Save Money By Cutting Recurring Expenses

By Joe Bingham
Posted Monday, December 20, 2004

One of the greatest things about running an online business is the extremely low operating costs it has compared to a brick and mortar business.

However, there are still many tools online marketers need.

In essence, web hosting, auto responders, list servers, ad trackers, and payment processors are the basic tools we use.

There are a wide variety of services available for handling these facets of our businesses for us.

However, these simple services can add up to hundreds of dollars of unnecessary recurring monthly expenses if we allow them to do so.

Auto responder services run anywhere from $15-$30 a month. Paid list servers run anywhere from $25 a month to 1000s of dollars a month depending on your list size. That may sound hard to believe, but trust me, I've researched that topic to death and they can.

Ad tracking services rack up additional charges as well, as do payment processing fees. All these together can become quite an expense, depending on what services you use.

And while there are free services covering some of these tools, they typically are not as good, don't appear as professional, and are limited on features.

From what I see around, however, there are many who don't realize that paying these recurring monthly fees is unnecessary.

The reality of it is this. If you have a good web host, that allows you full CGI access, you can buy scripts for these tools at a one time expense and never have to pay recurring monthly fees again.

After having gone through the process of searching for the best services myself, I've always come to the same conclusion. I'd rather own a copy of a script that can do these things right off of my own site so I don't have to keep paying others to do it for me.

Yes, it may require a slightly more expensive web hosting service, but what's a few more dollars on one monthly bill in exchange for getting rid of 3-4 other monthly bills altogether?

As well, to me, it is more professional to run these things from my own site. My auto responders have my domain name in the address, not the domain name of some auto responder service. Same with my ad tracking.

All my links reflect my site, not someone else's.

The price required to purchase CGI scripts for auto responders or ad tracking or running a mailing list IS higher than the price of ONE month of service through an auto responder, ad tracking, or list server company.

But what about after 6 months? What about after a year? A one time script purchase is done quickly and paid for, usually at about the same price as 3-4 months of paying recurring monthly fees for other's services.

Even if you don't know how to install CGI scripts at this point, you can learn, or you can pay someone to do that for you. Often the script owner is willing to provide that service. While that may be an extra expense it is still only a one time fee and less than paying recurring fees month after month, year after year.

If you're in business to stay in business, it's easy to tell which is the better alternative. And that's without even figuring in the added professionalism you get when running everything from your own site.

Now, I realize everyone's situation is different, but this is something I believe everyone needs to think about. Recurring monthly fees are just plain not justified if you can get the same or better quality tool without them.

It's the same thing with merchant services that expect you to pay recurring monthly fees. It's unnecessary. All payment processors will take a commission off your sales, yes, but why pay them monthly fees as well?

To help you out, I've prepared a list of the services and tools I use and recommend. The list includes payment processors, scripts for mailing lists, auto responders, ad tracking, sending referrals, web hosting, and more. You can access it for free here: (http://www.netplaynewsletters.com/rectools.html)

I think you'll agree that trimming your recurring monthly expenses is a good idea. Some of the monthly fee services are quality and they do market themselves well around the Internet. And I don't mean to knock them.

Still, when it comes to saving money and increasing profits, don't forget there IS a less expensive alternative you can go with.

About the Author
written by Joe Bingham of NetPlayNewsletters.com I've literally driven 1000s upon 1000s of people to my web at no cost by simply promoting articles like the one you see here to other ezines. Now I'm making MY articles available for YOUR use. I write them. You use them for YOUR promotion. See how at: (http://www.netplaynewsletters.com/auctionintro.html)