20 Must-Have Tools to Automate an Online Business
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!
(c) 2008 Donna Gunter
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You
can, as long as you reprint the article in its entirety
and include this blurb with it:
Online Business Resource Queen
(TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent 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.OnlineBizU.com.
Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at
http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com. Read about running an online biz at her blog,
http://www.GetMoreClientsOnlineblog.com.
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