Starting a Business? A Blog of Free Plans and Ideas

BookFresh.com's blog about starting and running your own business

• Phone Notification of Appointments

  February 23, 2009, by Matt Rowe

  We recently released a new feature that is available for our Business account holders that will allow service providers to receive a phone call notification when someone schedules an appointment.
  If you have your account set to Request / Deny mode, then the phone call will read off the details of the appointment, and you can accept the appointment right then over the phone. When you do this, it triggers all the confirmation emails that are normally sent out.
  If your account is set to Guaranteed appointments, then the phone call simply reads off the details of the appointment.
  Buyer cancellation of appointments also trigger a phone notification.
  I hope that everyone tries it out and let's us know what you think about the feature.

  Read More

  Posted in Advertising Your Small Business, Tips and Tricks | 0 comments
• What if the Stimulus went straight to service providers?

  February 09, 2009, by Matt Rowe

  I've been thinking about the Stimulus package that is trying to get through congress and signed into law. Many people have tried putting some context around how big the stimulus package is. Today I thought it might be interesting to our audience to put the stimulus into the context of what our service providers charge for services.
  Let's start with what would happen if we spent the $800 billion buying massages for everyone in the country! Let's assume that the price of an hour long massage is $100. So that would be 8 Billion Massages! If we presume that a busy day for a massage therapist would be six massages a day, five days a week (so each provider is giving 30 massages a week) and will take two weeks of vacation a year, that's 1500 massages a year. At that rate, we could keep 5,333,333 massage therapists fully employed for a year!
  We'd be one relaxed, and much healthier country at the end of it.
  Of course, it's not clear that there are that many practicing massage therapists in the country!
  Another way to consider the size of the stimulus is to consider another group of service providers. If we take the entire Personal Care Services (doesn't include massage, but rather day spas / salons, hair stylists, nails, weight loss / diet centers) category from the 2002 Census Data, which at the time employed a total of 535,000 people, with total revenues of only $20 billion. Given the current stimulus being considered, we could keep this entire segment, fully employed at 2002 levels for 40 years.
  Let's say that again.
  40 Years!
  That's a lot of personal care!
  I do hope that the stimulus finds it way to the service providers. I personally think that we could do worse than to take a small portion of the stimulus and send everyone in the country vouchers for a massage, day spa treatment, or some other service that is offered by one of millions of personal service providers in the country. It would at least be clearly going directly to employing people who likely need the business!

  Read More

  Posted in Advertising Your Small Business, In the News | 0 comments
• Using Craigslist and Hourtown to Find New Clients

  January 26, 2009, by Matt Rowe

  We've noticed from time to time that some of customers use Hourtown's Book Now button in a Craigslist posting to attract new clients. We have always considered a great combination between online appointment scheduling and online classifieds. It allows someone to act on your classified listing for your services, immediately from their computer while they have the listing in front of them. Since times are tight for many service businesses right now, we thought that it would be helpful to highlight such creative ways to generate some new clients. If your not certain how to get started, Craigslist, and lesser known Kijiji (EBay's online classifieds) have listings for various cities around the world. Within each city you can list your services in a Services category. When you post your listing, provide a description of your business, terms, conditions, and offer anyone acting on the "Ad" a discount. You can paste in the code for the Hourtown Book Now button, which you can find here. You might want to save the text for the listing that you create to a file that is local to your computer so that the next time you create a listing on Craigslist or Kijiji, then it's a quick copy and paste task that takes only a couple of minutes.

  Read More

  Posted in Advertising Your Small Business, Tips and Tricks | 0 comments
• Help Customers Discover Your Business

  January 20, 2009, by Matt Rowe

  We sometimes talk to service providers who say, "Online Scheduling doesn't really work for me and my business." Or some service providers say that it's too much work to put their entire schedule online. However, when we ask if they are interested in getting new customers, the answer is a universal and resounding, "Yes!" Online scheduling services also help new customers find your business and schedule a first introductory appointment. Many businesses use online scheduling for this sole purpose. Some service providers set aside specific times or days for initial appointments or phone calls. What such merchants have found is that new customers find their business or service online and online scheduling allows the relationship to start without needing to put define every last service being offered, and without putting their entire schedule online. Taking this approach makes it easy to get going, and allows new customers to find your business. Who doesn't need that these days?

  Read More

  Posted in Advertising Your Small Business, Tips and Tricks | 0 comments
• Small Business Survival Tip

  January 16, 2009, by Matt Rowe

  Keeping your small business alive and healthy during one of America's worst recessions in history will require you to change the way you work and think about technology. The businesses that survive during the next two years will be those that adapt to the needs of their clients more than ever before. Online bookings can help you do this by making life easier for your clients. Why? Because, by offering the convenience of online scheduling to your clients, you are telling them that you respect their needs and respect their time. The small businesses that survive will be those who adopt new technologies that make life easier for their clients. HourTown is committed to helping small business owners survive during these tough times. Make life easier for you and for your clients. Cut out the needless back and forth of phone tag and see what online bookings can do for your business in 2009.

  Read More

  Posted in Advertising Your Small Business, Tips and Tricks | 1 comments
• | Newer Entries >>