7 Profitable Ways to Use Autoresponders Written by Angela Wu
A visitor clicks on link to your site and starts reading. She's intrigued and nearly ready to buy -- but at that very moment, kids come back inside and she leaves computer to tend to them, meaning to go back later to make a purchase.Chances are, you just lost a sale. There are countless reasons why an interested prospect may not buy right away. Even if they intend to re-visit your site later, 'later' may never come -- they might not even remember your URL! By capturing your visitor's email address, you can follow-up with them and increase likelihood of catching them at a time that they're ready to buy. Here are a profitable ways you can use autoresponders to help convert more of your visitors into paying customers: __1. Distribute a Newsletter. Most good autoresponders have two important features that are perfect for distributing newsletters: a personalisation feature, and a broadcast feature. Wouldn't you be more likely to read something that's directly addressed to you? __2. Automate Your Sales Process. Repeated exposure to same message has been shown to increase sales. In an short ezine ad, for example, where you only have a limited amount of space, why not publish your autoresponder address instead of a website URL? With short ads like these, your objective is to generate leads, not make a sale. By directing readers to your autoresponder, you have multiple opportunities to convert your leads into sales. __3. Use Them to Distribute Your Articles. Writing articles and making them freely available for reprint is an excellent way to build credibility, drive more traffic to your site, and increase sales. In return for providing content-rich articles, editors will print your 'resource box': a short description of you and your product or service. Within your resource box, you can direct readers to write to your autoresponder for a free email course, free story, or whatever is appropriate for your line of business.
| | GIVE A LITTLE, GET A LOTWritten by Jennifer Johnson
According to a new survey carried out by Alliance & where ID_NUM=9270; Leicester, one in five small business owners view tax as their greatest concern. The Chancellor has announced in his last budget that companies with profits below œ10,000 will not have to pay any corporation tax with effect from 1 April 2002. The question to be asked is: does that announcement make incorporation a more attractive option compared to being a sole trader?The answer is that from a tax point of view, it is advantageous to trade through a limited company as long as income is drawn from company by owners as dividends from their shares and amount of dividends drawn is restricted below 40% band rate (i.e. œ31,063 for tax year 2002/03). That way, owners have no further personal tax ("income tax") to pay. Moreover, dividends are not subject to national insurance contributions. This is excellent news of course. But, if dividend income falls within higher rate bracket of income tax (i.e. above œ34,515), they will be taxed at 22.5% on excess, which of course will increase tax burden. The company profits are subject to corporation tax rates. Those are lower than income tax rates. The most catastrophic scenario is when director takes his reward from company as salary. Then his/her salary is taxed at income tax rates (like a sole trader's income). That is because, unlike sole traders, tax system treats companies as separate from their owners because a company is a separate legal entity. The problem is that income taxes are higher than corporation tax rates. On top of that, they will be subject to employee and employer national insurance contributions, which of course increase tax burden and render his position worse than even an unincorporated business ("sole trader"), because NIC Class 1 on payroll are higher than NIC Class 2 paid by self employed. In contrast, a self employed person ("sole trader") is taxed at income tax rates on profits from his business, which are added to his other sources of income. As it has already been mentioned, income tax rates are overall higher than corporation tax rates. On top of income tax, national insurance contributions class 4 are payable on business profits within a specified band (7% on profits between œ4,615and œ30,420). National insurance contributions Class 2 are also paid by self-employed people, although those are lower than those payable by company directors on their salaries. To illustrate above, let's take a simple example. We have a limited company and a sole trader. They both make œ60,000 profits each in tax year 2002/03. We assume that company director takes a salary equal to amount of his personal allowances (untaxed income) of œ4,615 and balance as dividends. The company will pay corporation tax at 19% equal to œ10,523 and nothing else. The sole trader will pay income tax œ16,542, National insurance Class 2 œ104 and National insurance Class 4 œ1,806. Total œ18,452. The bottom line is that person that has incorporated his business into a limited company will make a tax saving of œ7,929 compared to a sole trader! Isn't that fantastic? Somebody might be wondering: why is this entire happening? The official explanation is that, this government, to help economy grow, encourages people to leave as much profits within their businesses to be reinvested, instead of being taken out and spent. The "unofficial line" is that, as a matter of fact, for years Inland Revenue has tried to reclassify self-employed. The 1% in NIC hike on staff salaries above NIC threshold from next April adds to both employees' and employers' tax burden and may more than offset saving from corporation tax zero rate on first œ10,000 of profits.
|
