sss4success — Page 14

5 FREE Small Business Resources You Don’t Know About

Today, I’d like to share with you 5 FREE Small Business Resources You Probably Don’t Know About. I believe one of the keys to staying in business is managing money well (including the little of it you may have in your early days) and as such, I work to maximize the cash I do have by utilizing the litany of free and low-cost resources at my disposal that can help make my job as a busy entrepreneur and business owner a bit easier.

Here are the 5 FREE Small Business Resources You Probably Don’t Know About:

1. Mailchimp: If you’ve visited one of this blog’s recent posts then you know that I use and highly recommend MailChimp as an Email Marketing Service. Under their “Forever Free” program you can have up to 2000 subscribers and send 12000 emails per month. There are no expiring trials. No need to sign a contract, and no credit cards required to start using the service. In my opinion, this is THE BEST email marketing program for someone looking to grow and build their email marketing list! I believe this is the ideal Email Marketing Service for a new startup business or a business just beginning to organize its electronic customer database.

2. Open Office: OpenOffice.org has everything you expect in an office suite and it’s open-source, which means you can have it for FREE! With the latest version of Open Office.org you get a word processor (similar to Microsoft Word), in addition to a spreadsheet program (similar to Microsoft Excel), a database program (similar to Microsoft Access), a graphics editor (similar to Adobe Photoshop), and a presentation creator (similar to Microsoft PowerPoint), all for FREE! Plus, you can create your eBooks and share your documents using the built-in PDF writer to make PDF files, without buying additional PDF creator software! There are two ways you can get this software. One is visiting OpenOffice.org and downloading it directly, and the other is ordering a CD of it from OpenOfficeUSA.com, where the software is still FREE, but you have to pay $9.97 for Shipping and Handling to receive the FREE OpenOffice.org CD* (*Orders Accepted From the United States Only). It’s been my experience that despite the $500 price differential between Open Office and Microsoft Office, people still prefer the latter, but for those who are open to a FREE alternative and looking to save money, Open Office is definitely the answer!

3. CutePDF Writer: If you choose not to use Open Office with its free PDF Writer, then you might want to consider installing the CutePDF Writer (formerly known as the CutePDF Printer). CutePDF Writer is a free utility that lets you print almost any Windows Application documents into PDF format with just the click of the PRINT button. What this means is that you can create PDF documents without purchasing more expensive software like Adobe Acrobat Professional (which is the $499 upgraded version of Adobe Reader which is offered free to READ PDFs). You may not think much of this ability, but if you’re in the habit of delivering digital documents for review, you’ll definitely want to move into the direction of sending those documents in PDF format for a few reasons. One, when you send something in PDF, you know that it’s delivered the way you want it. Sometimes with Microsoft Word or Excel files the formatting can cause it to appear differently on another person’s computer, or they can hit a key and ruin your formatting altogether. Second, you know that people can open the document since Adobe Acrobat Reader is included for free on most PCs and opens intuitively on Macs, thus you avoid the possibility of sending a Word or PowerPoint file to someone who doesn’t have those programs and thus can’t open the file. Finally, you can save many trees by NOT printing documents for your archival purposes on paper, but instead with the CutePDF Writer, you can print your documents in PDF format and store them securely on your hard drive or a USB thumb drive.

4. MorgueFile: If you run a blog, one of the top tips you see is about using pictures in your posts to appeal to the visual sensibilities of your readers. I know that I enjoy including pictures within my blog post that help to visually depict the message or overall imagery I’d like to project on a topic. Sometimes it’s difficult to do, but with a little bit of forethought and planning, it is something that can be achieved. I mention all of this as a segue into talking about MorgueFile. I love this site and I visit it often! MorgueFile is a public image archive database that offers FREE photos for use in creative works, be they personal or commercial! It’s a great source for high resolution pictures, and I’ve been using it now for quite some time and I’m amazed that it’s yet to let me down!

5. Picnik: Once you get your high resolution pictures from MorgueFile the next step is to resize them. The picture files you download from MorgueFile are huge and definitely high-quality, but the resolution and file size will likely be too much for simply posting in a blog post. The best thing to do is resize the picture to a “workable” or more manageable size, and that’s where Picnik comes in. Picnik is an online image editor that is great for resizing and editing pictures quickly. All you have to do is upload the picture, resize it (typically to a width of 600 pixels – letting it auto-resize itself proportionately to retain its original shape) and you’ll create a picture whose file size is small enough that it should fit nicely within your blog post. Plus, you can add graphics and do other editing to the picture like framing it or adding shapes, all for FREE! Yes, they have paid premium options that you can upgrade for purchase, but many of the basic functions (similar to the ones a blogger would need) are absolutely FREE!

