Being a personal trainer, drag queen and a hair stylist means there isn't much time for administration. Cody uses Billycart to quickly and easily process his clients fees.

How the Gay Strength Coach manages his recurring payments

How Cody from The Gay Strength Coach used Billycart as a Personal Trainer

Personal trainer, drag queen, hairstylist. 

It’s safe to say that Cody is a busy man, so it’s not surprising that he needs a quick and simple way to process his payments for his businesses. We recently chatted with Cody to understand how he manages his successful businesses across three different industries.

So first of all Cody, how would you describe your jobs? 

Hmmm, the best way to describe my jobs is that they are basically all my passions jammed into 7 days. I love working with people, and I get a unique combination of getting to help them get stronger and more confident in the gym, helping them with self-care in the salon, and keeping them entertained, and happy when I’m working in drag. 

Tell us what a typical day looks like for you? 

My days vary! But usually, mid-week you’ll find me coaching clients early in the morning, then doing my own training, then heading to the salon to either help out or work on wigs. Sometimes I’ll have to finish at the gym, then go home to pack my bags, get into full hair and makeup to get to a gig for drag! On the weekends I’m generally spending the days at a drag brunch event and evenings at either gigs or being a social butterfly! Every day is always fast-paced, there’s never much time to stop, but I love what I do. 

What was your journey to becoming a PT, who also does drag, and who is now training to be a hairstylist? 

It was a progression, all with the main goal of always doing what makes me happy. I started PT because I love training and helping people. After years of working as a PT, I had forgotten how happy being creative makes me feel. I always wanted to be a singer or dancer, and unfortunately, I am not great at either. But then I discovered drag.

I absolutely loved it, but never thought it was something I could do. Eventually, I found myself practicing makeup after my PT job, I got better at it and then got offered a job to prance around pretending I can sing to other people's songs! From there, I started working on wigs and absolutely fell in love with the process of being creative and making beautiful hair. 

That’s what introduced me to hair styling. I was teaching a good friend who owns a salon how to pick up some styling basics on wigs, and he offered me a job to pick up some skills with human hair! And here we are, I’m now a PT, drag queen and hairstylist. It’s chaos. But  I always just do whatever I love.

What are your biggest challenges in managing your time across three different businesses?

Well, the biggest challenge has to be fitting everything in, and making sure I do a great job at each of my jobs. So I’ve had to become an expert at time management, and let me tell you, my ICal and Siri reminders have become my best friends. 

You use Billycart to help manage your time, how does it help your business?

Billycart makes my life and business a lot more simple. It handles the time consuming, frustrating hurdles that come with having lots of clients and collecting money. I shoot off a payment plan, leave it, and they do the rest for me. Trust and believe, I would be very stressed without it! 

Cody is one of many personal trainers using Billycart to save time on administration and ensure he gets paid on time while keeping his clients happy. Join Billycart today and get your first three months free.

Use Billycart to add a recurring revenue arm to your cafe such as coffee subscriptions, room rental, bean ordering. Recurring revenue will increase your bottom line and using Billycart to process them won't break the bank! Join today for three months free.

For café owners, there can be a range of stress when it comes to running your business, you have to juggle competing with competitors, navigating rising costs, paying staff, ordering the correct amount of stock, creating delicious recipes and keeping your customers happy. Running a café is challenging!  

So, how could a café use a subscription service pr recurring revenue model to improve revenue? Let’s walk through some potential options. 

Subscription coffee accounts 
This is a growing trend, and it truly isn’t just for large franchises. We’re seeing large businesses like Pret A Manger in the UK offering a hot drink subscription, this is an amazing business decision to take inspiration from. Although you may not be able to offer as many drinks as this business, there is still a range of perks you could offer. Perhaps you could give customers the opportunity to pay monthly for a coffee each day, you offer something like a 10% discount per daily cup. This kind of subscription will increase your customer loyalty and if done right, will increase your bottom line. 

Subscription coffee beans 
Let customers set up a subscription service with you to purchase coffee beans for their home or their office. Like the coffee subscription above, offer a small discount to make it worthwhile, and if you can deliver it to increase the convenience for them, you’re sure to be on to a winner. 

Business accounts 
Some people are lucky enough to work for businesses that offer free coffee or in some cases, discounted by the business. You could set up a recurring payment agreement with the business you are working with to make it simple for them to continue paying you on time and easy to pay for them. 

