Five Business Resources I Can’t Live Without

May 25, 2007

There are many resources that I use on a daily or weekly basis that are online-based. I wanted to share these with you and get feedback from you on what your favorite resources are. I think we can all benefit from knowing what it is that helps make our businesses efficient and cost-effective.

(1) WordPress

WordPress is a valuable one for me since it powers my website / blog, powers the websites and blogs of my clients and allows me to openly communicate with my website visitors and with my clients. It also allows me to communicate with my friends and family easily and efficiently through my personal blogs. Speaking to the business side of things however, it becomes my main portal for all things related to my business and industry.

(2) MyHours

Each day, I log the hours that I put in for my clients. It is one of the most important tools for me because it solely determines my invoicing and billing for my clients. On the 15th and the 30th of each month, I pull a report from MyHours and invoice my clients according to what appears on that report. The program is great because it is web-based which means that from any PC, any location, I can log the hours I am working for my clients.

(3) Cartville / 1ShoppingCart

In terms of list building and tracking contacts, I use Cartville. I don’t use the software yet for the shopping cart or the affiliate program but I do plan on taking advantage of those items once I get to a point in my business where I have more products than services or at least an equal amount of each. Cartville is a great business tool and 90% of my clients also use it for their business.

(4) PayPal

In addition to MyHours, PayPal is the other most important resource in terms of invoicing and billing. PayPal is the website that I use to invoice my clients and because it is free (except for a few small fees on transactions) it keeps my costs low. The other benefit is that I receive payments quickly rather than waiting on checks from other countries. My clients in Australia can easily submit payment for their invoices just as quickly as a client in Canada or the US could.

(5) Feed Demon

Feed Demon is a feed reader that I use to track other blogs on the internet. I subscribe to the blog’s feed and I track them in my software program so that I can stay current. What is great about Feed Demon is that it keeps the posts organized by subject (I specify what subject I want them to fall under) and also by individual blog. This is great because it allows me to stay connected to the bloggers that I enjoy with minimal effort. Time is something we, as entrepreneurs, highly value and this cuts down my time spent on blogs.

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