SFI now in its 19th year!

November 26, 2016 by csi4admin

We are now officially in our 19th year!  From but a small acorn 19 years ago, SFI has grown into a tall and mighty oak tree, with strong and deep roots.  But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet…because we planted an entire FOREST…and it’s spreading across every country in the world.

Happy anniversary to SFI and all its thousands of awesome affiliates across the globe!

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SFI President & Founder Gery Carson remembers the day SFI was born:

“As an entrepreneur, there have been very few holidays where I haven’t worked at least a few hours, and this day in 1998 was no different.  I went into my home office that morning planning to spend a few casual hours–on nothing in particular.  It was a holiday after all, and no one else on my staff at the time was working. So it was just going to be a relaxing day where I’d let my mind have a break from the typical daily grind.

I remember at the time that affiliate programs were becoming a big deal, thanks to the Internet, which made it very easy to track sales using affiliate links.  Numerous big-name companies were now employing affiliate programs as a part of their marketing strategy.  And I thought…why not us, too?!  

I remember being particularly impressed with Amazon.com’s affiliate program.  The word was, they had 60,000 affiliates.  60,000!  At the time, that number seemed enormous to me, a nearly impossible number.  But I couldn’t have been more wrong of course because, in just a couple years, we would be experiencing days where we’d sign up over 60,000 affiliates in a single day!  

But on this morning, I was simply sketching out a few basics on how our affiliate program would work.  At the time, we were publishing our magazine, Six Figure Income, which featured exclusive interviews with home-based entrepreneurs who were earning at least $100,000 USD annually from their business.  This magazine was essentially our one and only product.  By the way, it’s from the magazine’s name that the SFI Marketing Group name came to be (a few years later we changed the initials to stand for Strong Future International to better align with our vision for the program).

Six Figure Income magazine’s premier issue was the March/April 1998 issue.  Prior to this, and stretching all the way back to 1986, we had published other newsletters and magazines devoted primarily to mail order entrepreneurs, including Mail Dealer Newsletter, Mail Profits Magazine, and Profits Magazine.  During those years, marketing by mail was the “Internet” for many entrepreneurs.  All the marketing we do today on the Web; in those years, at least for entrepreneurs like myself, was all mail-based (with a little bit of help from phone, fax, and conference calls).

Six Figure Income magazine was published just four times per year, and a one-year subscription was $49, so we had a healthy margin…enough margin to pay a handsome commission to anyone who wished to be an affiliate of ours and sell subscriptions.

Within days of deciding to create our affiliate program, I had published information on how to sign up online (supplemented, if I recall correctly, with a small direct mail campaign ironically).  To my pleasant surprise, sign-ups starting coming in almost immediately.  Not a lot, maybe a dozen or two a week, but that number rapidly accelerated.  Soon it was hundreds of sign-ups a day, then thousands, then tens of thousands!

Driving this now hyper-growth was our decision to expand the program and compensation plan–many of the details of which were hammered out during a weekend at SFI affiliate Steven Sashen’s Boulder, Colorado, home with affiliates Gump Wallen and the late, great Richard Strayer (we miss you, Rich!).  By January 2001, we had exceeded one MILLION affiliates.  By the way, with our most recently assigned ID number, over 16 million others have joined SFI since, more than 17 million in total!

Yet, like many great accomplishments, it all started with a simple idea, a simple inspiration.  Today, SFI is the online home for millions of entrepreneurs from every country in the world.  Indeed, SFI today is very possibly the largest and most successful affiliate program in the world.  Aim high and dream big indeed!”

4 Factors that Influence the Price Your Customers Will Pay

by Joseph Lizio Most customers follow a four-phase buying pattern when choosing where to make their purchase. Use your knowledge of these patterns to determine the best pricing for your products or services.

Image source: BigStockPhoto.com

There are many schools of thought regarding how businesses should set their pricing and just as many ways of analyzing your business’ pricing models. From basing prices in relation to competition, ensuring that prices cover all costs to include a component for profit to a purely market based school of thought where prices are set on what your market and customers are willing to bear.

