Money Making Ideas from "Outside the Box"

RSVP using an Answering Service

Anyone can throw a party and have them RSVP using voicemail.

That's easy.

But why not add a "touch of class" and use an answering service?

It's perfect for weddings, anniversaries, and reunions, anything that might need a personal touch. An answering service can answer questions 24/7. Hard to do with Voicemail…

A live operator at two in the morning can confirm a location when a voicemail may just get full. An answering service will always answer the phone with a friendly voice to greet your guests making it one to remember.

Save your customers money while padding your own bottom line –

Here is a great tip from our recent trip to Chicago while attending the SNUG convention. Suggest to some of your customers that they may want to go to a 4-day workweek. This will save them a full day's wages while you pick up their phones for the entire 5th day. A win-win for both parties and another way to look "Outside the Box"!

This suggestion came from Mary Jones son, Tim Jones who works for Answer 1 Communications in Phoenix, Arizona.

Some choose to Delete Paper Mail offering the TAS Industry a new source of revenue!

The post office doesn't deliver mail to Steven Stark's Santa Maria, CA home anymore. It's not that Stark, the 36-year-old owner of an Internet company, is unpopular- he just decided that he'd rather deal with his correspondence online.

Millions of Americans receive online versions of their bank statements and bills including their answering service statements. But Stark is one of tens of thousands who have decided they don't need any physical mail, be it junk mail or advertising come-ons. Instead of plodding out to the mailbox or driving down to the P.O. Box, they open their Web browsers. Rather than stuffing file cabinets with paper or taking pounds of unwanted advertising catalogs to the dump they keep their mail online.

Analysts say it's too soon to tell whether digital mail is the next big thing and skeptics, including the U.S. Postal Service abound. Still as consumers become more tied to the digital world, Web-based snail mail services are expanding.

Beginning on April 27, 2009 Swiss Post, Switzerland's national postal operator, will use the technology developed by Earth Class Mail of Seattle, the same company Stark uses, to deliver regular mail online in six European countries. "There is a real desire for such a service," said Benoit Stoelin, head of finance at Swiss Post solutions.

Scanning correspondence and putting it online is the "middle step" in a march toward the future of all-digital delivery, Stoelin said. Early adopters such as Stark give a glimpse into how that might look.

Earth Class Mail assigned him a post office box in Los Angeles. For $11.95 per month, the company opens his mail including letters, bills, and catalogs then scans and uploads it to the Web so he can read his correspondence online and from anywhere.

Stark doesn't have to give the post office his new address every time he moves. He can go on vacation and not miss any mail. If he is a traveling salesman and is worried about missing a payment, he can keep on top of his payment schedules even from abroad. By checking a box on his computer screen, Stark can tell the company to shred, recycle or forward the mail to him. He can have the company send packages to his house or pick them up at the nearest Earth Class Mail Center. "It's just more convenient," he said. Convenience has its cost. The $11.95 fee includes 50 pages scanned a month and unlimited recycling and shredding. Each extra page scanned costs $.25 cents. Like a cell phone plan, customers can pay more to have higher limits.

Members are assigned either a post office box or a generic mailing address in Beaverton, Oregon, where Earth Class Mail has a sorting facility. Customers who want a premium address, even a false one such as Hollywood, Wall Street or Wash. D.C. can pay extra. Manhattan costs $29.95, and West Hollywood or San Francisco cost $23.95. Security is obviously a big concern. Worries about mail fraud and identity theft may slow the shift. Although having someone else open your mail reduces the chances you'll get anthrax poisoning, it also "opens up another way that the customers information can be compromised," said Stan Stahl, president of the information security firm Citadel Information Group.

Earth Class Mail, which has 115 employees, tries to limit risk. Employees need key cards to enter the mailrooms. They wear pocket less jumpsuits to make it tougher for them to remove correspondence and are monitored by security cameras as they sort and scan the mail.

Many answering services now offer mailbox services for their customers. Here is another opportunity to look "Outside the Box".

We are in a depressed economy and I know that TAS owners everywhere are always looking for another source of revenue to add to their bottom line… this may possibly be it.

Portions of this article were taken from "Some choose to delete paper mail" by Alana Semuels of the Los Angeles Times.