Did you know about any of these resources? And can you think of other FREE small business resources? If so, please leave us a comment letting us know.

Kindra Cotton, Small Business Survival Specialist

5 FREE Small Business Resources You Don’t Know About

5 Easy Steps to Setting Up an E-Newsletter: Building Web Traffic Through Email Marketing

By sss4success 10 Comments

I’ve talked in a previous post about how Email Marketing through e-newsletters can be used to build bring traffic either to your website or blog, and ultimately enhance your small business's overall brand by nurturing the relationships you have with your customers.

I’ve noted how email marketing can be used to build your reputation as an information resource to your core audience, and let your audience know that you’re an authority in your area of expertise. I’ve also highlighted how it keeps you connected with your audience, and it gives you the opportunity to stay relevant and provide useful information that they’ll appreciate. Additionally, I’ve mentioned that if you sell things, or at one point will want to promote something, it’s a great way to have a “pre-sold” audience who trusts you and your opinions, and it helps you build traffic and enhance your brand, while engaging in activities that help your business’s bottom line.

Today, I’m going to share with you the 5 Easy Steps to Setting up an Email Marketing Account and Distributing an E-Newsletter with very little money. Let’s get started (Note: This list assumes you already have your website or blog set up, and if you don’t, I’d suggest contact SSS for Success at 615-336-4325 ASAP to get one setup FAST):

Step 1: Sign up for an Email Marketing Service. I’m currently using MailChimp under their “Forever Free” program that allows you to have up to 2000 subscribers and send 12000 emails per month. No expiring trials. No contracts. No credit card required. In my opinion, this is THE BEST email marketing program for someone looking to grow and build their email marketing list! It’s been my experience that it’s not the best for importing a large list from a personal database, or another email marketing program, but for those just starting out with email marketing, this is the best (and cheapest) service out there. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to find out if email marketing and e-newsletters are really a worthwhile long-term investment of your time and money (and I’ll note that MailChimp’s paid programs are comparable to many of the other paid email marketing services out there). One of the market leaders in email marketing would be Constant Contact and chances are if you’re receiving several email newsletters currently, at least one of them is coming from Constant Contact just based on the prevalence of the service. They have monthly plans that start as low as $15 a month, and they offer a lot of additional solutions like online surveys, event marketing solutions that assist with planning events including tracking registration and payments for events. Yet another paid option is Vertical Response, which offers a free trial where you can send 100 free email newsletters to test their service.

Step 2: Add people to your list (ethically). I want to emphasize “ethically” because there are rules and regulations to how you can add people to your list. For instance, just sending a blanketed business-related email to everyone in your email address book can be considered “spam”, especially if you did not acquire their email through a legitimate business transaction within the last 18 months. Most email marketing programs give you the option of “importing” or adding email addresses, but I would advise against doing this for the email addresses you already have in your address book for a number of reasons. First, just because you have someone’s email address, that doesn’t mean they’re interested in your newsletter or its content. And second, if you add them to your list, and they receive email from you they don’t want, and unsubscribe from the list or report you as spam to your email marketing service, you can be kicked out of it. The best thing to do (in my opinion), is extend an offer personally to the people in your address book to sign up for your newsletter. This is great because it insures that you only have the people who are truly interested in your content. True, it might mean that you start off with fewer people on your list, but hopefully, over time, with good content, you’ll grow your list, and grow it with the right intended audience that’s open to receiving your message. Again, I can’t stress this enough: Do not randomly add people to your newsletter list without their permission! This one particular issue is something that hits close to home as I get annoyed with being added to newsletters I didn’t opt into. And it makes me twice as likely to report you for spam to your email marketing service and my email provider. I’d much rather prefer if a person contacted me directly to announce their newsletter, then gave me the option of subscribing to it, as opposed to me receiving yet another unsolicited message in my already overflowing inbox.

Step 3: Use the tools of your email marketing service. For example, MailChimp has a lot of functions and integrations that let you not only see statistics on who opened your newsletter and when, but also what they clicked on, if they forwarded it to someone, and a host of other options. Additionally, you can set up automated messages or “autoresponders” that send a message to your mailing list (or even only a subset of the mailing list that you identify) at a specific time or date in the future. Luckily lots of great functionality is typically packed into just about any email marketing service you choose, so choose a free service like MailChimp, or a free trial with Constant Contact or Vertical Response and just dive right in!