Room rental 
Many workplaces are offering completely remote working, although this luxury can be great, some people still want the opportunity to leave their house or have face to face meetings without being disturbed. If you have a room, or even the opportunity to just rent a table for the day without the pressure of them needing to buy multiple coffees and food, this could be a great opportunity to make some extra income without much outlay on your behalf. All you need is a good Wi-Fi connection to get started.  

Subscription services don’t just have to be limited to Netflix or your gym membership, they can be applied in a range of ways to a plethora of businesses... You might just have to get creative. 

If you would like to test how a subscription option in your business might work for you, try Billycart for free for your first three months. Sign up today. 

Freelancing can be tough, it can be stressful and lonely at times. Use these tools to improve how you freelance, improve your productivity, minimise your administration and get paid on time

Freelancing is on the rise, we are looking for more flexibility and more control from our work and freelancing offers that. COVID gave us a lot of lessons, and for a lot of us, it was that traditional work may not be the greatest fit for what we want in our lives. However, with freelancing comes challenges, you have the flexibility but you're greeted with less security, you have the ability to pick your own hours, but it can often lead to you working more than planned. Freelancing requires a lot of work, but the rewards can be huge.

Let's walk through some ways you can simplify your freelancing processes to make freelancing work for you.

Bit.ai has been built for teams and individuals to create, collaborate, and organize all your knowledge in one place from anywhere in the world. It's perfect for freelancers to collaborate, especially if you don't have the opportunity to be in person with your clients. You can create fast dynamic notes, documents, wikis, knowledge bases, projects, client deliverables, technical docs, training guides and client portals, while integrating across the apps you work with all in one place.

Your documents, presentations and even your invoices don't need to be boring, add a bit of spice by using Canva templates- or create your own. Canva is easy to use and is a great alternative for someone without a design background. Canva can be used by anyone in any profession, whether you're in marketing and need social media posts or you're a CEO preparing a high level presentation to board members.

It can be difficult to say with accuracy to your clients how much time you spent on a project. By using Toggl, you can accurately track your time and work in this tool. If you're someone who often gets distracted, Toggl can be used as a productivity tool to help your focus too. Being a freelancer, it can be hard to find motivation day in day out, especially if you aren't working as part of a team. Toggl can be used on your desktop or as an app on your phone.

Even the best writers make grammatical errors occasionally. Grammarly is a cloud-based typing assistant that reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes. It uses artificial intelligence to identify and search for an appropriate replacement for the error it locates. If you're a freelancer, you likely don't have a colleague to cross check your emails or final drafts, let Grammarly assist.

Use Calendly to end the back and forth meeting suggestions

If you're managing multiple clients, it can be difficult to schedule meeting times that suit both you and your clients. You simply send your client a unique booking link, they choose a time that best suits them and your meeting is locked in. No more back and forth, no more wasting time coordinating.

Ever waited six weeks for an overdue invoice? Scrambled to pay rent because you didn't get paid on time? Getting paid on time is often a headache for freelancers, but it doesn't have to be with Billycart. Billycart is a payment management platform that creates Smart Payment Agreements™ and equips businesses/contractors/freelancers and their customers or clients with more control, flexibility and transparency over their payment plans. The best part? You can try Billycart for free for the first three months, join today.

Freelancing can be lonely at times, it can be stressful but it can be oh so rewarding. You're working on your terms for clients you feel passionate about and doing it all on your own. Ease some of the stress or free up some of your time through these tools and make freelancing easier for you.

6 Tools That Will Improve Your Freelancing

Are subscriptions worth adding to your business? The statistics say so and Billycart makes the whole process more simple. Our Smart Payment Agreements™ allow easy set up and transparency for both you and your customers.

How will subscription services improve my business revenue?

Subscription services are on the rise with 78% of International adults in 2021 having at least one subscription service (Wonderment) with that statistic expected to rise year on year. Subscriptions can come in many forms, from gym memberships, subscription boxes, dog walking... there's a range of opportunities for subscription and recurring payment options for most businesses, you might just need to get creative.

