If you are a regular customer of many larger consumer product companies, like Coca Cola, Walmart, etc., you may be lucky enough to be able to get a coupon when you purchase an item from them. Typically, coupons would be found in newspapers, magazines and the products themselves. Occasionally, you’d find sheets of coupons distributed in various ways.

Recently, though, coupons came to the Internet. For many products, you can search for coupons that can save lots of cash on up front purchases. Such coupons can either be used directly on companies shopping websites, or printed out and used at stores.

When I started out hosting my websites on Dreamhost, I didn’t know about such things! Apparently, there are lots of coupon codes for such companies. Search through this blog to find several such coupon companies, and see the list of companies that offer coupons.

If you are disciplined, you could use deduct difference between the regular price and the price with a coupon and put that in an interest bearing account. Not only would you save money on your purchases, but you’d actually earn a decent return on the money saved. Of course, this would work best on items that are regularly purchased.

For example, you get a 10% reduction on CouponChief’s website for books purchased from Barnes & Noble priced at $85.99. You get $8.56 savings which you put in the bank or building society account. While you won’t get top rates of return, you will still see 3%-4% returns on your income. Do that 20-30 times a year, and the amounts will add up.

But it isn’t the only way to make money with coupons. Occasionally, some sites will allow customers to create their own coupons and then give them away. One good example is Dreamhost which will allow you to earn money from referrals and has a coupon scheme, too.

The traditional referral scheme allows you to make a percentage of any sale for a customer whom you refer. But Dreamhost goes one step further. You can actually create your own Coupon Codes. I made several today: Blogger2yr and Blogger1YR

For example, Blogger2y coupon code will allow a new customer to purchase a plan and get $60 off if s/he pays for two years at once. This represents quite a saving: upto a maximum of about 46% (if my math is correct on the smallest plan!). That’s quite a saving over the 1 year payment for the customer.

Since the promo codes are offering upto a maximum of $97 per discount, that’d mean any customer who uses that discount would get a great deal BUT $37 would still go to the referrer!

I’ve found a few websites that are happy to take information about new coupon codes, too. So once you have created your coupon code, you can visit these websites and add your new code information there.

1. Redeem Coupon at http://www.redeemcoupon.com/ this website works very much like Digg.com. It was easy to get listed there.
2. http://www.couponshock.com/ is focused much more on hosting and domains. I submitted my listing but it hadn’t shown up by the time of this posting.
3. http://www.retailmenot.com/ is also a coupon site that offers a wide range of coupons, worth checking out, and worth submitting too.

So, look around for a coupon site to save a few bucks or use a coupon making facility at one of your favorite stores (such as …) to make a few bucks that way. Either way is good! Both are better!

Disclaimer: I am a customer of Dreamhost, and this email contains affiliate links.

Banks love businesses but there are times when finding money for your business needs can be tough. Our business had no way to access short term loans or find Unsecured Credit Lines to provide the capital for expansion in 2004 when we moved to new premises.

We had to fund the entire move, which cost almost double the initial investment, from the business’ own cash flow, and our own pockets. And we were an ongoing business with a clientele and even a profit margin! We also had been in business for more than three years, so we had established ourselves. We were lucky though, as our business was 100% cash up front, and we were able to use that money wisely to fund the move, while we continued to run the business at the old premises. We did however, close for an extra two weeks, but when we reopened things were fine. You might not be so lucky, so you will need extra planning in financing your move, perhaps through affordable and appropriate levels of borrowings.

Of course, availability of loans is no use unless they are backed up with a suitable process that allows the business owner to keep running his or her business. Paperwork is too often the bane of most small business owners’ lives. It detracts from core tasks, but doesn’t always add to productivity or sales success. So, it’s essential that the process be as easy, as fast and as convenient as possible. If your business is looking for financing, you might be wise to look at the services provided by EzUnsecured.com.

You may find that you can consolidate existing business loans and cut your interest payments, a nice saving that would go to the bottom line. You may need extra funding for capital investments, help with invoice factoring or even just creating an emergency line of credit for times of need.

Of course, such loans will require interest payments, and documentation before they are approved. You’ll need to make sure that borrrowing such money does not place extra stress on your business financials.

So, get out your pencils, calculators and spreadsheets. Then decide on what kind of financing, the level need, and the timescale of borrowing and repayment. If you’re not sure, do your calculatiosn again! And talk it over with your partners! They may need to know this kind of information.

Jim Kukral writes in his blog about BlogRush and the problems small trafficked-websites face in making the most of this opportunity. In fact, he asks one question that is hard to answer ..?

Are you ready to give up valuable space on your blog for a few new readers a month?

But I would like to ask an even harder question…

Are you ready to lose your readers to any of these websites, in exchange for a few visitors or a few cents?

Actually, he really encouraged me to write this post because it is a problem that all small time blogs (like this one) face: to monetize your blog, you almost always send traffic away. Let’s look at some of the top ways to monetize your blog.

Adsense – Adsense involves you placing an adblock in your blog, either in a post at the top or at the bottom or in the sidebar. If it’s at the top, then you are literally begging your readers to click on it and send them away!

Paid Posting – Again, if you write a post, you will usually include a link in the post or several, that invite readers to visit the linked website.

Text Link Ads – In the sidebar, and at the bottom of posts (for post level links).

Affiliate Ads – Such as the one for Thumb Drives on the right of this website. They can include all manner of products, though. Perhaps the best known are Amazon and Commission Junction.

Contextual Advertising – These are the little links that you see in posts from companies like Kontera, and of course they take traffic away to other websites.

There are additional ways to lose traffic, too, though they are not considered revenue generators.

MyBlogLog – That’s the pretty box on my right sidebar with lots of little images. If you click on the image of one person, then you are taken to the MyBlogLog website, where you are not presented with the blog of the person you are clicking to, but a page about the blog. In fact, you have to look really hard to see the blog link.

Twitter, Technorati and Alexa badges and links also function in similar ways. And now, BlogRush adds to the ways you can use to send traffic AWAY from your website. To read about BlogRush, visit Jim’s post. You may not wish to use it after you read that!

So, when you add the next EXPLOSIVE sales pitch or TRAFFIC website to your sidebar, you should wonder why is it when I visit a website like Engadget so hard to find a real link in any posts? I mean, a link that actually takes you to another website…! Try it, you’ll see what I mean.

PS. Of course, there are no links in this article at all! I want to make a point!