How To Get Newspaper Advertising Cheaper Than Your Competition October 30, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentSeveral weeks ago I had an absolutely fascinating conversation with a newspaper advertising expert.
In our meeting, he laid out some of the best newspaper ad tips I’d ever heard. There were tips that can save anyone money and make things go a lot more smoothly when dealing with newspapers and other publications.
And one of the best secrets he told me — which sounds really obvious, but is still a secret to most people — is when you are looking at buying newspaper advertising, one of the things you should do is form a relationship with a representative.
In other words, deal with one person and get to know them. Let them know you and what you are doing, and try to have a real business relationship with the person. It seems such a simple concept but you would be surprised that it actually requires planning as well as good “people skills” when forming the relationship.
Ideally, this person should be a supervisor or manager of the department. But either way, that representative that you have a relationship with is going to be your best ally and will assist you in getting some great pricing. Additionally, he or she will keep you abreast of anything that may help you out such as current or upcoming specials on advertising that you may want to take advantage of.
Now, if you can’t seem to get along with the first person you deal with, you should literally ask, “Who else can I work with? I want to spend some money with you. Who can I work with?” If they won’t help you with that, go above their head and talk to their boss.
Really, the higher up you can go in the advertising department chain the better. They will be more likely to be able to get you better deals, or make exceptions for you. Especially if you are a good customer and are spending money with them on a regular basis.
So the bottom line is this:
If you do newspaper advertising — or are planning to — start trying to form good business relationships with the newspaper sales representatives of the publications you are planning to run your ads in. Keep those “people skills” in mind as you try to form relationships. Creating and maintaining a good dialogue with the other person is really the critical aspect here.
It will take a little bit of time and effort, but it will be more than worth it for you in the long run when you see the savings and advantages that result.
Copyright (c) 2006 Michael Senoff
To hear the full 60 interview with a newspaper advertising expert go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/audioclips.htm
Watch Geico Commercials October 30, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentWatch Geico commercials and the first thing that you will definitely say is that whoever produced the video really wanted you to consider buying Geico products. This, of course, is but natural, since this is what commercials are for. Video commercials are videos that are produced by certain commercial companies and aired in between local popular television programming in order to advertise their products so that people who watch these videos will want to buy them. So obviously, these commercials will contain certain instances that let the audience get an idea that they should definitely buy the product being advertised.
However, people who watch Geico commercials will notice that the trends in advertising are no longer that of the typical sales talk on television where a spokesperson usually just promotes the product personally on video. Sometimes short advertisements that do not carry direct meaning to the audience are the more effective types of commercials because they are not subject to the direct scrutiny of the viewers. Instead, these videos intrigue their audience so much that they think about the commercial that they as well as the product being promoted there.
Of course, there are those who are impressed by how the commercial was made that they enjoy watching advertising video clips like these for their artistic content, and ironically become immune to the promotional effect that was intended to be felt from watching the video in the first place. This is but proof of the rising artistic trends of the multimedia industry as well as the advertising world when it comes to conveying messages.
The easiest way to Watch Geico Commercials is with the TVChannels2PC Internet TV software. For a small one time investment you will have access to live sports, full episodes, movies, news, weather and much more. Why pay high monthly fees for satellite or cable?
5 Golden Rules To Squeeze Every Cent Out Of Paid Advertising October 27, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentMost people know that the quickest way to promote your website or even your offline business is paid advertising, but what most people do not realize is that it can also be the quickest way to sink your business if you are not doing it right. This article is aimed at giving you some tips on how to do it the right way.
1. Are you targeting the right audience?
No matter where you are advertising it is critical your ad is in front of the right person, selling ice to Eskimos springs to mind. Have a look at other ads what are they selling, what service are they providing does it fit in with what you’re offering. If it is similar or even better in direct competition with you then that is a fair indication you have found your target market.
2. Are you targeting the right publication?
Before advertising with any ezine, website or printed publication a good way to test the water is read the publication for a few issues and see if the same ads are being shown this will indicate if the advertisers are getting a good return on investment who is going to advertise over and over again if they are not seeing a good return.
3. Does your headline grab the reader by the collar, slap them around the head and say listen to me?
A golden rule of copyrighting is to write an attention grabbing headline this can be especially important when writing a small ad usually the ads are competing with other ads the publication is running so yours must stand out in the crowd. People generally scan when reading until something catches there eye. Make sure it is your ad.