Subscription and recurring payment businesses have consistently grown 5-8x faster than traditional businesses (What's New In Publishing). Why? Well, we think there's many reasons:

- Improved revenue opportunities
- Improved customer retention
- Customer convenience 
- Offer customers exclusive discounts
- Improved brand loyalty
- Increased touch points for communication
- Increased customer referrals 

Despite these improvements to revenue, 48% of businesses with a recurring revenue model struggle to meet accounting and reporting challenges (Fusebill). Manually managing multiple recurring payment contracts from customers can be extremely time consuming and stressful, following up failed payments, communicating upcoming payments and reporting. We could see this problem across many businesses, that's why we created Billycart.

Billycart offers businesses recurring payment software that makes ongoing, recurring and subscription payments a breeze. We do this through:

Smart Payment Agreements™
A Smart Payment Agreement™️ or digital payment request is your invitation to the new improved way of managing recurring payments. The payment request is what the business sends to the customer, this is sent directly to your  customers mobile via SMS, or email and contains a unique join link. Once the customer clicks this link and follows the prompts to activate, your Smart Payment Agreement™️ is live and you can begin processing payments.

Grace Periods™
Rather than hitting your customers with instant late fees, Billycart gives customers an opportunity to pay their fee before they're hit with a late fee. No customer wants a late fee, so improve your customer experience by giving them another opportunity to pay their fees late fee free.

Automated Communication
Save time calling customers and letting them know their payment failed (those calls aren't very fun anyway). Our clever technology automatically communicates upcoming payments, failed payments and Grace Periods™ through SMS or email. 

Reporting
Billycart offers a dashboard of your incoming, upcoming, successful and failed payments as well as reports on your recurring payments from your customers. With 48% of businesses with a recurring revenue model struggle to meet accounting and reporting challenges (Fusebill), we know how important this is for small businesses.

Seamless Integration
Billycart are an offical partner with industry leader Square, if you're a Square user you can sign up to Billycart in under a minute. If you use another payment processor, you can still benefit from our Billycart technology, we just have to manually sign you up.

Payment discrepancies resolved in less than 24 hours
Thanks to our Grace Periods™ and automated communication, Billycart successfully turns 99% of failed payments into successful ones within the first 72 hours. That's all without you lifting a finger.

So, is it worth you launching a subscription model business? Or adding a subscription model to your business? The statistics say so, in a recent survey from Invesp, they found:

- 54% of online shoppers said they have subscribed to a subscription box service
- 20% of men surveyed claim to be subscribed to at least 6 ecommerce services
-24% say the most important reason for continuing to subscribe is convenience
- 28% say the most important is personalised experience
- 23% say for them, the most important is value for money
- 69% of US households now subscribe to one or more video streaming services

Customers  love subscriptions and that's backed by Fusebill stating that the average subscription billing vendor is growing 30%–50% annually. With the rising cost of living and increasing inflation, improving business offerings and revenue are paramount.

If you're interested in adding a subscription model to your business or launching a new business, try Billycart completely free for your first three months. Join now.

So, What Is So Great About Subscriptions?

Attention to Buy Now Pay Later software has risen after the rise of companies like AfterPay. But is it the best payment option for your business? There's other software out there... Like recurring payment software that we offer at Billycart. The best bit? We don't take a cut from your sale, simply a low monthly fee.

Recurring payments vs buy now pay later, which is better for your business, and what do they both mean?

Let's begin with the basics before we start.

Even if you aren't familiar with what recurring payments might be, you've certainly had some recurring payments. They come in many shapes and forms, and some are a bit more fun than others. Your gym membership has likely been set up as a recurring payment, a lot of your bills are a recurring payment and you might even have your toilet paper as one too. They can be an ongoing payment or they might be for a limited time.

Buy now pay later has risen to popularity in recent years, particularly through the major success stories like Afterpay. Buy now pay later means you can instantly receive your product or service without paying in full. More commonly with these services, you tend to pay in four increments making the product or service more accessible. Popular services include Afterpay, Klarna and Zip.

So how do you know which option is best for your business?

Well, there's a few things you may need to consider:

Do you need the money from your customer straight away? You're looking for a BNPL.

Is your payment on-going from your customer? Recurring payment platform is what you need.

Are you trying to avoid high fees? BNPL often have high fees, and so do some recurring payment platforms... but not Billycart.

Are you looking to help push your customers across the line to purchase? Both will help you here.

Looking for a hands-off approach? Again, both will help you here.

