Irunabiz: Technology

I have started a few small business in my lifetime. Currently I am running a part-time home based business business that consists of this blog and a consulting business. Since this blog is about getting value from technology in a small business, I want to show you how I use technology to run my business better. 

Starting the business

Instead of paying a company to incorporate my LLC, I got on to the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, printed the forms and followed their directions to incorporate my LLC. This saved me about $100 in fees from a registration website. It may be worth your while to get to your states website and see if you can do this yourself. (I think you can only do this yourself if you register your corp. in the state you live in, but I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice.)

Internet and hosting

I use ATT DSL (So there’s no money saved there ). I registered my sites with GoDaddy.com‡ They usually have a good deals on website registration. While there are some free web hosting services, I also use GoDaddy‡ for my web hosting. They are very reputable, and since a good deal of my business comes from the web, it worth paying for hosting. GoDaddy has applications that you can install for free on its paid hosted sites, and I use a one of those, a blogging platform called Wordpress  (So I didn’t pay for that at least). In any case I have  2 websites for less than  $120 per year  including annual registrations and monthly hosting fees. (Thats about $10/month !!!.)

Applications

I use both OpenOffice.org (a free MS office like office suite you install on your computer) and Google Docs for my Wordprocessing and Spreadsheet needs. Since both are free is saves hundreds ($250) compared to shelling out the big bucks for MS Office. For email I use Google mail (gmail). It allows me to consolodate my 5 email addressed (blog, consulting, 2 personal addresses, and one address that only my inlaws use) into a single location. Its easy to use and pretty robust for a web based email client

I do pay for my accounting software. I use Quicken Home And Business. But to save money I don’t upgrade it each year, I take about two and a half years between upgrades. I strongly belive that if it works, there’s no reason to upgrade (if you have to pay). I upgraded this last time becase they said that they were shuttng off my online bank access.

I think that, on average I have saved about $400 over the life of my business by making smart technolgy choices. 

I’m thinking of moving entirely to “the cloud” sometime soon so I’ll probably let you know how that goes.

Here are a couple of stories I found that might be be interesting:

Unplug for Dollars: Stop ‘Vampire Power’ Waste

You can save a few hundred bucks a year by unplugging electronics that aren’t in use. Get the lowdown on costs, plus some products to help you cut back on kilowatt consumption. (From PCWorld.com)

New Web App Allows Free Conference Calls

A new Web service provides free conference calling for up to six people.  (From PCWorld.com)

No..this isn’t a political post, I’m just using the the successfull Obama campaing as a mini-case study for how you can use the web to improve your business. 

One of the thing that is frequently talked about in the press, was the Obama campaign’s use of the web to interact with  his supporters– To Summarize, he had the designer of the Facebook social network design his campaign website. His site allowed him to accomplish the following goals

1. Present his Platform (Product Information)
2. Collect Money (E-Commerce Sales)
3. Inform Supporters of Events (Promotions/Advertising)
4. Communicate with Supporters (Advertising)
5. Obtain Feedback from Supporters (Market Research/Customer Service)

If you are running a small business you hould want your web presence to accoplish as many of these goals as is possible.

Ok, you say “now that you have told me what I already know, how am I going to do it ?”

Below is a list of tools and hints and resources to help you:

1. Pick the right domain name. This link is to a Video blog about how to pick a good domain name by Bob Parsons at GoDaddy.com. You can also register you domain name at goDaddy.com‡. I have my Domains registered at with GoDaddy, as well as my web hosting and some of my email accounts.

2. Create a website with interactive features. Once you have a domain– Google has a great free tool called Google Sites, that allows you to create a website withn many features  (like announcements, Calendars) and other information and, it does not require any programming. Google Forms lets you collect data and information from site visitors and store them in a google Spreadsheet.

4. Ceate a blog. Blogs are a great way to ceate  personal interaction with you customers. I recommend you get blogging platform created for businesses. If you have some technical savvy you can use use the ‘quick install apps from goDaddy’s Hosting Connecton‡ (This blog is setup that way with a blogging program called WordPress), or you can have your blog hosted by Wordpress.com for a reasonable prices.