4. Have you any idea which ad is working?
This is especially important when running ads in printed publications. This can be done by creating a different landing page on your website for each advert then you will know which publication is bringing you the most traffic and which converts the best. Advertising online is a little easier there are many software tracking programmes available, this way if you advertise in an ezine for example you can just add you’re tracking id to your website url and you will know which is the most effective.
5. Are you giving the reader a reason to act?
People are generally lazy and may know a good deal when they see one but unless you give them a good reason to act most times they won’t. An effective way of doing this is offering something for free people love free stuff and will usually go out of there way to get something for nothing.
Thanks for reading and I hope these points have given you ideas of what you can do with paid advertising.
Pete Moore
Pete Moore is the author of The Theory Of Internet Marketing and publisher of the Zero BS Marketing Blog. Pete Moore is dedicated to helping people who are serious about creating a successful online business. To find out more about him get yourself over to http://www.zerobsmarketing.com
Secret Web Advertising Technique That Has Landed Me Numerous, Valuable Clients October 26, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentIntensive web advertising of my writing services is how I have managed to land the vast majority of my clients. In this article I discuss a web advertising technique that has helped me bag my most valuable clients.
While it is true that there is a huge and growing demand for online writing services, it is also true that your potential clients need to find you and they also need to get convinced pronto that you can write. The web advertising strategy that I am about to reveal to you, did just that for me
The nature of online writing is such that most of the prospective clients you will come across will be looking to use your writing skills to increase traffic to their site and ultimately the sales that they achieve. I have found that by using articles as my main web advertising tool, I have been able to attract a lot of interest and clients. To start with, it shows clearly that you believe in what you preach. It is excellent practical research into the sort of articles that work best in promoting a business.
Where you post your article matters a lot if your web advertising is going to give you a good response. One site I know has consistently outperformed all others in terms of driving traffic to my sites and helping me get a response to my free web advertising articles that I post at their site. That site is www.ezinearticles.com. I still post my web advertising articles at other sites and they all give me a response occasionally. But the site I mention here is my leading site and gives me a response, that is visitors to my site, every day without fail. It is really amazing. I know that they do various things to publicize articles posted at their site, but whatever it is they do, the end result speaks for itself.
I usually post the same articles that I usually distribute free elsewhere, to my blogs. I then refer people to my blog where I have a page that describes my writing services in full including what I charge for a typical 300-400 word article. Hat page also has my email address where interested prospects can reach me.
So picture a prospect reading one of my articles on how they can promote their web site using articles as their main advertising weapon. They can immediately tell whether my writing meets their standard or not. And if they did this at another site and they find my article interesting, they will then use the information in the article resource box to find my blogs on the subject that they are interested in.
But my web advertising strategy for writing clients does not end there. Most people will not take immediate action. That’s where my valuable email course comes in. I usually run it using the popular free online auto-responder service www.freeautobot.com. For the next couple of weeks they will receive information from me in their email inbox. It is from this constant reminder of my writing services that almost 90 per cent of my most valuable clients end up giving me some online writing work to do for them.
Set everything up so that you can start using this powerful web advertising technique today. If you do it right, you will soon end up with more writing clients than you can handle.
Christopher Kyalo is a successful online writer and entrepreneur. Read the rest of this article at his blog, please use the following link:
http://100grandonlinewriters.blogspot.com/2005/10/secret-web-advertising-technique-that.html
For insider secrets on how to earn thousands of dollars from online writing, order his free email course NOW by sending a blank email to writertips@freeautobot.com. Christopher can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com
Email Advertising - The Pros and Cons October 25, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentAs what is normal with the online businesses, there are several email messages that will be sent to people. And you can be one of those who often receive email advertising campaigns and information on things which you never really asked for.
Most of these email advertisings are engaged to by the website owners in order to invite the potential customers to check out their websites and thus to improve their own traffics. In most cases, the website owners are more geared towards increasing the prospect buyers of their products and services rather than utilizing their bandwidths.
It is okay to go for email advertising. After all, this is the life of the online business. How can the business be known when no advertising about it is made? It will hence be pointless to maintain an online business if no one is paying the websites a visit. The bad part comes in when email advertising starts to get annoying.
