your account to pay less?
You can always upgrade your account again when and if you need it, and you can generally save a good $60-$100 per year doing this.
For Self-Hosted WordPress Users
For self-hosted WordPress users, you likely have web hosting. Some web hosting plans go up in price after your first year — sometimes drastically — and you may be able to find a cheaper plan elsewhere.
With web hosting, a word of caution: generally, you get what you pay for. Often, cheap web hosts do not offer quality service. And if you have an ecommerce website or another type of website that requires a lot of power and resources and your current web host is working well, I’d be cautious about moving. But, if you have a relatively “basic” site, definitely consider shopping around.
I recently shopped around for my web hosting and it ended up saving me about $325 per year. Years ago, I found out I was severely overpaying, and transferring to a new web host saved me over $2000 per year!
#3: Look At Your Paid Plugins & Add-Ons
Depending on what type of website you have, you may have purchased additional add-ons or plugins. Some of these may be on a monthly basis, while others may be billed annually.
Make sure you actually need all of the plugins and add-ons you’re paying for.
Pro-tip: because these usually have vastly different renewal dates, I suggest keeping a spreadsheet that lists the plugin/add-on name, cost, and renewal date so there aren’t any surprises. This way, you know everything you are paying for.
Be careful about getting rid of a plugin or add-on if it’s related to a feature people actually use. It goes without saying, but make sure you have a good understanding of how everything is connected and have an exit strategy for removing it!
#4: Check For Course Software You May Not Be Utilizing
Online courses are SO popular.
I had a few available years ago under another brand name. There came a point in time when the course wasn’t really popular any more, and I wasn’t getting many — if any — students coming through. I wanted to take the course down and take some time to redo the course and refresh its content, but I felt bad about taking it down because I offered “lifetime access” to students and didn’t want to disappoint. So I paid $49 per month for years just in case someone wanted to access it. (Dumb move, I know.)
Reconsider Granting Students “Lifetime Access”
I’m starting to see more people offering their course with limited access, like students have the access for 9 months or 12 months. As a course creator, this is great because it makes it easy and acceptable to pull that course down, update it, move it to another platform, etc. before making it available to students again, if I choose.
I can also not feel guilty about removing the course if I don’t want to offer it anymore.
Pull The Course Down If You’re Not Actively Maintaining It
It really does you no good, and you may be able to downgrade your plan and pay less with your course software or host.
#5: Analyze Your Ads
Paid advertising isn’t an area I dabble too much in, but I do know if you are paying for ads, you want to make sure you are on top of them, analyzing the stats and making sure they are worth your while.
Back when I sold on Etsy more, I paid for their ads to get increased sales. It worked, and Etsy tracked everything, so I could see when I got a sale that was a direct result of paid advertising. BUT when I really sat down and crunched the numbers, I realized it was barely worth it.
What’s Your ROAS?
There is a metric called ROAS, or return on ad spend.
You can calculate this by taking your conversion value and divide it by the cost of the advertising, then multiple by 100 so it is a percentage.
In easy terms: if you sell 1 $50 piece of art and you spend $10 on advertising, your return on ad spend is 500%. That’s worth while because you’re making a significant amount of money back.
(If you don’t want to do the math yourself, try this nifty ROAS Calculator.)
You have to be careful because if your ROAS is low, you’re basically paying for nothing. You’re breaking even.
AND your ROAS could be negative, too. If you spent $100 in advertising, but only sold $90 worth of stuff, your ROAS is 90% and you aren’t breaking even, you’re losing money.
It probably sounds obvious that you need to check these metrics to make sure your ads are performing well…but a lot of people don’t do it. Or maybe they do it in the beginning but don’t do it consistently, and then the market or something changes.
It also gets tricky, I think, when you’re getting a significant number of sales and income. You see those big numbers and that feels good, so we focus on that…but we don’t really focus on how much we’re spending on ads.
So the bottom line is: now is a good time to reevaluate any paid ads!
#6: Consider Eliminating Any Extras, Even Temporarily, That You Don’t Use All The Time
A lot of services, if you have a monthly subscription, allow you to pause or downgrade to a free version. Take advantage of this if you are not going to properly utilize them for a month or two.
For example, I use Loom, which allows me to create videos for clients.
But, I’m not creating those videos ALL of the time, so I don’t need to be paying for the premium Loom account every month.
I recently downgraded my account in December and into January because I knew I wouldn’t be doing much recording at the holidays. The savings is small – only $8 per month – but if I do it for multiple months, and with other things too, that money can add up quickly.
(People will hate on me for this one, but sometimes I even cancel my premium Spotify account if I know I’m not going to be listening to music a lot. Again, it’s not much cost savings at only $9.99 per month, but why pay for it if I’m not even going to launch the app?)
Bonus: Unsubscribe From Email Lists & Remove The Temptation To Buy
It’s January right now, and so I’m finding myself on a lot of company’s email lists that I never was before because I’ve done so much holiday shopping online in the previous couple of months.
I was on Urban Decay’s mailing list and I was getting marketing emails in my inbox every day. Even though I definitely don’t need any more make-up, I found myself opening the emails anyway and getting tempted to buy.
But…if I hadn’t received this email, I never would have thought about Urban Decay. Out of sight, out of mind.
Unsubscribe to all the marketing email lists you don’t want to be on to remove the temptation and keep your wallet a little fatter. Bonus points because this will reduce the clutter in your life too!