With all the information online about tools and techniques
available to help someone effective manage and run an
online business, how do you ever decide which ones are
truly useful to have in your business management toolkit?
Here’s my listing of the 20 indispensable tools that I
cannot live without:
1. Article Marketing: SubmitYourArticle.com automates the
article submission process by allowing you to submit up to
eight articles each month and then distributes the articles
to hundreds of web sites, article directories and ezine
publishers. Without a doubt, this has been my most
effective online marketing tool that has produced
tremendous results for my business.
2. Audio Recording/Podcasting: AudioAcrobat.com makes audio
streaming fast and simple, whether you want to add an audio
greeting, audio testimonials, podcast or videos to your
website or send out an audio postcard or record a teleclass.
3. Backup: Carbonite.com offers an unlimited amount of
data storage for $50 per year. Carbonite is very intuitive
and went directly to my email files and Roboform files to
back them up without me having to manual select the backup
files. I frequently use this service to find the original
version of a file that I’ve accidentally overwritten, as
well.
4. Blogging: Typepad.com is both simple to use and
powerful. You can set up as many blogs as you desire with
a Pro account, and you can customize your blog in an
infinite number of ways. Once it’s set up, the online
interface makes it a snap to make new posts to your blog.
5. Bookmark Manager: SPURL.net makes managing a moderate
to massive amount of bookmarks very easy. You create any
number of categories in which to file your favorites, and
adding a favorite website is as easy as clicking a button.
6. Color Matching: Pixie is a tool that I use daily to
help me match a color exactly for a document that I’m
creating or a color I’m trying to replicate on a website.
Run it, simply point to a color and it will tell you the
hex, RGB, HTML, CMYK and HSV values of that color.
7. Content Management: Edit.com is a website maintenance
service that makes your current website editable so you can
change the content yourself. They handle everything to get
your site set up and provide you with a phone training to
walk you through your first edits. There is no software to
install because it just uses your web browser. At no
charge, you can have them review your website to ensure
that your site is compatible with their service.
8. Email List Management/Autoresponders: aWeber.com is a
great service for creating, mailing and reporting back on
the success of your newsletter as well as to subscribe your
readers to a sequential autoresponder, either associated
with your newsletter or with another product. I love to be
able to see how many readers opened my newsletter, who
opened the newsletter, and what links they clicked on from
the newsletters.
9. Fax: MaxEmail.com lets you send a receive faxes through
the Internet/email and makes your need for a fax machine
obsolete. The faxes arrive in PDF format, so you can
easily share you faxes with others as needed. They also
offer voice mail on your fax line, and the voicemail
message arrives as an audio file in your email inbox.
10. Graphics Program: SnagIt.com lets you show someone
exactly what you see on your screen. Select and capture
your screen image. and send it to SnagIt’s editor to add
professional effects, edit the image (resize, adjust
color), and or drop it into your favorite application.
11. Hosting: Aaces.com offers the ability to buy a hosting
plan in which you can host and manage a large number of
websites through one account rather than buying multiple
hosting plans for each website for your business. And,
their customer service can’t be beat.
12. Idea Management: With EverNote.com you can easily
store and quickly access typed and handwritten memos,
webpage excerpts, emails, phone messages, addresses,
passwords, brainstorms, sketches, documents and more! A
free version or a 30-day trial of the paid version is
available for download.
13. Merchant Account: PracticePaySolutions.com offers an
all-in-one ecommerce solution that helps you take payment
online. The coolest feature that they offer in this
service is the ability to do batch uploads of charges, so
if you have a number of clients on retainer that you
invoice every month, you can simply create a spreadsheet
and batch upload the data rather than entering each
client’s information individually.
14. Publicity Tracker: Google Alerts let you type in an
unlimited number of search terms, like your name, your
company name, your industry, the name of your competitors,
etc. Google will then deliver an email alert for any
mention of your search term online. This is a wonderful
way to track your own PR as well as industry trends.
15. Password Management: Roboform.com is the top-rated
password manager and web form filler that completely
automates password entering and form filling. You’ll never
have to remember a password again! I maintain both my
passwords and user info and that of my clients in this
program.
16. Shopping Cart: KickstartCart.com is easy to use and
setup, and offers the ability to create affiliate programs,
follow up with prospective and current customers with
autoresponders, create coupons for limited-time offers, as
well as enable buyers to immediately download electronic
purchases (ebooks, audio files). There is a free 30-day
trial, but don’t sign up until you have the time to test
drive it–30 days goes by fast! Get your free ebook here,
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System That Makes You Money.
17. Spyware: CounterSpy.com will protect your computer
from spyware, adware, Trojans and other malware threats.
18. Teleconference Line: LiveOfficeFreeConferencing.com
lets you meet with colleagues, associates or even family
members through a teleconference bridge line that can bring
up to 250 people together at one place over a
teleconference phone line. You can use the line to conduct
classes and training and record your calls, as well as
manage your participants from an online interface.
19. Time Tracker: TraxTime.com has helped me keep track of
my consulting projects for years. You simply create
projects and clock into and out of them, with the ability
to write memos about how you’ve used your time.
20. To Do List Management: Accomplice.com works online and
offline, integrates with Outlook and other software you
already use, and syncs with your PDA. What I love most
about this software is that I can create in-depth,
hierarchical to-do lists (tasks and sub-tasks of a bigger
project) very easily, and add additional tasks on the fly
as they occur to me. I can see at any point what are my
more important tasks and what is coming due soon.
Try out these tools with the trials offers provided and see
how your business becomes easier to manage!
About the Author:
Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business
Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service
professionals learn how to automate their businesses,
leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more
clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your
Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at
http://www.GetMoreClientsOnline.com . Ask Donna an
Internet Marketing question at
http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com .
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