Do you want flexible payment agreement options? Recurring payment platforms have a lot of flexibility and options in terms of how your customers pay.

Buy Now Pay Later has truly risen to fame in the last few years with the likes of Afterpay making headlines across the world. But it isn't just Afterpay playing in this space, there's a range of Buy Now Pay Later platforms rising in popularity with even major banks getting involved. It is important to note the risks in these platforms, Buy Now Pay Later platforms are a form of debt. If you are looking at taking out a loan, your accounts for BNPL platforms may be taken into account unlike your accounts with recurring payment platforms. In addition to this, most BNPL platforms are also taking between 4-5% in merchant fees for each transaction made by a business on top of collecting high late fees from your customers.

You aren't likely to see a recurring payment platform making headlines, they've been around for quite some time now. But the recurring payment landscape is truly changing, particularly when you look at Billycart. We're using automated communication, recovering around 99% of unsuccessful payments within the first 72 hours and doing all of this at a low flat rate monthly fee for businesses.

It's important to note that each business is unique and requires different tools and software to help its success, you may even benefit from using both a BNPL platform and a recurring payments platform depending on your business offerings. If you're interested in finding out more about recurring payment platforms, join Billycart. New users get the first three months completely free.

It can be hard to cut through the noise in the fitness industry, here are some top marketing tips for gaining new clients- and keeping them too! 

Marketing tips for anyone in the fitness industry

We're a society becoming more health conscious and more educated on the importance of moving our bodies and eating well. Signing up to a gym, doing fitness classes or working with a personal trainer is becoming increasingly popular and an important part of life for many people. But with the increase in popularity of fitness comes the increase in people working in the industry too, which can make it hard to cut through and reach more clients. 

So what can you do to cut through the noise?

Finding your niche is a bit of a buzzword at the moment, but it can really help to differentiate yourself from other fitness industry professionals. You might focus on a specific type of training, specialise in a certain age bracket, target a certain gender, or even on servicing a specific suburb. Your niche doesn't have to be "23 year old women who want to grow their arm muscles" but specifying what you're really good at and what you enjoy doing can help you find suitable clients while also letting you do what you love. You might have a passion for competitions and love preparing athletic clients for these challenges, or you might be passionate about helping those new to working out to transform their lives. Having specialised skills to suit your clients and offering really specific options can help a client choose you over another fitness professional.

Advertising your fitness programs or your gym doesn't just have to be done online, there are a range of other tools you can use offline to reach new clients. You might consider creating flyers, putting out an ad in the local magazine or newspaper, adding posters to local notice boards, and don't forget about your own network- ask friends if they know anyone who might be interested, you could even offer them a cash reward for referring someone to give them more motivation to help you out.

Social media has done amazing things for so many fitness folk in the industry. Don't worry, you don't need the latest iPhone or expensive equipment to get started, if your content is educational, a bit of fun and entertaining, your audience will come organically. You don't even have to be someone who likes to be in front of the camera, you could use a tool like Canva to create informative and educational content, create quote tiles of clients talking about your services, or ask clients to send progress pictures.

If you are someone who loves to get in front of the camera, Tiktok has been an amazing tool for a number of small businesses trying to reach new clients. Jump on trending sounds, share top tips for working out or educate people on the best form for specific workouts. Tiktok has huge potential if you're ready to jump in front of the camera and interact with your audience.

Create partnerships with other professionals

Health and wellness isn't limited to getting a gym membership, fitness links perfectly with diet, mental health, recovery and a number of other areas. Network with other professionals in similar industries and see how your offerings can support their clients.

- Working with a dietician to offer discounts for each others clients

- Asking a local sportswear company if they would offer discounts to your clients

- Working with a yoga studio to offer discounts to classes and your programs

- Working with a physio or massage therapist to offer fitness and massage packages 

There's a range of ways you can draw attention to your business but remember, it's always important to pair good marketing with great customer service to keep the customers your marketing draws in. This can happen in a range of obvious ways but there are hidden customer service tactics you can offer outside of a friendly smile and being polite. Think of things outside the box like quick and easy onboarding, session reminder texts, high quality equipment, and of course, it's worth considering a great payment platform like Billycart. Nasty hidden fees, surprise late fees and complicated sign up processes will often impact customer satisfaction, keep your bills coming in and your customers happy with Billycart. 