Step 4: Create Interesting Topics. I would suggest as a general rule of thumb writing 1 newsletter article per week, if you have the time or at least one per month to stay relevant to your audience. Also, there’s lots of research out there on what kind of email marketing schedule works best, and when’s the best time to send your letter, and there are plenty of places who work out all the science and methodology behind what works and when. But the best rule of thumb in this situation would be to determine the time schedule that’s going to work best for your audience AND decide if you have enough content to consistently put out content on the schedule you’ve set. I typically work to create “evergreen content”, which is “timeless” content that can be reproduced again over the years without much information that gets “dated” quickly. Another good tip I would suggest is to write out in advance, 52 topics that you’d like to hit with your newsletter within a year. It seems like a lot when you say it, but if you manage to keep your content light, fresh, and relevant, it’s not hard to stamp out 52 topics very easily. Or, if that number seems too daunting, start out with 4 (i.e. a month’s worth of topics) and watch how many new topics you’ll come up with from just that 4!

Step 5: Watch the Analytics of your Newsletter. The final step in creating and producing your email marketing e-newsletter would be to watch the analytics of your newsletter. As I mentioned, most email marketing services give you the option of knowing just about everything your subscribers are doing with your newsletter messages. Use that information and analyze it for what it’s telling you about your audience. What do people click on most? What doesn’t get any clicks? What type of subject lines get opened the least? All this is information that you can use to improve your newsletter over time. Also, be sure to integrate a feedback survey at some point to get feedback from your subscribers and find out directly what they think of your newsletter.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing more information about email marketing and e-newsletters, including sharing my own personal journey of creating and disseminating the SSS for Success “Social Media Covered” Newsletter due to be unveiled soon, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I ask: Are you using email marketing in your small business? Tell us some success stories.

Kindra Cotton, Small Business Survival Specialist

5 Easy Steps to Setting Up an E-Newsletter: Building Web Traffic Through Email Marketing

Beware: Domain Registry of America

By sss4success 9 Comments

Recently, I received a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” from a company called “Domain Registry of America”. What bothers me most about this notice, is that it’s designed to look like a bill, and to the untrained eye, or unlearned domain owner, you are very well led to believe that you need to follow the instructions on this form in order to renew your upcoming expiring domain.

For this reason, I’m issuing this Public Service Announcement to Small Business Owners who may have or will receive a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” from Domain Registry of America. In my opinion, this company participates in an unsavory business practice of preying on individuals, via the mail, who are likely not web-savvy enough to know that this “notice” is nothing more than an advertisement of their high-priced domain transfer and registration service.

And when I say “high-priced”, I mean it. I’ve attached a copy of this notice here:

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And on it, you’ll notice that a one year renewal for one domain is $35! This is highway robbery, especially since the worst case scenario I’ve seen for a domain renewal has only been upwards of $12. So, with Domain Registry of America, you’ll likely pay 3 times more than you would with other registrars!

It bothers me that this company is participating in what I believe is a “shady” business practice, especially since they’re going after people who likely don’t know what they don’t know. I’ve been getting these notices for quite some time now, but it recently came to my attention again because one of my clients inquired to me about it, based on some recent domain purchases that I had just procured on their behalf. They thought, that something mentioning their domain name and having their address on it, with what LOOKS like a bill, was a bill, and if they hadn’t spoken to me first, they likely would have been out of at least $40!

Because I knew to intuitively ignore these notices, I assumed that others did as well, but then I later learned I was wrong in my assumption. For that reason, today I say: BEWARE OF “Domain Registry of America” of 2316 Deleware Avenue, #266, Buffalo, NY 14216-2667. They may in fact be a “legitimate business”, but the way they go about business sucks and they need a new model that doesn’t prey on misleading people and taking advantage of them.

I would suggest, if you get one of these notices in the mail that you REPORT IT TO YOUR LOCAL STATES ATTORNEY FOR CONSUMER FRAUD! That’s what I intend to do! It’s your State’s Attorney’s job to stay vigilant and protect your state’s consumers from companies with unsavory and predatory business practices, and this should be brought to everyone’s attention, to keep “Domain Registry of America” from sending out these faux-bill notices with its ridiculously small fine print on the back.

I hope that this information has been useful to you, and I’d encourage you to share your experience with Domain Registry of America, and similar companies that operate like them. Have you gotten one of these notices before?

Kindra Cotton, Small Business Survival Specialist

Beware: Domain Registry of America