5. Send an email newsletter. Newsletters are a great way to communicate with your customers. Make sure that you have valuable and informative content as well as promotional  information. A tool that comes well recommented for this purpose is  Aweber‡. They lots of tools to help you leverage your email list.

6. Setup a web store. You can use goDaddy’s Quick Shopping Cart‡ (I have used it, and found it to be pretty good) or one of the many other ecommece sites out there. Don’t forget to setup a payments, PayPal and Google Checkout are good options for a basic store.

I have been trying to figure out what to say about Windows Vista. It has certainly gotten a (somewhat undeserved) bad rap since its release. The real problem with Vista isn’t anything about the Operating System(OS) itself, the problem is Windows XP.  XP is pretty good, pretty stable, and works with most hardware and software. Vista on the other hand, doesn’t work with older hardware, some software, and didn’t bring any more stability to the table. Vista does have new gee-whiz features but they really don’t add to its underlying functionality, and an upgrade incurs significant costs for hardware and software upgrades.

However over time, you do have to upgrade to newer versions of the OS in order to keep up with new technological innovations, to fix bugs, and to maintain security. But you won’t need to upgrade to Vista to do this. Microsoft has just released its latest beta (test) version of the Version of windows that will follow Vista. Its currently called “Windows 7″ Microsoft has indicated that it may be out in as early as a year from now. The reviews I read indicate that it fixes a lot of the complaints that people had with Vista. So since something better is on the horizon, wait to upgrade. 

If you have to buy a new PC go ahead and buy a vista one (there’s no reason to pay extra for an XP downgrade.) You’ll have to make sure your software and peripheral hardware (printers, scanners, cameras, etc) are compatible, but Vista won’t disappoint you. 

I have updated the site so that it is easier to read (especially for Safari users) and has more features. I hope that you like the new look. Please note that if you have links to articles from the old site (business.irunabiz.com), you will have to update your bookmarks. 

Thanks

Not more than a day after I posted my review of Jott, they sent me an email stating that they are out of Beta. They now offer three tiers of service– Jott Basic for Free, Jott for $3.95/month and Jott Pro for $12.95/month. Unfortunately they took away emailing, and Google calendar from the basic (free) service, but you still get 15 second notes with the free plan.  The Jott ($3.95/month) plan  is pretty much the same as the free Beta service I reviewed in my earlier post. I would have hoped they left some emailing on the free plan since I think that was Jott’s best selling point, but beggars can’t be choosers. If you need to do  emailing on the run, from a non-email enabled cell phone, the $3.95 a month plan may be worth it to you. I am still planning to use the notes feature myself since I forget stuff frequently, and its faster than writing.

I  had the opportunity to get a new IPhone 3G last week. I have been using a Blackberry 8700 for the last two years and I just started testing out the IPhone for my day-job employer. So I figured that I would give you a my take on this phone. 

The US government has hundreds of grant programs that it creates each year, they include everything from programs to create micro-businesses in Peru, to grants to create frequency sensors for the the Air Force. The US Government has a free site  to allow you to search these grants, grants.gov. While I suspect that there are not grants for everybody, and the process for applications may be daunting in many cases, it is certainly worth a look to see if there is something here for you. Its your tax money … you might as well use it.

Microsoft Office is known as the premier Office Suite application, it has hundreds of really cool features–that you will never use. So, why pay for Mercedes when all you need is Chevy? Below are three applications that may meet your needs, and best of all, they are all free.

OpenOffice. Open Office is a full featured office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation application, database, and drawing application. I terms of features its nearly on par with Microsoft’s offerings. Its about 80% compatible with Microsoft Office so you can read and create documents that can be shared. Open office is pretty easy to learn if you are familiar with Office 2003. I use Open Office and I have yet to come across a situation where I couldn’t read document from a Microsoft app or save a compatible one.