Sign up today for your first three months completely free.

Decrease the time you spend following up missed charity donations and process them automatically through billycart at a low monthly fee.

How charities can decrease administration through Billycart

For many charities, ongoing donations are an essential part of charity revenue. For most charities, paying late fees to companies for missed donations and following up donors can be a major business administration expense.

On the other hand, some smaller charities can't utilise ongoing payments from donors because of the large expenses often associated with ongoing payments.

In order to help those in need, charities need donations, but with low resourcing, the processing and following up these donors can become an issue. Then there's the additional issue of many platforms charging the charity for missed payments from donors.

So what are the wins for charities in using Billycart?

In your charity, do you have people who dedicate time to following up missed donations through phone calls, personal emails and texts? If you do, this doesn't need to be the case. Billycart is successfully turning 99% of failed payments into successful ones within the first 72 hours through our cleaver automation.

Payment providers charge late fees, usually with no option to opt out. Depending on who you are currently using, that late fee will either go to the charity or to the customer, when it comes to donations, both of those options are less than ideal. Billycart gives you the power when it comes to late fees, you can choose not to give late fees at all, or you can choose the late fee you set and that money will go directly to you.

Billycart offers clear and easy to interpret reporting dashboards. You can easily see your upcoming donations, any failed donations and successful payments. 

Billycart has a special rate for not-for-profits and sporting clubs, take a look at the pricing options here. We also have three months completely free for new Billycart users! 

How Charities Can Decrease Administration Through Billycart

Subscriptions can amplify the hospitality industry, you just need to think outside the box to get started.

Subscriptions Are Changing The Hospitality Industry

The past couple of years have not been easy for the hospitality industry... That's no secret. But generally, working in hospitality isn't always the easiest industry to make a profit. We've all seen some of favorite restaurants or cafes close their doors because their profit margins weren't high enough, or because the amount of work didn't match their profits. It's tough. At Billycart, we want to find ways to support the hospitality industry and help people in it generate profit in less traditional ways to stand out.

By now, your probably know that Billycart is primarily a recurring payment platform. We allow you to send Smart Payment Agreements to your customers and get paid successfully on a recurring basis. So how does this help in hospitality? Well, in a lot of ways actually. Recurring payments or subscriptions aren't just limited to Netflix, they can come in many ways. 

- Charge a fee for using your cafe as a working space

- Charge a club to use your space each week outside of your opening hours

We've seen great success from big players like Pret in the UK taking on subscriptions. For £25 a month, you can have up to five drinks per day, including barista made coffees, hot chocolate, teas and frappes. We're pretty sure most people don't manage to hit the five a day quota, but overall this gives Pret some solid revenue month on month. If you're a small business owner, you probably can't afford to risk giving up to five drinks per day, but even at one drink each day, this subscription is still worthwhile. 

Having recurring guaranteed revenue can help your profit margins and give you stability in your business. It's a great space to get creative and think outside the box too. As we mentioned before, you could consider renting some of your space or hosting a class, it doesn't have to be limited to food.

Interesting in seeing how recurring revenue can help support your business? Join Billycart today and don't pay a thing for the first three months

How Subscriptions Are Changing The Hospitality Industry

There's a number of important dates you need to acknowledge on your social media calendar to show your audience who you are as a business and what you stand for.

Key dates to acknowledge on your social media calendar

We all know social media is king for businesses. Social media has given small businesses so many opportunities in the past few years, from Instagram being the new shop front to viral Tiktok videos producing thousands of orders, there's not denying the importance of social media. There are a number of key dates in the calendar that are worth noting and celebrating with your audience, some of them might promote sales, others are to show your social consciousness. We aren't recommending that you turn your social feed into an entire list of days to celebrate, but it is important to acknowledge some key dates, particularly those that align with your business. 

If you're often client facing, perhaps even your birthday

If your business is specifically working out of your city or town, any significant dates in your area

Small Business Saturday Last Saturday of November

Days to celebrate to show your social conscious

International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT) 17th May

Celebrating key dates are a great way to beef up your social calendar, show that your company cares about certain social issues or to increase sales around certain dates. We recommend looking up key dates that align with your business, search for key dates that relate to your industry and post about them. It might not just mean one post on the day either, these dates can form social media campaigns for a week or a month leading up to them. The choice is yours! But our top tip, don't over do it. There truly is a day for everything and your entire calendar could quickly become a day of celebration for everything and anything.

