5 FREE tools for small business owners (yes, free!)

Jan 28 2008

Okay, I’ll admit it: I REALLY LIKE getting stuff for free. And especially as a small business owner, I hate laying out for anything I don’t really need to. But these are all completely free, no strings attached tools that have helped my business
without costing me a dime.

1. Google Analytics: Let’s face it… Without statistics to guide us, we just don’t know how successful our marketing efforts are on the web. And Webalizer, AWStats and the other free packages that you might find preinstalled on your server just don’t tell you enough. At the same time, there may not be enough value in stats for a small business to justify spending hundreds or thousands of dollars an advanced analytics package. Google Analytics is a really nice solution though. It’s user-friendly, customizable and offers MUCH more information than you’ll get from whatever came with your server space.

2. FreeConference.com: Conference call lines are expensive, many have subscriptions and many will charge you by the minute. So if you’re cheap like me and don’t want to spend money on the conventional conference line but hate hitting the 3-way button on your phone, this is the free solution for you. Here’s how it works: you sign up and they email you a conference line dial-in number, a bridge number and a moderator’s PIN. Then you can start having conference calls whenever you want. You never need to schedule and there are no limitations; you can use it any time, on-demand. There are only two catches I’ve found… First, the conference can’t start until the moderator logs in with their PIN. That means that if you’re late, your guests will wait in limbo until you arrive. Second, you are unlikely to get a dial-in number with a local area code. But with the prevalence of unlimited calling plans, this is unlikely to offend a lot of people.

3. Yugma.com: Funny name, but a nice free web conferencing tool you can use to complement the free conference line I told you about. The desire to do presentations and web meetings may not be strong enough to justify $20-$100 a month. But with Yugma, I can share PowerPoint presentations — or anything else on my computer screen — for free. Then I can get on my FreeConference line and give the audio portion of my presentation and share the visual part over the web. Now we can do presentations anywhere in the country as if we were there. Except that I don’t need to wear a tie. Is there a catch? Absolutely. You can only invite 10 attendees to a meeting with the free account and you can’t use their scheduling tool which will automatically send conference URLs to all of your invitees. Instead you need to start the conference a few minutes early on your computer which will allow you to generate a URL and email it then. Ultimately, you may want to pay for your web conferences, but this will allow you to dip your toe in the water and keep it there as long as you like at no cost.

4. LinkedIn: I’ve been on LinkedIn for almost three years… Building your network gives you the opportunity to view and search your connections’ connections, their connections and so on. Ever wanted an “in” with a particular company but never had a name? Search on LinkedIn and see what comes up. For example, if I were to search my network for CEO’s in the Consumer Products industry, I get 430 names. They may not all be interested in speaking to me, but I’m free to try anytime I want. If I’m ever talking to a prospective client, vendor or employee, I usually try digging them up on LinkedIn to learn a little more, see if they have any recommendations, etc. LinkedIn also has a great “Question & Answer” section where users can pose business questions to the community and others can show their expertise and help make connections. Essentially, it’s like a giant 24/7/365 networking group with millions of members. And as an added bonus, creating a LinkedIn profile will do wonders for your search engine rankings. Here’s my profile.

5. WordPress: Open source software is a mixed bag in my opinion. You can find something free to do just about anything these days, but that “free” always seems to cost you something in flexibility, functionality, support or scalability (up or down). But WordPress is terrific and a lot better than you’d expect for free. It’s an extremely powerful tool and, from my perspective, near-perfect software at the world’s most perfect price point. To use all the functionality of WordPress, you’ll want to install it on your own host rather than use the version hosted at their site. But you’ll still be blogging within minutes. Content is easy to create, manage and update and with the ability to create static content pages as well as blog posts, WordPress can even serve as a very basic content management system. You’ll still need a designer or firm familiar with WordPress in order to customize the front end and create a look just for you, but that is by no means a requirement for implementing or using the software — just a good suggestion.

Do you have any good small business freebies that you’d like to see added to this list? Email me and I’ll credit you if I use them in the sequel to this post. I’ll take links for “almost freebies” as well. Happy bargain hunting everyone!