Cha-Ching! Save Money in 2010

Last entry I wrote about making a professional New Year's Resolution. Did your New Year's Resolution overlap with one of your business goals for this year? What?!! You didn't make business goals for this year? Shame on you! At least it's still January. Back to my point, most likely your New Year's Resolution aligns with one of your business goals for your one, three, five or ten year plan. Specific to your short-term goals, I'm willing to bet that a common theme is money. How to spend less and how to get more. Let's focus on how to spend less. Here are a few tips in how to spend less:

• Track your spending. Sounds simple enough, but do you track your expenses online and/or through receipts? Sometimes by just looking at everything you spend on a regular basis (think monthly), you can see where you are unnecessarily spending. Also, sticking to a budget that you review once every six months can help you track your spending as well. You do have a budget right?
• Don't pay full price. This can be applied to many situations including your office supplies. Need to replace your printer/scanner/copier? Check out online electronics supplier Newegg.com for cheaper-than-retail prices or with the manufacturer for refurbished items. Also, if part of your business requires you to purchase books or other media, make sure to check out Half.com or Amazon.com for incredibly cheap prices.
• Be smarter about entertaining your clients. It may be harder to stop what you're doing during the day to meet a client for lunch, but it will be a lot easier on your wallet. Lunch menus are considerably cheaper than their dinner counterparts, plus there's less chance of having a drink with that steak during lunch hours. Beers and other drinks can really add up quickly too.
• Utilize guerilla marketing/advertising/PR. This includes social media! Are you getting the results you anticipated with your latest direct mail campaign? Have you tried the low-cost guerilla marketing tool social media? (Yes, in most cases, you can access a plethora of online social media tools for free, however it takes time to create and maintain your profiles. For a small business owner, time is money.) Make sure you're signed up on LinkedIn and use the Groups and Answers area on this site. This will help get your name out and help demonstrate (in Answers) that you're an expert in your field of practice.

What do you use to help save yourself and your small business money?