Key Dates To Nod To This Year On Social Media

Billycart is the best recurring payment platform for small to medium businesses. With low fees, clever automation and tactics to recover failed payments, Billycart has you covered.

The best recurring payment platform, Billycart

So you’ve heard Billycart is transforming the way businesses and customers exchange money but what does that mean exactly?

Billycart is turning recurring bills into recurring delight by giving business and customers freedom with their payments.

Billycart allows businesses to set up a Smart Payment Agreement™ with their customers while giving their customers flexibility to pay how it suits them.

You get paid on a Wednesday but every month, your phone bill comes out of your account on a Tuesday. Half the time you miss this payment because you don’t have enough in your account. This doesn’t mean you’re bad with your money, it just means the current system isn’t working for you.

Using Billycart, your customer has the option to adjust the day their recurring payment leaves their account at a time and day that suits them. Meaning you’re more likely to be paid on time and your customer is left with a better experience.

Billycart operates at a fixed monthly fee for you as a business but you have the option to charge your customers a fee when they miss payments. This fee will go directly to your business. You can edit fees to cover the cost of your subscription to Billycart, edit your fees to be higher so your customers avoid missed payments, or not charge your customers at all. The choice is yours!

If you’re a Square user, Billycart integrates seamlessly with your account. You’ll be set up with a Billycart account in minutes and be ready to send your customers Smart Payment Agreements™.

Join Billycart today and get the first three months completely free

Personal trainers don't need to keep waiting for clients to pay them on time. End the phone calls and use Billycart for a low monthly fee, your first three months are free

How personal trainers can minimise admin through recurring payments

The fitness industry is loving Billycart, it's saving you time and keeping your clients happy. 

No one loves doing admin… right? But when you’re a personal trainer and especially if you're working for yourself, it can be a challenge to stay on top of your finances, admin and your busy training schedule. We want to help you spend less time chasing clients for payments and more time training them, after all that’s what you do best.

Billycart works to make recurring payments simple, which is a common issue for personal trainers. You have a busy schedule of recurring clients who need to pay you for your services but the administration of getting these payments can be a common pain point for personal trainers.

Your clients love your services and want to pay you, but if you aren’t making it simple and convenient for them, it can cause frustration. Billycart aims to change that through simple payment agreements that give your clients flexibility and ease, making them even happier with your business. 


1. You decide how much your customers will be charged and for how long based on your offerings and contracts

2. You set your own late fees and we don’t keep a penny of it like most other payment systems. 

3. Some users allow grace periods, it’s your choice how long these are (or aren’t)

4. You set the recurring payment amount for your customer through your Billycart integration via Square

5. Your customer agrees to the amount. You’ve now entered a payment agreement together

6. It’s official, you’re up and running. Let Billycart do the hard work for you, your money show be flowing and your customers should be smiling

If you'd like to join Billycart, you can join for free for the first three months, join today.

I'm a Personal Trainer, How Can Billycart Help Me?

Tiktok has been transforming sales for small businesses across the globe, it's no longer just a dancing app, it's a tool to improve your small business audeince.

Tiktok is the ultimate social media tool for small businesses

Tiktok is no longer a pandemic lockdown trend, or simply a dancing app, it’s here to stay and it’s a great way to promote your business. But how do you use TikTok effectively?

Particular sounds ‘trend’ on Tiktok, they might be music or a voice over. Using these sounds are a really great way to land on someone's ‘for you page’. Make sure you’re using the sounds for their trend though, if you simply layer a song over a video that doesn't match the trend, it doesn't look like you authentically use the app, that's something TikTok users really care about.

Think carefully about when your users are most likely to be online scrolling TikTok. It probably isn’t during 9-5 business hours. They’re likely scrolling through TikTok later in the evening between 6pm - 8pm.

Hashtags help people find your business! But don’t flood people with too many, find your niche and focus in. Say you’re a PT, but all of your clients are female and focus on weight training, you could use #femalePT #femaleweightcoach #femaletrainingtips. These hashtags are specific, focused and you’ve only used three. Your hashtag strategy might take some practice, mix up your hashtags on your videos and take note on what videos reach the most people depending on what hashtag you use.