There are innumerable cases when people receive emails about Viagra, Hoodia, Cialis, and many others when in fact they haven’t even exerted any effort on searching for details on these. The products like these are just among the most scammed ones. Yes, the internet market is filled with scams and there are still people who get victimized by these hookers. At this point, email advertising gets into the verge of becoming too frustrating.
Most of today’s consumers are brainy enough to search for the services and the products which they need and want. They need not receive many scam email advertisements in a day for things which they don’t even take interest on.
Too bad for the email advertisers, they always get the negative notion from people. There may be a lot of spammers out there who’ve got nothing good to do but it is just too unfair to judge email advertising that easy.
It pays off to recognize what legitimate email advertising is from that of the spam. The legal email advertisement is only sent to the potential consumers who have requested for details on particular products and services. The information which they asked for is of course sent to their email addresses. In short, the recipients of the email advertising campaigns are only those who display interest on the things put up for sale.
If the businessmen want to secure an effective email advertising scheme, he must be able to understand the things that he needs to fulfill. The very first thing to secure is the list of the names of the potential clients.
What you need to secure is the permission-based email list of the people who may in one way or another exhibit interest in doing business with you. Another rule to follow is that email messages must be sent to the recipients three times in the duration of 7-10 days.
Take note that it is better to tie up with an internet-based advertising company which will take charge of disseminating your email advertising campaigns. Always write things concisely and clearly.
Proper communication is all that you need in winning customers. It is also required that all the spellings and sentence constructions are correct as this will signify your professionalism. At the end of your email advertising campaign, always include a call to action. This will prompt the receiver to send you back a response.
As the email user, you must also render sufficient judgment to email advertisements. They may not at all times be spam mails. It can be one sure way of letting the product or service be known to all.
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How to Make Money from Your Website Using Advertising October 23, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentYou have managed to get your website to that magical point where you have established popularity, traffic, loyalty and a community of fans. Your site contains a wealth of information, resources and services that you provide free because that’s just the kind of person you are. You may not have intended to make money from your site but now that you have an audience you realise that it’s possible, or perhaps you have to start thinking about generating income because your costs to manage the site have increased and it’s starting to hurt.
You have been diligent over the years to build up your community and wonder how to go about making some revenue by leveraging this audience (as the marketers would say, you want to monetise your site). Maybe you have some big dreams and plan to one day generate advertising income from your new web project. This is a very common plan for online business given people tend to expect information and services to be free. Advertising may be one of the only revenue generation strategies available to you.
How much traffic do I have to have to make money?
In my experience once you have about 500-1000 unique visitors per day to your site *at least* before you can start to make real money. You can make chimps change from day one from your 50 hits, but this article is targeted at those that have a larger audience, or perhaps are constructing a business plan (either real or in your head) and would like to know how to go about monetising your website. If you get more then 1000 unique visitors a day chances are you already make money from your site (if not you should be!) but my points are still relevant.
As per usual I will illustrate my article using real world examples from what I did to make money. Over about five years I managed a hobby site that started off as a very local site focusing on people in my area that played the game Magic: The Gathering. I wrote reports and did news coverage for the game. Later I expanded the site to Australia and eventually opened it to the world although it remained mostly Australian with a good chunk of Asians and New Zealanders.
Banner programs
At around the time I was getting 500 unique visitors a day I decided to start playing with advertising methods. This was before the advent of Google Adsense (more on this later) but there were many banner programs available that paid either on cost per click (CPC) or per impression basis. An impression is a banner being displayed to a user once, a click is someone clicking the banner and visiting the site being advertised.
These networks act as a middle man between business that want to advertise and people like me that have an audience and want to make some money by displaying banners. Unfortunately these programs display banners that often don’t match your audience. I tried a few but it was a short lived experiment that made me a few dollars if that.
I recommend you avoid any banner programs. If you are confused about what I am talking about regarding banner programs do a search for Burst Media to get a grasp of how they work. For small sites they just don’t make much money. For large sites there are much better ways to make money. There are people out there that make good money from these programs (I’m sure the program owners do!) but in my experience a little effort to find the right type of advertising can yield much better results.
I decided the best way to make money was to really leverage the demographics of my audience. I had a fairly focused niche, card game playing young males. I started by emailing all the local and international card game shops and asked if they were interested in exposure to my market. Instantly I had responses but I had to come up with a pricing structure first.
How much should you charge?