Regardless of your school of thought, I want to add another wrinkle to the pricing dilemma. Clayton M. Christensen and others like him have poured countless hours of research and analysis into the buying decisions of customers. Regardless of where your prices fall, the bottom line is to entice customers to part with their hard earned money, thus understanding their buying behaviors.
Based on a buying hierarchy model first outlined by Windermere Associates, most customers follow a four phase buying pattern, with only the last phase being based on price.
These phases are as follows:

1. Functionality – Where a product or service meets a certain need or does a certain thing that cannot be accomplished in any other manner.
2. Reliability – When two or more competitors offer similar products that have the same functionality, consumers turn to the competitor whose product offers the better reliability.
3. Convenience – When competitors have products or services that offer the same functionality and the same relative reliability, consumers turn to convenience – those products that are the most convenient to use and the companies that are the most convenient to work with.
4. Lastly, price – When competitors all have similar products or services that offer all the attributes above in very similar manners, then, the product or service essentially becomes a commodity and at that point must compete on price (following the schools of thought outlined above).

Thus, the first question that any entrepreneur should consider when setting prices for their offerings is: "Is this product or service already a commodity?"
If it is not, then the business should be able to compete on one of the four phases listed above, without much regard to price.
A great example of this is Apple’s iPhone. When this smart phone device first entered the cell phone market, it was extremely unique in its functionality and thus its price was set astoundingly high. When it was first introduced, following the phases of the buying hierarchy, this phone was marketed based on its functionality.
As other phone manufacturers began duplicating the iPhone’s functions with their own devices, the marketing focus shifted to reliability – not just based on the smart device itself, but also the reliability of the network on which it would be employed. Just think about the Verizon Wireless commercials.
As time passed again marketing efforts shifted once more, this time to both the convenience of the device (easier to use, easier to type on, easier to text or surf, running multiple apps, etc.) and the convenience of the network – customers not having to switch networks (and incur the fess of doing so) to get a compatible device with the service they already know and use.
Bottom line: know where your products or services fit within this buying hierarchy.  Doing so many save you, the entrepreneur, countless hours of worry about prices – especially if you and your business do not yet have to compete on price alone. The idea here is not to purely focus just on pricing but to how your business can market its offering using the four phases of the buying hierarchy and actual customer buying behavior.

5 Common Small Business Money Mistakes

by Janet Attard Staying on top of your business's finances is just as important as finding new customers and serving existing ones. But, if you're like most small business owners, bookkeeping and managing money is probably not your strong suit. You can stay ahead of the game if you avoid making these five common small business money mistakes.

Image source: Photospin.com

Of all the roles a small business owner takes on, often the most challenging is managing the business's finances. The reasons are many, but most small business owners don't have a background in business finance, and at least at the start, are more focused on bringing in business and serving the customers than they are on record keeping and financial planning for their business. As a result, many work long and hard at their businesses with only mediocre success to show for their efforts. Others fail completely.

You can improve your chances for success - and your profitability -- by being aware of and steering clear of these common small business money mistakes.

Insufficient Cash

Insufficient cash is one of the leading causes of business failure. Startups often overestimate how quickly they'll start making money, and underestimate all the expenses they'll incur. But startups aren't the only businesses prone to failure due to insufficient cash. Once you have a steady flow of business you can run into cash problems in a couple of ways. One is a failure to realize the difference between cash flow and sales. You can have plenty of sales on record, but unless you get paid in advance for those sales, you'll have expenses to pay before you collect from your customers. If one or more of your big customers pays late, or doesn't pay at all, you may not have the cash to pay your bills on time.
Growing businesses can have a similar problem. You ramp up to be able to serve bigger customers or a wider areas, and before you start earning income from the growth, you need cash to pay your growing staff, growing payroll taxes, and other growing overhead expenses.
Still another problem for an existing business: existing cash flow may make the business owner miss or ignore falling profits and growing debt. To avoid cash flow problems take pains to accurately estimate all your costs and allow for the time it can take you to get paid. Get invoices out on time, stay on top of collectibles, and reassess your cash position at least quarterly, if not more often.

Waiting Too Long to Seek Credit

The worst time to look for a business loan or line of credit is when you most need it. If your business is paying its bills late and is on the brink of failing, finding funding will be difficult or impossible. The time to seek funding is when your business looks solid enough to convince a lender you will be able to repay what you borrow. 

The type of credit to seek will depend on the type of business you run, the purpose of the funds, and the size of the loan. Depending what you need, funding sources include traditional banks, online lenders, credit card cash advances or purchases, and specialty lenders. (For major projects, check with your local economic development agencies for suggestions on funding.) Interest rates and terms vary widely, so give yourself time to find the best funding source for your needs. And don't get discouraged if local banks turn you down. Check with the major online lenders to see if they'll work with you and how their rates and terms may compare with other options.

