Favorite Free (or Low-Cost) Programs/Software for Business

Running a business is complicated – and expensive. So it’s nice to know that sometimes you can get ‘big bucks’ quality for a low price – or even free. Here’s a list of programs I use day in, day out – and you might want to check out as well:

Ad ManagerphpAdsNew is a great Open Source (and free) program for managing advertising. Rather than the simple rotator scripts you see around, this is a professional quality program for setting up customer ad campaigns, allowing them to log in and view results. I use it to display banners on all my sites.

Internet Protection – If you’re on the Internet, I recommend a firewall (like a LinkSys Cable Router box) to protect from outsiders trying to get in. However, that won’t stop programs running on your computer from ‘reaching out’. A free program like ZoneAlarm allows you to choose what goes out – and when.

AutoResponderEmail Go-Getter System (EGGS!) is a nice autoresponder script. It’s low cost (donation-ware) but a great way to get a high-quality mail tool on your site. I use it for all my sign-up forms.

Blog softwareWordPress is my preferred blog tool of choice – popular, actively supported, customizable, and easy to use. If you’re looking to put a blog on a website or two, it’s a great choice.

Office Software (Word Processor, Spreadsheet, etc) – I have Microsoft Office, but I don’t use it. OpenOffice does what I want, and it’s compatible with MS Office (one exception I’ve found – spreadsheet passwords). I recommend it as a great way to learn Office tools, while keeping costs low.

This just scratches the surface of the tools out there, but quality software like this will help out a lot – letting you provide ‘Big Biz’ results – on a ‘Small Biz’ budget!

Review: Online Land Rush

Just about every one of us has dreamed about owning a bit of property, some land to build on, or perhaps to sell and make a tidy profit.

But, buying land is risky and expensive. In contrast, OnlineLandRush.com offers a simple and inexpensive solution to ‘stake your claim’ – Internet domain name purchasing.

OnlineLandRush.com is an eBook and membership site devoted to one thing – making your domain names more valuable to you.

If you’ve been online for any time, you know how valuable domains are getting, especially those that end in .com – news programs will occasionally have stories of names going for millions of dollars, even during these economic down-times. So this ‘land’ can be just as valuable (or even more so) than the ‘real thing’.

But buying a domain other people will want is only one aspect of what you’ll learn reading the OnlineLandRush eBook. Like real estate development in the ‘real world’, online land has many uses, and the eBook takes you through how to benefit (and the site provides tools to help out, including an exclusive forum).

For instance, continuing the land analogy, even what appears to be bad land can be made valuable with a shopping center built on it. Likewise, a domain can be made more valuable with content. Buying near an upscale property can benefit; so too you can get ‘close’ with misspellings (a suggestion program is included with the membership to help with this).

And of course, some people just want land to live on. OnlineLandRush discusses that too, explaining how to keep your domain but benefit from traffic, such as with Google AdSense.

The eBook is an easy read, but a very interesting one. If you’re wondering how to buy a domain, or what to do with it, it will help you; and even if you’ve been in it as long as I have (or longer), there’s still tips. I especially found the section on misspellings very informative, and I plan to do a little domain shopping in the near future…

If you’re planning to do business, you’ll likely need a domain name. With the huge investment of time and effort that will go into any purchase you make, it’s worth a bit extra to make sure you’ve considered all the angles.

OnlineLandRush.com is not just for an ebook (although it includes a good one) – it’s a membership site, with LIFETIME membership for a one-time fee. Since the lifetime membership is the price of a typical eBook, and you also get the eBook as well, it’s an easy decision – so head over to OnlineLandRush.com, and see if you can’t stake out a little piece of the Internet for yourself!

Review: Co-Reg Master

What are co-registrations? They’re a hot new topic among online businesses looking to improve their bottom line.

With co-registrations, people sign up for multiple items at a time. For instance, a form that allows them to download a product can also sign them up for a newsletter.

Or you could work with other businesses, each offering the other’s newsletter to visitors along with their own. In this way, you could possibly grow a subscriber list twice as fast.

Of course, talking about it and actually setting it up are two different things. With Co-Reg Master, however, much of the technical details are managed for you.

For instance, let’s say you are working with someone else – you want them to add a checkbox to sign visitors up to your newsletter, in return for doing the same on your site. With Co-Reg, you would set up an emailing offer, modify your forms on the website to include that additional checkbox, and also code to call CoReg Master.

In return Co-Reg would send the form for processing, but would also pull out the special info you added (that little ‘sign me up for the other guy’s newsletter’ checkbox), and inform them they have a new subscriber – including date and IP address (highly important to avoid spam complaints later on).

You could also take this information and store it instead of emailing it, or pass it to another script for further processing. So for a hands-free method of combining offers, it is a highly configurable solution.

Of course, this only scratches the surface – for a better look, drop by their website and see how a Co-Registration system can help you improve your newsletter subscriptions – or anything else!

How to Manage Your Time and Blog Right

It’s been an extremely busy week – too busy.

I’m especially aware of it because of the time I’m not spending on my blog, which of course begs the question – how can a businessperson budget the time to keep a blog going?

My thoughts:

  • Expect to fail. How’s this for a choice – go crazy when you can’t get out an article a day, or give up completely? So avoid the crazy, and skip once in awhile.
  • Plan for droughts. For instance, if you find you end up writing three articles a week, make sure you space them out every couple of days (even if you did them all in one night!) Better a bit every day, than a long dry spell.
  • Plan ahead. Do you have a list of topics to write about? If not, then start it. On those days you don’t quite know what to talk about, think about those.

There’s many more things you can watch out for, but keep these in mind, and you may find the pressure easing off when ‘deadline’ time comes around.