Towson University

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Running your own business can take a lot more work than people realize. As a small business owner, I want to make the most out of my business, but getting our name out there and our business off the ground has been a daunting task. I guess when I was first starting out, I thought that if I had a good product and a reasonable price, I would have a successful business, but it requires much more than that. Running my own business has found me in charge of everything from the actual running of the business, to being my own accountant, advertiser and sales person. I never realized how much of my time and money was actually going to have to go into making a success out of a good idea. Well, finally it is starting to pay off, however finding a way to get the most for my money has not been easy.

The actual running of the business has been going pretty smoothly and I am finally getting the hang of the book keeping, but I am still working on getting my business name out there. I live in a small community, and in talking to one of my customers, he suggested promotional gifts. He explained to me that I could give gifts, like coffee mugs, t-shirts and umbrellas to my customers for free with my company logo and phone number printed right on them. He said by doing this I would improve my customer retention (everyone likes to get something for free) and I would get free advertising for the merchandise price. People would carry around my items and other people would see my company name everywhere. I told him I really did not have a lot of money to invest in it, and he told me about a site online where I could get small items, even just pens that would do the same thing for me. He said it was really a lot more reasonable than I would think, and its purpose was 2 fold. He said he tried it with his business and found an extreme increase in business in about a month or so.

Well, he was right and the site he told me about had some really neat items. I can't wait to start giving the stuff away. It will be so much easier than me having to go out on the off hours and try to drag in some business.