Taking Control

Yesterday, my husband and I took a giant step that will go a long way toward increasing our business revenue. When you own a service-industry business it is easy to lose track of your billable time, and, in this case, let clients use a service for free. Why would we allow clients to use our service for free in the first place? Originally, the service we provide allowed our largest clients' clients to use our service to increase revenue. In this chain, we receive a flat fee for every transaction. We thought this model would work for us, but what we found was that our service was being used for purposes we had not intended--more than sixty businesses were using our service as a marketing tool and not making any purchases, so we were not receiving any fees. Friday night, we sent an email, with a price list attached, to all of the clients that have been using the service and let them know that their "free trial" has ended. If they would like to keep receiving our service, they will have to start paying a monthly flat fee. The phones started ringing an hour later. Monday will probably be crazy.

A word of advice: Don't let yourself be blinded by your own model. There may be more than one way to realize revenue from the same service.