Posted Under: Business, Marketing, Networking, Online, Planning, Small Business, Startup, Web, Website

The biggest challenge that almost all small businesses & start-ups face is FUNDS. Money being most limited resource should be allocated and spent wisely. To keep your start-up cost lower, life easier and operations effective, this article will introduce you to some of the free business tools available and all you need is an Internet connection and a motivation to try.

Web Presence/ Website: No need to break the bank for a website, try hubpages to create FREE web pages about your business

• More info: http://hubpages.com/help/about/
• Plus: FREE, Instant publishing, Edit anytime, track your visitors, improve your content, great way to promote your business
• Minus: Not an alternative of your business website
• Example: Breaking the 9-5 jail http://hubpages.com/hub/Breaking-the-9-to-5-Jail
• What to do? – Try it. Its FREE plus gives you instant room in web-space 😉

Blogs: Blogs have become more and more popular as a means for businesses to promote their products and services and most importantly develop a personable image and relationship with their customers. Blogs are typically industry related News and Article posts that tend to be more informal than the typical corporate advertisement. A successful blog is more effective than a website. Starting a blog is easy but maintaining it is the challenging part because an empty blog sends the wrong message and regular updates demand a lot of time.

• More Information: www.wordpress.com OR www.blogger.com
• Plus: Search engines love the fresh and relevant content
• Minus: Time consuming
• Example: http://idea2inception.wordpress.com/
• What to do? – Don’t rush in!

Coupons: How many times have you thought about sending coupons to your customers and have them come back but did NOT do it? Well, no more excuses because One Minute Coupon makes it easy for you to create coupons for your customers. Use your own words and images and then take it to your customers by showing it on your website. Your customers can print the coupon there or click to see a whole bunch of them right there.

• More Information: www.oneminutecoupon.com/
• Plus: FREE
• Minus: You tell me…
• What to do? – Try one…

Keyword Search Alerts: Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms. They currently offer alerts with results from News, Web, Blogs, Video and Groups.

• More Information: http://www.google.com/alerts
• Plus: Alerts can help you monitor competition & keep you updated of the latest developments in your industry.
• Minus: More mail in your inbox
• What to do? – Try it !!

Web Analytics: As a start-up or small business not only it is important to have a website and maintain a healthy web-presence but it is very important that you understand who is using your website, what they are doing when they come to your website, which pages they visit and for how long they are staying, etc. All of this information helps you improve your website and channel your marketing dollars in the right direction.

• More Information: http://www.google.com/analytics/
• Plus: Reliable web traffic information to help you make right decisions
• Minus: Google owns the data
• What to do? – Go get it, you need it.

Google Docs: While it may not have all the advanced functionality of the leading office software suites, Google Documents allows users to create and save documents online. Write your business documents using Google’s word processor. Use the database, mathematical, and sorting functionality in Google’s spreadsheet application. Create a presentation on projected sales of your product. The collaborative feature of Google Documents allows multiple users to work on the same project at the same time, anywhere in the world. These applications work like simplified versions of Microsoft’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and allow colleagues to work together on the same document.

• More Information: http://docs.google.com
• Plus: Instant collaboration and no more sending attachments back and forth
• Minus: No internet, NO access (unless you saved the documents on your desktop as well)
• What to do? – You NEED it.

VOIP or Internet-based Phone Calls: Skype. You can make FREE Internet calls to anyone you want (of course if they also have Skype) or for a small fee to a landline. It is perfectly suited to start-ups and small businesses who need to keep their phone bills down. As Skype says “Free calls, video calls and instant messaging over the internet. Plus great value calls to phones anywhere in the world.”

• More Information: www.skype.com
• Plus: Lower Phone Bills
• Minus: No internet, No calls…
• What to do? – Try it, its FREE to register and use…

Instant Messaging: Instant messaging or chatting is a popular form of two-way communication using typed text. The communication takes place in real time and hence it facilitates better communication, mostly amongst geographically-dispersed people.

• More Information: www.google.com/talk
• Plus: Much more than Instant messaging – file sharing, online calling, voicemail, offline messaging distinguishes it from other IMs
• Minus: Making sure that all your connections are on Google Talk
• What to do? – Its 2009 and am sure you’re already using it

Collaboration/ Desktop Sharing/ Web Conferencing: As a small business owner you may feel the need of desktop sharing, web conferencing, and web collaboration for webinars, web meetings, sales presentations, online training, and remote support. Here’s the solution: Yugma.

• More Information: www.yugma.com
• Plus: There’s a Skype version which provides instant desktop sharing and interactive collaboration tools for Skype users.
• Minus: Servers may not respond sometimes 🙂
• What to do? – Sign up to get your free Yugma instant web conferencing account.

To Do List: There are a number of online ‘to do’ lists which help you manage your tasks & reminders. If you don’t trust your Post-it notes and Outlook then consider “Remember the Milk”, a free application at help…

• More Information: www.rememberthemilk.com/
• Plus: Never forget the milk (or anything else) again
• Minus: Do you really need it?
• What to do? – Stick to your trusted post-it reminders 🙂

The good News is that’s not all…There are so many more resources out there to make your life easier; I’ll talk about those in more details, in a separate post. In the meanwhile, take a look, explore and enjoy the FREE (or almost FREE) resources discussed in this post.