This is a guest post by Diana, a full-time mom interested in topics related to marketing and latest business technologies.

Trimming down your business costs is just as important as earning in the world of business.

In fact, regardless of how big your income is, there is no guarantee that you’ll turn profit without finding a way to decrease your costs.

If you are on a shoestring budget, these tips will help you trim down your costs without too much effort!

1. Cloudsourcing.

Let’s not kid ourselves, we’d all like to be our own bosses!

Luckily, the current business climate has provided many professionals with an opportunity to achieve this dream.

People can now earn their wages by working as freelancers online and even post their portfolios and CVs on websites that specialize in freelancing, such as Freelancer, Elance, iWriter and many others.

But what does this mean for a business owner? Well, the benefits of freelancing extend into the traditional business world.

Outsourcing, or cloudsourcing allows an entrepreneur to hire professional help based on their own needs and timing.

This is perfect for positions such as website designer and graphic artist, which don’t really need to be on your full-time payroll. Cloudsourcing allows you to be flexible and invest in accordance with your own needs!

2. Interns.

Even though they aren’t your employees, freelancers are professionals; and professionals tend to charge heftily.

For a well-established, medium to large-sized company, this isn’t really a problem, but small businesses will be looking to trim down their costs even further.

Luckily, there is a way to get by even cheaper and possibly even hire people for free!

Sounds too good? Well, although hiring temps does come with its downsides, sometimes this is a valid means of saving up some money.

On the other hand, some jobs are easy to perform by anyone and there is no reason why you should use your paid personnel or hire additional workforce to perform them.

Going around local colleges and looking for interns can solve this problem. They will likely ask for nothing more than a recommendation from you and will definitely be able to perform tedious tasks that you or your full-time employees don’t have the time for.

3. Discounts.

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Always being on the lookout for discounts might take time and dedication, but it will definitely pay off in terms of cutting business costs.

This is exactly why many top retailers won’t actually advertise their discounts, which is why you need to show initiative here.

Instead of waiting for a retailer to shower you with discount offers (which is highly unlikely to happen), simply going ahead and asking them might get things rolling.

4. Careful with Buying in Bulk.

On the other hand, wholesales are a slippery slope. Sometimes, a retailer will offer a bunch of items for a ridiculously low price, and this is exactly where you need to be very careful.

For example, if you receive an offer for a thousand pens for $500, you need to ask yourself whether you really need so many pens.

Sure, this price might be ridiculously low, but once you are left with so many items, you’ll quickly realize that you won’t know what to do with them and will end up with a bunch of items you don’t really need and a wallet that is significantly lighter.

The best solution here is always knowing what you may need and what you really need.

5. Storage Space Efficiency.

Customer satisfaction is crucial and if they aren’t satisfied with your deliveries, your client base won’t keep coming back for more.

In fact, delivery efficiency is so important that your customers are more likely to disregard an occasional mistake than to tolerate not making deliveries on time.

The largest factor behind delivery efficiency is storage space efficiency. Which means that your warehouse won’t be able to function properly without adequate paraphernalia, such as an elevated work platform or two, a couple of forklifts, and a few other necessities.

This means that you should either invest a part of your budget and buy new equipment, or opt for renting.

Increasing your income is extremely important, no one is denying that. But without trimming down the business costs, a large part of your income will pale in significance.

Outsource where you can, hire interns or temps, run an efficient storage, look for discounts (but be careful when buying in bulk) and keep in mind that profit is always more important than income!