Ways to Find Hidden Revenue Streams

March 29, 2017

Like most small business owners, you are probably consumed with trying to do the day-to-day activities that pay the bills and keep customers coming through the door.

However, there is every chance you are overlooking hidden substantial revenue streams in your business. These revenue streams make use of assets you already have; rather than requiring any investment, these revenue streams simply provide an increased return on the value already in your business.

The list of revenue streams below may add anything from $10 through to $1,000 per month to your business’ bottom line, and either way, they can be the difference between your business growing or stagnating. Most of these don’t require you to spend any time or invest in additional resources.

Display Advertising

If you have a website, display advertising is an ideal way to add immediate additional revenue to your business. You already have visitors to your website, regardless of how small or large the number. These visitors are valuable in the internet world and there are a large number of other companies that would love to have the opportunity to advertise to clients in your niche.

Rather than approach other businesses, although this is a possibility also, you can register with Google’s advertising network, and they will place ads on your site. Each time a visitor clicks on one of these adverts, you get paid, regardless of whether or not they buy anything.

The best bit is that you can choose the type of ads and industries that are allowed to demonstrate their content on your site, ensuring that content that is inappropriate or impractical for your business is not shown on your website. Each month, the amount this earns drops into your account without you lifting a finger.

Kindle Books

Regardless of your industry, someone wants to read what you have to say. In fact, thousands of people each are searching for valuable content on your subject.

By devoting about 8-10 hours of your time to produce the content for a small eBook or Kindle book, you not only cement your reputation as an industry expert and author, but also provide yourself with an additional income stream. Simply selling one small Kindle book per day at $4.99 will generate an additional $150 per month in completely passive income. You upload the book and the e-commerce stores complete the rest.

Lead Generation

Regardless of your business type, likely there is a subset of your prospects that you cannot serve. Perhaps they don’t fit your business model or your expertise doesn’t lie in that area. Rather than abandoning those prospects and leaving them with nowhere to go, you can pass those details across to a firm that is able to help them.

This is beneficial in two ways:

1. You become known as the business that cares. Rather than leaving prospects unsure where to go, you can signpost them to a helpful service.
2. You have already spent money acquiring that lead. Selling it allows you to recoup at least some of that cost, and in some cases even make a profit.

Virtual Offices and Addresses

Do you have a physical office or address? Do you have an administrator or receptionist?

Many start-ups these days avoid the overhead of an office, and are instead having their mail directed to another address. The administrator at the premises sorts the mail and either scans and emails it or forwards it on. The level of service you provide can be entirely up to you, but this is a fantastic way to maximize your office space and utilize your team effectively.

Social Media

Do you have a social media following? Did you know that advertisers will pay you for recommending or sharing their products or services?

A simple tweet or Facebook post can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on the number and activity of your followers.

This doesn’t even require you to manually set up the posts, you can simply use a social media scheduler to set up posts for the forthcoming weeks or months and the messages will go out automatically, such as Hootsuite.

Affiliate Marketing

If you were the owner of a personal training clinic, your clients would likely also interested in diet, home exercises, self-help products etc. An affiliate promotes other people’s complementary products and services to their services, usually by way of emails.

By providing your clients appropriate and ethical offers that reflect your values, your customers will thank you for raising their awareness to offers and deals and you will make extra money. For each product sold, you could receive a percentage of the revenue straight into your bank account.

In Sum – Take a Look Around

Hopefully this has whet your appetite and opened your eyes to some of the revenue streams that are hidden inside your business. It’s time to get creative and see what other assets you have underutilized.

About Scale Funding

Scale Funding is an invoice factoring company serving businesses across the United States. For more information on factoring, call (800) 707-4845 for a free, no-obligation consultation and quote.