Only using trending sounds and dancing isn’t going to retain your audience or make them click follow. If you are a car rental company on Tiktok, you could consider educating your audience about the fuel economy of cars, the true cost of owning a car vs renting one, how to best clean your car etc. If your audience is both entertained and educated, they’re more likely to click follow and stay following your content.

Hack 5: Don’t treat your Tiktok followers the same as your other social accounts

TikTok doesn’t follow the same rules as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. Curated feeds are rarely popular, unlikely stars are emerging and the algorithm can actually work in favour of small businesses unlike many other social media platforms. TikTok favours authenticity like no other platform, self deprecating humour is celebrated and trends continue to get more and more strange. Have fun, be silly, educate your audience, sell your product and don’t be scared to post multiple times in one day.

While you're here, check out the Billycart Tiktok: @wearebillycart_

Subscriptions are on the rise, they're a great way to increase your revenue, improve your customer loyalty and assist with retention. Use Billycart to easily process your subscription payments.

5 ways subscription services are transforming businesses

It's no secret that subscription services are growing, from streaming to toilet paper to gym membership. It seems almost anything can become a subscription... and well, in many cases, it can. Subscription services offer businesses guaranteed revenue, they're a great way to offer your business stability and scalability. 

Subscriptions offer a range of bonuses for customers, they offer convenience and often discounts to customers. Subscriptions are often 'on demand' and in a world where we can get what we want from our fingertips, that's exactly what customers are looking for.

Owning a small business can be financially stressful. Guaranteeing income in some capacity will give you stability and potentially opportunity to scale your business. 

With subscriptions often comes loyalty. If you are offering a high quality service or product in your subscription and your customer has been subscribed for some time, the customer loyalty will come naturally. Adding things like referral codes if possible, gifts at key milestones like one year of being subscribed for example, will likely increase customer loyalty too.

You already know your customers love your product or service, that's why they're your customer. It's certainly worth considering what else these customers might need or want from your business. Consider cross selling additional items or services, increasing their subscription offering or moving them to a more premium offering. Subscription customers are loyal customers- test the waters.

Having subscription based customers means lower overheads, particularly in your marketing from a retention standpoint. If your customers have been locked into a time based contract, you don't need to re-market your product to any customers that have already made a purchase.

Subscription services are here to stay, they're a powerful tool for businesses, small or large. Billycart helps business easily accept subscription fees in a way that's convenient to customers as well as businesses. Customers are given the opportunity to adjust the day of the week the money is taken from their account, which in turn minimises chances of missed payments. Billycart also gives businesses the ability to easily see financial reporting, keep their own late fees, set their own grace periods and easily communicate with their customers. 

Try Billycart today and see how we're turning recurring bills into recurring delight.

5 Ways Subscription Services Are Transforming Businesses

Customer service should be a priority for every type of business, but what are some easy ways to improve your businesses customer service without having commit too much time?

Five of the best customer service tips for your business

To have a successful business, most of the time high quality customer service is going to have to be at the core of everything you do. Happy customers mean retention, they mean word of mouth marketing and they mean increased profits. So what can you do to increase your customer service to your customers?

Tip one: Find out how your customers feel about your business

Surveying your customers is a great way to find out how happy (or unhappy) your customers are with you. Surveying can also help you in identifying 'at-risk' customers and fix any issues they have instead of trying to win them back once they leave. A great way to survey your customers is to keep it simple and do something like creating a Net Promoter Score (NPS) for your customers. Keeping customers is a lot easier than acquiring new ones or trying to win back past customers.

If you're offering a subscription based product but you haven't been in contact with your customer in a couple of months, they may be at risk of leaving. Now, it can be hard to find a happy medium in this space, over communicating can push customers to leave, but so can under communicating. Make sure you're emailing your customer about new product offerings, updates on their order or services, reminders when their product is arriving or when their appointment is coming up.

Tip three: Respond to your customers where messaging exists

If you are running social media accounts, your customers are likely to message you on these accounts, leaving them on read is not going to make for good customer service. Even though you'd likely prefer them to email you, they don't know that this isn't the best process for you. If you really don't have capacity to respond to social media messages, create an auto-response and let them know the best way to contact you.

Tip four: Speak to your customers with kindness, always

Customer service often comes with customer complaints. It is important you don't see these complaints as personal attacks and respond in a professional way that reflects your business. With the rise in social media and the ease of screenshots, assume everything you write to your customers will be shared with the public and act accordingly.