By this time my site was getting close to 1000 unique visitors per day, with about 300,000 impressions per month. I had done my research and I knew that advertising on websites was usually via the standard 468Ã-60 banner so I would start with that. I also knew that many companies charged by what is called CPM or cost per 1000 impressions. Back then this was by far the most commonly used scale for pricing of web advertising and you could expect to earn anywhere from $0.10 to $10.00 CPM. I never liked this method of advertising because it didn’t guarantee any visitors. Charging by click-throughs is a far better method, but didn’t become mainstream until later. I decided that in order to keep my advertisers I had to offer value so I went for a blanket approach. I started charging a flat rate of $30 per month to have a banner on my site which offered as many impressions that my traffic could provide. I signed up my first few advertisers at this rate.
Banner management software
In order to “rotate” different banners across my site I needed some special software that would dynamically place banners. This allowed me to have more than one advertiser banner in a single location so I could optimise my adspace and make sure my audience didn’t get too bored from seeing the same banner over and over again.
Let me save you some time, phpAdsNew is the best banner management software out there. It’s under an open source license and has all the features you could ever wish for at a price you can’t beat, it’s free. If you don’t believe me and absolutely have to try searching elsewhere try searching the PHP Resource Index.
There is a learning curve with phpAdsNew and you do have to install it on your own server. If you are like me and you do things like this yourself most of the time you shouldn’t have too much trouble. Otherwise you might try contacting your favourite ITGeek and get them to give you a hand.
Statistics are important
The best feature with phpAdsNew is that it allows you to provide a unique user login for your advertisers to check their banner statistics in real time. This means at any point in time they can learn how many impressions and clicks there banners are receiving from your site.
Before you start searching for advertisers you should be very familiar with the statistics of your site. Do you know how many unique visitors you get? How many hits you get? How many impressions? Do you even know what the differences are between these? Try this stats terminology primer on for size if you don’t.
Most web servers come with a statistics package. Ask your web host if you don’t know. The most common are Awstats and Webalizer which often are preinstalled on many hosting packages. Become familiar with these packages so you can accurately assess your site traffic.
Increasing ad revenue
I now had the foundations laid and was serving the ads of my first few advertisers. From the point onwards I went to work attracting more advertisers by directly emailing North American online card stores and other related sites. I kept an Excel file to track which websites I had emailed and their responses so I could follow up in a timely manner.
I created new banner positions and started initiatives like a newsletter to generate more revenue. I created monthly packages that combined newsletter advertising and different banner positions and offered them at $500 per quarter. I increased the top prime banner position fee to $50 and started offering a tower banner position for $50 as well. Eventually I had to limit the number of banners I could take in the prime positions to avoid dilution. I had a guarantee in place that offered at least 30,000 impressions per month (averaging 40,000-60,000) to advertisers so that they always received a good equivalent CPM rate. I even had some advertisers purchase the rights to “own” a position for a certain period to make sure no other advertisers banners would be displayed.
Eventually I reached a point where I was averaging $500 per month and peaked at $1000 in one month. Some advertisers came and went quickly but many stayed loyal and in fact still advertise today though I sold the site a long time ago. The niche for the site was so focused that it became the pre-eminent site for Australia in it’s marketplace and consequently some Australian advertisers simply stuck their banners up as a branding exercise. They knew that the exposure from the site would help to align their business as one of the pre-eminent retailers or event organisers for the game. Some advertisers stopped caring about click through stats and kept advertising purely for the branding exposure.
Google adsense
At some point Google Adsense popped up and I was in with other early adopters to try it out. My results were okay. The money wasn’t nearly as good as the established relationships with advertisers I had, however the ads being displayed were a lot more targeted than banner networks. I eventually stopped using Adsense because I could better monetise the adspace with my traditional advertisers. However that was before Google went to work providing such a variety of banner sizes and display options. Nowadays Google Adsense is a viable income source for many websites so I definitely suggest you look into it as a possible option for generating revenue but remember it’s not the only means and you can earn more if you get busy chasing targeted advertisers.
