35 Essential Small Business Tools & Resources – Guest Blogger Jodi Crosby (@SmartVAforU)

Are you a Small Business Owner trying to keep your head above water?  Utilizing the right tools allows you to get back to doing what you love!  Lucky for you, there are a multitude of tools and resources available online.

The World Wide Web is such a vast place, filled with resources that you just might not realize are out there.  Some of these tools are extremely helpful and will become a life saver to a small business owner.

Time Tracking Tools – Options to track your time and work and, in some cases, invoice your clients.

1. Timepost – Web integrated time managing system that allows you to plug the information into Harvest, Basecamp and Tick.
2. Tick – Tick is a simple and friendly time tracking application focused on helping you hit your budgets.
3. Harvest – Simple time tracking, fast online invoicing and powerful reporting software.
4. Freshbooks – The fastest way to track time, organize expenses and invoice your clients.

Invoicing Tools – It is essential for a successful business to get paid.  For most business this requires an invoice be sent to the client.  These tools save time and, in turn, create opportunity for additional revenue.

1. Freshbooks – The fastest way to track time, organize expenses and invoice your clients.
2. Harvest – Simple time tracking, fast online invoicing and powerful reporting software.
3. Less Accounting – Package of Financial Software with several 3^rd party integration applications and thousands of domestic financial institutions.
4. Quickbooks Online – Full Package of Financial Software for any Small Business.

Organization and Project Management Resources – Tools to help you organize your business, as well as your relationships with your clients and other members on your team.

1. Backpack – Share information with your team.  Keep your documents, discussions, and schedules in one place all the time.
2. Writeboard – Sharable, web based text documents that let you save every edit and roll back to previous versions.
3. GoPlan – Lets you keep track of your projects and collaborate with your colleagues securely through an intuitive user interface.
4. Basecamp – Focuses on communication and collaboration for project management.
5. Central Desktop – Collaboration Software, Online Project Management and Sharepoint Alternative for Business Teams.

Business Tools – Miscellaneous list of online resources to do everything you need to run a successful business.

1. Highrise – CRM helps you manage your contacts, keep track of who said what when, schedule follow-ups, set reminders, and convert leads into done deals.
2. Campfire – Campfire is a simple web-based real-time group chat tool for business. It makes real-time communication with 2-60 people as simple as visiting a web page.
3. Google Apps – Reliable, secure web-based office tools for any size business

Powerful, intuitive applications like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs can help reduce your IT costs and help employees collaborate more effectively – all for just $50 per user per year.

1. GoToMeeting – Reliable, easy, effective web conferencing and online meetings. Work with anyone , anywhere.
2. Wufoo – An online HTML form builder that helps anyone create beautiful contact forms, online surveys and event registrations without writing a single line.
3. Paypal – PayPal is the faster, safer way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account.
4. FaxZero – Free Internet Faxing – Send faxes to anywhere in the US and Canada for free.
5. YouSendit – YouSendIt is the most popular and secure online file sharing software that allows you to easily send large files and email attachments. FTP Replacement resource.
6. eFax – Send and receive faxes by email.
7. DropBox – Dropbox is the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online. There’s no complicated interface to learn.
8. DropSend – Send large files and store files online.

Email Campaigns

1. AWeber – Send email newsletters & autoresponders. Top notch email deliverability.
2. Breeze – Breeze lets you create and send amazing email campaigns.  Analyze and view real time reports of who is opening and clicking on your email.
3. iContact – Email marketing through iContact allows your company to create, send and track your email messages with ease and efficiency.

Legal

1. Copyright -US Copyright Office is an office of public record for copyright registration and deposit of copyright material.
2. Creative Commons – Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators.

Web Presense

1. WordPress – Blog Tool and Publishing Platform.
2. Expressions Engine – Web Publishing Resource for Professionals.
3. StrongSpace – Rather than writing your data to a single drive, Strongspace spreads the data across up to 45 disks significantly improving reliability.
4. Google Sites -Thinking of creating a website? Google Sites is a free and easy way to create and share webpages. Learn more. Create rich web pages easily.

Advertising

1. Adbrite – Webmasters can buy and sell text ads based on their site’s topic area.
2. Adwords – Advertise with Google AdWords ads in the Sponsored Links section next to search results to boost website traffic and sales.

Enjoy and, I hope, profit from this wonderful list of Online Tools and Resources for Small Business Owners/Freelancers.   For those of you looking for additional resources, here is a link to a list of 12 Cool Web Tools for Small Businesses.

Jodi Crosby, Smart Virtual Assistant for You, is a mom and an entrepreneur committed to working with small business owners.  My goal is to enable you to accomplish your goals while leaving the administrative tasks to a professional.  I understand that being in business for yourself, while very rewarding is also very challenging.  Smart Virtual Assistant for You can help.  Visit http://smartvaforu.com.  Follow Jodi on Twitter @SmartVAforU