I recently read a post by Brandie Kajino at The Home Office Organizer about her favorite freebies that you can use in your business. Her post was inspired by the list in Entrepreneur magazine. Of course, this inspired me to think about my favorite free (and practically free) things for business.
All of these free services and tools help me out on a regular basis.
1. Google.
It’s not just a search engine. Gmail has reinvented e-mail. It has a great feature where it groups back and forth e-mails together in one “conversation” so you do not need to go searching for earlier threads to the conversation. I also use Google Calendar and Google Docs to organize and share information throughout our organization. Google Apps is great for setting up web site e-mail and putting together a simple intranet page of important business information. The great thing is that all of these Google services work together. When I get an e-mail with a doc attached, I can open it in Google Docs rather than download it to my computer. I can also add important dates from e-mails right into the Calendar. In a word, Google is great.
37signals has some great business apps. These are two that I use regularly. While I pay for both, they are offered at a basic level for free, which is great for trying them out or if you are a 1 person business with just a few customers.
Highrise is a simple (but robust) customer relationship manager. It makes it easy to keep track of all details for each of your customers and potentials. One nice feature, you can automatically attach your e-mail messages to your contact histories.
Basecamp is a project management tool. It is simple and intuitive, and has been helping me stay focused and on track with projects. In other words, it does what it is supposed to do!
Simpleology is in a class by itself. It is at once a organizational tool and a college for learning how to be a better businessman and a better person. Simpleology 101: The Simple Science of Getting Things Done is a free course on setting goals and executing those goals. It helped to change how I think and act each day, both in business and in my greater life. Even after the course is done, I still use Simpleology every day to organize my tasks and plan for my goals. You absolutely owe it to yourself to check this out.
4. WordPress
WordPress is a free blog publishing software. I am using it right now. This is a great and easy way to publish a blog or simple website. It is free to use and you can even host your blog for free at WordPress.com. Be sure to check out the free templates and extensions at WordPress.org.
5. Vistaprint
Need business cards, postcards, or a plethora of other marketing material. Vistaprint is the place to go. They offer great prices, fast delivery, and wonderful products. Oh, and if you play it right, you can get tons of free stuff, including their famous free business cards.
Okay, this is not technically a business service. It is a list of great Web 2.0 sites, including lots of great sites and tools for businesses. And a lot of the websites highlighted offer free services. I have found lots of gems over the years by keeping up with Ehub.
7. Skype
Skype has great free services for calling from computer to computer, which you could set up and use if you have workers at various locations. I personally use Skype for their phone calling service. My phone bill went from around $100 per month to around $6 per month.
8. Open Office
I have no idea why anyone would ever buy Microsoft Office again. Open Office does the job just fine, and its free (though you can donate time or money). A download from OpenOffice.org includes a word processor, a spreadsheet tool, a presentation tool (Powerpoint), and more.
There are a lot more great tools out there. Check out Brandie’s list and the Entrepreneur article. Let me know if you have a list of your own. And always keep your eyes open for something new.
