As an entrepreneur on a small budget, I like to pocket my profit and avoid spending whenever possible. In today's economy, you can't afford to waste your money. Check out my listing of the top FREE and affordable web tools for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners. Feel free to add your freebies to the list and/or share this list with others.
1. The best free web tool for every entrepreneur is of course paypal.com. I use paypal for everything; sending out invoices, setting up subscription payments, and creating shopping carts.
2. My cell phone is my primary line and that simply won't do as an entrepreneur. I spend little to nothing to make international calls on Skype and I host all my teleseminars, conference calls, and virtual meetings for Free using FreeConferenceCall.
3. Adding Video or Audio to your site doesn't have to cost you a thing! If you can't afford Go-to-Meeting, use UStream for live video streaming, it's free! PC Users take advantage of your free Movie Maker to create your own movies. For audio, download audacity, a free audio recorder. It's great for podcasting. I host my podcast on podbean for less than $5 a month, and I make money by adding a subscription fee to my premium podbean posts. In my podcast I share my e-business tips with other entrepreneurs.
4. I self publish all my books at no cost on lulu.com and use Kunaki to mass produce my CDs.
5. There is no better Free email service than g-mail. Google has tons of free small business solutions, from google analytics to Google Docs for word processing applications, which are great if you don't have MS Word or MS Office.
6. Do you want to keep track of your website and marketing campaigns. Use google analytics to track your stats. Signup for Google Alerts and create alterts on your name, website, or business to receive free email notifactions of any weblinks relevant to you. When creating a new alert, remember to put phrases and names in quotations. Try Google's free keyword tool if you need help with selecting keywords for your ads or SEO campaigns.
7. If you are looking for free software visit Download.com or the FreeSite.
8. You can try eFax for online faxing services. When I don't feel like paying for faxes, I simply scan my document and send via email as a pdf. Get's the job done without the extra hassle.
9. If you are looking for freelance work or a freelancer for your project, visit elance.com to promote your business or find inexpensive services.
10. Get access to tons of Free Templates for newsletters, calenders, invoices, and more at Microsoft Office's Small Business Templates page.
11. Quality images are so important for your business. Every week I am in need of professional images for my blogs, banners, photos for business material, eBook covers, etc. I get my clipart and stock photography graphics from iStockphoto.com for as little as $1.
12. For only $5 per month I make hundreds of dollars in weeks by selling my e-Books on e-junkie.com, the best website for selling digital content. I create all my eBooks using MS Word, Istock Photos, and I use a free webtool to convert my files to pdf format - PDF995.
13. Blogging is so important for my business. I get tons of Free Advice on Blogging from ProBlogger Darren Rowse, and Yaro Starak. Yaro even has FREE How-to-Blog video tutorials to help you build your first blog.
14. No Cost Marketing is my favorite kind of marketing. I promote my site for free online in tons of different ways. I created my own social networks for FREE on ning.com. I use free social bookmarking and networking sites like stumbleupon.com and twitter to share my posts with other entrepreneurs. With thousands of friends on Myspace and Ning, I hardly ever pay for advertising.
15. When I am not on my Ning website, I am networking with people on yahoo groups and meetup.com.
16. For Creating a Blog, there is no better Free Blog Publishing Tool than Wordpress. Here is a listing of over 45 Free premium word press themes.
17. Send out your press releases using PRLeap and PRWeb.
18. The best free websites to host your videos are of course youtube.com and blip.tv.
20. For the most affordable web hosting plans and domain name registration I suggest godaddy.com and hostmonster.com.
These are just a handful of free web tools and smalll business resources that I feature in my eBook, the Web Entrepreneurs Back Pack. I created this guide to give you access to over 500 web tools, so that you never have to waste your precious time searching for the right resources. You can download this ebook by itself or get it in a collection of my 3 Best Guides featuring information about Internet Marketing, Selling Your Products and Services online and finding affordable Small Business Services Online.
LaShanda Henry
Premium eBooks for Web Entrepreneurs
http://www.e-junkie.com/lhenry
You need to be a member of Black Business Women Online to add comments!
Thank you so much for the information. I am certainly on an almost nonexistent budget, but I know that there is a lot of free resources for struggling entrepreneuers. You made my search so much easier.
LaShanda Henry > Shahidah al-AminJune 20, 2009 at 12:09am
You are welcome. Glad you like the article. If you have any questions or topics you want to see in the BBWO forums, please feel free to let me know. -LaShanda
Replies
Amina
Sarah Elliott
Owner & Desgner
Sarenzo Beads
www.SarenzoBeads.com
http://www.sistasense.com
you have just confirmed that i was on the right track .. I had a check mark by at least 19 of the 20 things you had listed.
Thank you
Rhonda