Mixing Business and Personal Funds

Whether you are starting a new business, or you're running an established business, mixing personal and business funds is a recipe for disaster. Assuming you are the sole owner and you buy business supplies with your personal credit card or use a business check to pay for a personal purchase, you're going to have difficulty keeping track of how much money the business actually is making or losing throughout the year.
You'll also have a big headache at tax time trying to separate out the business and personal purchases to determine what's deductible on your business tax form, and what your profit or loss is for the year. The headache will get a lot worse if you get audited and the IRS believes you have purchased goods or services for personal use and deducted them as business expenses. If you have business partners or investors and mix business and personal expenditures, you'll have even more problems on your hands.
Finally, if you don't clearly separate business and personal expenses (using separate banking accounts and credit cards for each), you'll find it difficult or impossible to get a business loan if you ever need one.
Even if your business is only a part-time operation with few profits, you should have a separate checking account and separate credit card for the business. You may need to take out the credit card in your own name when you're starting out, and that's ok, as long as it's used exclusively for business purchases.
If there are times when you have to use personal funds for your business - or vice versa - the correct way to handle the situation is to make a formal transaction and document it. If you have business partners, get them to sign off on the transaction, too.

Not Staying on Top of Recordkeeping

Let's face it. Recordkeeping is a big pain in the neck. As a business owner your focus is usually on winning business and making sure the customers get it in a timely fashion. Along the way there are so many things to do that it's easy to let recordkeeping fall by the wayside. Receipts for inventory or other purchases get shoved in a folder, envelope, drawer, or the proverbial shoebox, until such time as you "get around" to recording them. Invoices for items you've purchased on credit maybe wind up in your inbox - with dozens of other pieces of paper. Mileage records for business travel may wind up on the back of a receipt or napkin, or stuck in a note on your smart phone. Check stubs from people who still pay you that way wind up in the same folder or drawer, and credit card payments show up in your bank account based on the credit card used to make the purchase, with no convenient way of matching any one day's credit card receipts to specific purchases made.
As a result, whenever you get around to actually putting the expenses and income records in an accounting program or spreadsheet, you'll waste a lot of time trying to remember what each thing was for. You may also have misplaced some of the records. Worse, if you haven't been keeping all your accounting up-to-date, you may find out months down the road that you're losing money because the cost of your supplies went up and the number of hours your employees worked went up, but you never raised your prices.
The only way to avoid these kinds of recordkeeping disasters is to do you recordkeeping weekly or more frequently. Either you have to take the time yourself to enter all the data into an accounting program or spreadsheet or you need to delegate the job to someone else. If you have someone else manage all your financial records, you need to review their work weekly, looking to be sure income and expenditures are properly documented and be sure that nothing looks strange. Employee theft is a big problem for small businesses, and often the thief turns out to be a trusted, long-time employee.

Under Pricing

Determining the right price to charge for products or services is seldom an easy decision. Charge too much, and you could lose sales to a competitor. Charge too little, and you won't make much profit - or worse, you'll lose money.
Small businesses - particularly those just starting out - often charge too little. Sometimes they rationalize that the low price is a way of "getting their foot in the door." Sometimes the price is low because a new business owner isn't taking into account the cost of his or her own labor, or hasn't accurately determined all of the costs that have to be considered in setting prices.
A fencing company, for instance, has to figure in not only their costs for the fencing, but also the costs of labor, advertising, office expense, vehicle maintenance and repair, and other overhead costs when deciding what to charge customers. An independent consultant may have fewer overhead or labor costs to consider, but has to pay close attention to what her target annual income is, how many clients she'll actually land and be able to serve during the year, and how many hours of work time will be billable vs unbillable and what her advertising, networking and other promotional expenses will be.
Established small businesses sometimes underprice their goods and services because they're afraid to raise their rates. They worry if they increase their prices their customers will go elsewhere.
If you're just starting out, remember to account for all your costs in figuring out what to charge, and check to see what competitors are charging for what you sell. Don't try to be the lowest price vendor out there. Once you're up and running, reassess your pricing structure at least annually. And whether you're just starting out or have been in business for a while, take a few minutes to read some of the information we have available here on pricing strategies for small business.