Ongoing maintenance
I wouldn’t call web advertising income passive, but it sure is close. The systems I had in place handled everything automatically. While I did have to manually create advertiser accounts, pursue advertisers and control billing, once the systems were in place, in particular phpAdsNew, I didn’t have to do much. Of course depending on your website often the maintenance of your community is were the labour is involved, but chances are if you started the site you either enjoy it or have plans in place to eventually remove yourself from the maintenance role. In the end I sold off my site but if it wasn’t for the advertiser revenue my asset would not have been valued nearly as highly as the final sale price. Investing in advertising is like investing in any asset, the time and labour you put in today will lead to benefits in the future.
By Yaro Starak
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
Do you want to profit from your own successful home based Internet business?
Learn from Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. He works part time from home on several web based business that generate between $2,000 and $8,000 per month. Get your free articles and audio now - visit his Internet Business Blog.
Advertising a Business Through Flyers October 22, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentFlyers most certainly are a excellent marketing tool to promote your business and the products and services you may have.
Also a massive bonus is that you have fun whilst making money which you must agree it is always a bonus. Fill them with colour on both sides in order to keep the customer logged in and maintain a positive attitude towards your business. Here is a important tip 52% of people don’t always care about the product they are simply influenced by the way the business is presented.
If you do not feel up to producing your own flyer then there are companies that will produce them for you.
A top tip that I would give is do not ever put to much information because some people do not have time to read it all you just need to be short and sweet quite literally.
There are many things that flyers can be used for such as trade show giveaways, product sheets, Information guides and presentation hand outs.
You also select the shape and size that you want your flyer to be. This is important for your financial perspective. As well as selecting weather you want them folded or not.
A important thing to do on any flyer is always enhance a unique style effect as this will give people good impressions. Where I am from
Comic Sans Ms has been on posters so long I am sick of it and posters with this do not grab my attention. Fonts like ‘Times New Roman’ which is exceedingly formal! Or I opt for Bradley hand as this give a stylish look I think. But your business is different so consider your font!
Click Here to design your flyer!
Home Business Tips - No Pride, No Profits October 22, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentOkay, rant time coming. I get on these every once in a while, so if you don’t want to hear me going on about this subject, you can click on the little X at the top right hand corner of your screen. Otherwise, you might want to read this article. You may very well be killing your home business without realizing it. So pay attention because I just may be saving you a ton of grief.
A lot of home business owner make the mistake of putting together crappy products and services because it’s quick and easy and they figure nobody will notice. After all, it’s just as easy to put together something that is substandard as it is to put together something of quality, right? And besides, who would notice anyway? Most people when they buy things wouldn’t know quality anyway. And even if they didn’t think the product was all that good, they wouldn’t return it and they wouldn’t go bad mouthing it to others, right?
The truth is, a bad product or service can pretty much kill your business right out of the gate. Believe it or not, people DO ask for refunds and people DO talk. Bad publicity, in spite of what many people think, can destroy your business. Think I’m kidding? Go look up some famous and infamous names of Internet business owners and you’ll find some pretty horrible stories of scams and people who were literally forced to retreat to the islands in order to avoid prosecution.
And the truth is, it doesn’t really take that much more effort to make a product of real quality. And if you do take pride in your work, it will show. People will talk about your product…in a good way. Refunds will be much lower. You’ll start to notice that there are blogs popping up about your products. And the best part is, affiliate marketers will want to promote your products. So you’ll make even more money because you have such a great reputation.
So please do yourself a favor. Don’t skimp. Don’t put out shoddy products. You’re only going to hurt yourself in the long run.
No pride, no profits. You can take that one to the bank.
To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim
Tired of busting your behind for peanuts online? Go to my web site and find out how I earn a monthly income that exceeds 5 figures and how I can help YOU do the same. Get your free report at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/report.html
Internet Marketing - Top Ten Squidoo Marketing Tips October 21, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentWhy Squidoo? Well, since they launched the site has been an absolute Internet
marketing phenomena.
Google loves Squidoo and it’s f-ree!
It is still one of the easiest ways to get to the top of the rankings for a long tail keyword, quickly and with the minimum of effort. However, it is a good idea to do a little more than just put a page up, so here are my top 10 Squidoo Marketing Tips:
1. Always create your Squidoo page with the keyword as your title.
2. Make sure your content is keyword focused. It is a good idea to keep adding fresh content on a regular basis. (But as always, be cognizant of your return on the time invested. It is no good spending hours dominating the search engines for a phase like
‘left handed basket weaving’. Sure you’ll be number 1, but who will care?)
