Building Monthly Residual Income For Your Existing Business

As a small business owner, you may be running into the up and down cash flow that most businesses run in to. This happens in almost any type of business. We have good months and then... Not so good months.

The best way to help eliminate this up and down issue is to set up a form of pre-paid program for your customers to help even out your cash flow and build a strong monthly base for your business.

This can be in the form of a pre-paid program, monthly autoship program or monthly membership program. This often overlooked income stream for your business can help any small business even out their cash flow and build your business each and every month.

So let's take a look at each of these three programs and expand on each one.

Pre-paid programs
This method works great if you have customers that make larger purchases. Using this method you can bring in a good cash flow at any time and guarantee that the customer spends their money with you. The best way to do this is with Gift Cards. Most of the major retail stores out there are using gift cards or reloadable cards as a great way to increase cash flow in their business.

These cards can have any amount of money added to them by the customer and then they can give it as a gift or even keep it for their own use. Some people will use these cards to help themselves keep a budget on their spending. They will go in each month and add a specific amount to the card as their “spending limit”. Parents buy these cards for college kids and reload them each money to ensure they can buy things they need but it's better than cash that they never know what it will be spent on.

From your side, you get paid either way. Once the money is spent on these cards, you know that you've been paid and have the cash flow. The customers may not use the cards right away but you already have been paid.

Autoship Programs
Many nutritional supplement companies use this as a way to ensure monthly recurring income and it's a great benefit for both the company and the customer.

You sign up for their program and every month they ship you your products without you having to do anything on your part.

The “Book Of The Month” Club was one of the first companies to use this type of system to ensure cash flow.

What products do you have that your customers need each month or even every couple of months that you could offer as an autoship program?

Office supply or printer supply stores might offer to autoship a customer's ink or toner each month to ensure that the customer never runs out of ink and just auto charge their account each month for the order.

It's easier for the customer so they don't have to worry about running out of ink in the middle of a big print job and the Supply store gets an automatic order each and every month.

Monthly Memberships
Monthly membership programs are the third way you can build in more stable cash flow for your business.

This type of program works best as an added upsell to a larger single purchase product. This could be a program for continual education and training on product that the customer purchased.

Another way this can be used is as a discount program. If the customer becomes part of your membership program, they might get your newsletter that gives them great tips and tricks each month but also gives them access to specific special discounts not offered to the general public.

Think about the a membership to Sam's Club or Costco. You can't even buy from there stores unless you are a member of their membership program.

So there you have it.

As a business owner, you need to be looking at ways you can build in a form of monthly residual income for your business in order to even out cash flow and build your business with a stable residual baseline of income. Getting this in place will help your business if you have a slower month here and there and ensure your business is growing each and every month.