Emails are a great way to stay connected to you customers, but you don't need to manually send every single email for it to be a successful communication with your customer. There are a range of products that allow automated emails to go to customers based on certain rules. E.g you could create an onboarding email flow that spans over three months of your customer subscribing to your product or service. These emails may comprise of a welcome email, product update, upsell option, or a customer survey. 

Good customer service means high customer satisfaction and at Billycart we love happy customers. That's why we keep our fees low, why we're always working on making our product better and increasing our offerings. Happy customers are what has grown Billycart. Our customers tell other businesses they would benefit from using Billycart and our customers stick around. Customer service must be at the core of what you do.

5 Customer Service Must Do's For Your Business

Looking for marketing tips on how to market your business to gen z? The Tiktok dancing and environmentally conscious generation aren't the same as other generations when it comes to marketing.

Top tips to market your business to gen Z

Is it all just TikTok and iced lattes... or is there a little more to it?

Do you have a product or service that you think Gen Z would be interested in? This generation often requires a different approach, they’re tech savvy, climate caring, TikTok loving and baggy jeans wearing. They want brands with authenticity, brands with social responsibility and they probably aren’t afraid to cancel you.

So how do you market your business to them?

A lot of Gen Z users look for what a brand stands for, not just what they do. Does the brand deliver products in plastic packaging? Does the brand offset their carbon footprint? How diverse is the company? And does the company post in support of key events like Pride and Black History Month? It’s not just about saying you care for Gen Z, it’s about acting on these things and working to make the world a better place.

If you’re only marketing on Facebook and you’re confused why this isn’t reaching Gen Z… you might need to do more research. Gen Z probably aren’t there. If you want your product to reach Gen Z, you need to go directly to them (and they aren’t updating their Facebook status). It’s probably time to download TikTok and build a following on there if you think Gen Z will purchase your product or service.

Gen Z want flexibility, why? Because they’re used to it. They didn’t go through the days of pirating movies and waiting three hours to download, they had Netflix. They have grown up with choice and if your brand doesn’t give them choice and flexibility, they’ll just quickly Google an alternative. 

That’s why we’re finding Gen Z love Billycart. It offers them choice in when their payments can be made and flexibility in how they pay and what works for them.

The best piece of advice you can get? speak to a few people in that age bracket! They know best. Ask them what they do for fun, what their daily struggles are and what their key interests might be. This will help you better understand them rather than guessing.

If you own a beauty or wellness business, you should consider how subscription modelling could transform your business and increase your revenue margins.

Subscriptions are going to change the beauty industry, here's some tips to get involved

The beauty industry is bursting with recurring payment options, from blow dry clubs to fortnightly nail appointments. But following up the payments from clients can be a headache. Phone calls, emails, late fees, disgruntled customers. 

Say you own a hair salon, and you see a gap in the market to begin offering your clients a monthly subscription to a blow dry club at your salon. For $50 a month, they now have access to weekly blow drys and exclusive salon discounts. 

But how will you take this $50 monthly fee?...

You could manually process the $50 each month yourself but with 40 clients taking up this offer, that is already timely. It will become more timely when the $50 doesn’t go through for eight of your clients who joined the club. This now means eight phone calls to find out when you can try again to process the payment.

At Billycart we live and breathe recurring payments. The Billycart platform takes away the manual processing, the follow up and works in the best interest of your business and your customers needs. You are in control of your payments when you use Billycart. You choose the late fees (and you get to keep them if you charge them!), you choose the grace period, you choose the amount and you can give your customers flexibility to pick their payment date to ensure you get paid on time.

Step one: Your customer has signed up to your blow dry club. You then set up a Billycart Smart Payment Agreement™ through the platform by entering in the amount, the frequency and their details.

Step two: Your customer receives an email and accesses the portal. You’ve set their payment to come out on Tuesdays but they get paid Wednesday mornings. They adjust the payment day so they know they can pay you without being charged the $10 late fee you set.

Step three: Let the recurring bills turn into recurring delight for both you and your customer. This payment will continue recurring without you having to lift a finger (unless you would like to make any adjustments).

Give Billycart a try and see what it can do for your business, try Billycart for free for three months, join today.

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