3. The higher your ranking in your Squidoo category the higher you will rank in Google. (That same principle is being used by Google more and more, for example, videos have to become popular FIRST before being ranked in Google).
4. When you submit articles to the directories, make sure one of the hyperlinks in your resource box your SQuidoo URL, hyper linked with your targeted keyword.
5. We’ll be talking a lot about Social Bookmarking in the weeks to come, but don’t forget to social bookmark your Squidoo lens too! bumpzee is a great place to start.
6. Think of your Squidoo lens as another one of your web-sites. So, for example, if you are using any other marketing technique, such as classified ads or forum posting, then don’t forget to include your Squidoo lens as one of the targets.
7. Study squidoo FAQs. You are going to find out just how to tweak the engine under the bonnet. For example, you can all about their automated algorithm Lens Rank they use to rank the lenses. They look at community ratings, lensmaster reputation, click through rates, frequency of updates, inbound and outbound links, rev-enue generated, and lots of other factors and give the lens a number.
8. Hop over to the home page of squidoo. Study Squidoo marketing strategy to your heart’s content. Check out the forum.
9. While you’re there, make a comment (or six) and add your link to your signature.
10. You might have gathered by now that Squidooing is a whole science by itself. There are people who make a living, just by Squidooing.
Finally, you often find the best marketing tips on how to promote a site on the site itself (after all, they have a vested interest).
Here’s the advice Squidoo give themselves:
Email it. To your friends, your mom, your boss. Don’t be shy about bragging, you deserve a little limelight!
Blog it. Post your lens to your blog. Send a note to someone you admire who runs a blog on your topic, and ask them to check out your lens. Sincere flattery gets you everywhere.
Link it. Link to the lens on your Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Flickr profile, eBay auctions, email signature. Create your own little traffic network and get discovered in more places. Wouldn’t you like to get found more online?
Group it! Find a Group that’s busy talking about your topic and request to join. Get friendly, get relevant, get feedback, get found. Compete. Stop by the Lens of the Day Group for inspiration from winning lenses. And if your lens is up to snuff, enter it in
the contest.
If you would like to harness the power of word of mouth marketing for your web-site, then sign up for Allen’s viral marketing newsletter and 366 free internet marketing tips and secrets for superb unadvertised bonuses.
Small Business Storage Solutions - Self-Storage Facilities October 20, 2008
Posted by business1001 in : Business , add a commentWhen you’re starting out in a small home-based business, you often find that your storage requirements can’t be met by your current location. You may have a small house or the garage is already filled to capacity. Perhaps you rent an apartment with little storage space, or your landlord just doesn’t want the yard cluttered up. The answer to your small-business storage problem could be just around the corner!
Self-storage facilities are springing up everywhere! There is likely to be one close to your home, or along a route you travel regularly. Self-employed plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and mechanics often have large equipment or tools they don’t use every day but still need easy access to. Retailers and wholesalers may have large inventories that they just can’t keep organized in a home environment. A conveniently located self-storage locker can give you that extra space you need and easy access to your equipment or merchandise!
When choosing a self-storage facility for business purposes, there are a few questions you need to ask the owner of the self-storage facility. You may need to do some basic maintenance on the equipment you keep there. Does the individual unit have a light inside, and is an electrical outlet available? Will the company allow such maintenance work in the unit?
Some self-storage lockers are climate-controlled, but many aren’t. Ask if climate-controlled units are available if you need to keep your business assets from temperature extremes and high humidity.
Ask about self-storage facility’s security features, too. Is there video surveillance and are the grounds patrolled regularly? Are the grounds well-lit and carefully maintained? Is the security fence intact, with access available only to tenants? Have there been break-ins recently? Are fire alarms and sprinkler systems installed?
Most storage units will offer basic insurance for an extra fee, but it may not cover the full value of your contents. Consider buying extra insurance to protect your investment in equipment or merchandise. Some homeowners’ insurance may cover possessions that are in self-storage lockers, also.
Estimate the amount of space you will need by arranging your equipment or merchandise in the yard, and measuring the square footage. Don’t forget to leave room to move around, or to move equipment or merchandise in and out. You can put free-standing shelving units or file cabinets in your self-storage locker to increase the storage space, or hang a peg board (ask the facility first) to keep hand tools within reach.
Renting a self-storage locker can give you the space you need to keep your home-based business equipment or merchandise safe, organized, and readily available.