Most (if not all) small businesses are concerned with operating costs and cash flow, especially when they are in the start-up stages. In this article you will learn how you can handle business with less than $100 per month while all your business activities are humming at the right speed.

I chose to stay away from the obvious and instead give you the resources you might not have heard about, while others might be obvious but not quite known at this time. I have divided the must-have business activities in 3 major sections:

1. Communications
2. Sales
3. Finances

1. COMMUNICATION

This activity is vital to any business and without the right tools you might as well forget about starting anything, let alone a thriving new endeavor. Modern communication spawns across several fields:

• Telephone (voice mail)
• Messaging
• Faxing
• Online Meetings
• Email

With all the phone candy on the market most of these functions can be covered by any simple phone offered by a reliable network. Stick with Verizon or AT&T and you should have no problems with a 3 bar coverage signal in most of continental US.

In order to make yourself available to your clients, you are probably indicating your mobile phone as your primary business phone number. That’s fine and dandy but what happens if your client is outside your ‘realm” and need to speak with them on your “off-peak” hours? That $100 per month will look more like $1000 per month and the whole essence of this article would be lost.

That is why you need the all mighty Google again. Google, in case you didn’t know, is in phone business and if you are a small business, most of the stuff offered by them is FREE. Well, if it’s free – it’s for me!

Go to www.google.com/voice and check out the virtual number you can get and unify all your phone numbers into one. It’s a good read and will help you select the right central number you can now give away to your clients. Just don’t complain when they will be able to reach you from Hong Kong at 3:00 AM your time.

One thing a phone would not do is faxing; unless Steve Jobs is currently thinking of equipping the new iPhone with a thin roll of paper, this function is still bias to the existence of a fax machine or a PC/MAC on your desk.

There are however services that can eliminate the clunky fax machines off your desk and save some space for a cool new color printer, which can be connected to your computer and thus print any fax you might receive (and you really, really need to print it). Once such service is called Fax It Nice (www.faxitnice.com). The cool part about this service is the flexibility in plans and its simplicity as a program. You can virtually fax anything anywhere without really being at your computer because it does not require any software to download. Their pay as you go program puts the “nice” in the Fax It Nice.

Next runner up – eFax (www.efax.com). Still a good service and easy to understand software but a bit pricey compared to Fax it Nice. Give it a shot and see which one you like the best.

Online meetings

Yes – sometimes you really need these and if you want to appear as a well established business you better know how to handle this function. During these online sessions, you can share files, video, audio and even screen shots off your computer.

It’s a great tool to have access, especially if you have a lot of demos or portfolios you want to share with your audience. If that’s your need, head over to the nice people from Vyew (www.vyew.com) who offer this amazing tool for FREE.

Email

– there is one thing I need to add about this – you totally have to check out Google mail and I am not talking here about creating a Gmail account. That would look tacky to your clients, relying on free email accounts.

I am sure, by now you have considered and/or probably already purchased hosting for your website. Usually, that comes with free email accounts. Before you do anything, just migrate your domain to Google and get your personalized email on any computer or phone. [ Read this article to see how it is done ]. I use it and love it.

2. SALES

There is a sweeter alternative to carrying a Franklin planner with you to all the meetings – a CRM (Contact Relationship Manager) system that allows you to track your existing as well as perspective clients, meetings, dates, sales appointments, alarm you when some task or another is due, and the list goes on. You can have all this for around $24 per month by taking advantage of the services offered by 37 Signals on their website (www.highrisehq.com)

Similar types of software can be found at: Sugar CRM (www.sugarcrm.com) or Sales Force (www.salesforce.com).

3. FINANCES

You are probably keeping track of all your invoices, cash flow and bill payments using some sort of combination between and Excel Spreadsheet and QuickBooks. Well, the following is a nifty tool that gives you all that and more without breaking the piggy bank. I am referring to Less Accounting (www.lessaccounting.com) which could be your cup of tea is you are a business with small accounting needs. You will be amazed about its dashboard simplicity and easy reporting, so you know your financial situation at any time.
Others that come close to what Less Accounting can do are: Blink Sale (www.blinksale.com) and Fresh Books (www.freshbooks.com).

These are just some of the applications that are available on the web, so if you are using other ones and have great experience with them, please do share.

FREE Internet Marketing Tools; Blog directories, Domain Search, Keyword Analyzer and much more

Google AdWords
This Keyword Tool allows you to enter one keyword or phrase per line for each keyword suggestions. This will help you better target your online ads.

7Search.com
This Keyword Suggestion Tool allows you to enter keywords or keyword phrases in order to get additional keywords and keyword phrases suggestions.  You’ll also be able to see how many searches were done for the last month on this site for each keyword and phrase.

Keyword Finder Tool
This tool will show you Google & Yahoo suggestions on the same page. Just type in the keywords you are researching and you will get
many other keyword suggestions.

RSSTop55 – Top 55 Blogs and RSS Submission Sites
It is a great site if you have a blog and you want to get exposure for it. It lists over 100 places where you can register your blog.

Nameboy Domain Search
This is a pretty nifty website that will help you find the perfect domain name, even when you run out of ideas.

LunarPages
Great hosting company with competitive prices. You can also register your new domain name for free when you sign up for hosting.

JustHost
Another solid hosting company with unbeatable prices and a ton of features. Includes unlimited disk space and unlimited email accounts.

KeyWord Typo Generator
This script is designed to generate common typing mistakes for a list of keywords for use in AdWords, Overture and other Pay Per Click systems.

Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
This is a great website when you are looking for lists of related search terms based upon a term or keyword you enter related to your web site.

SEO Digger
The SEO Digger will allow you to research what keywords your site ranks high enough to be in the Google Top 20.

Compete.com
This wonderful tool will show you the traffic trends for competing websites, allowing you to compare sites side by side.

Search Engine Saturation
Search Engine Saturation helps you compare how many pages you have in the search indexes against your competitors’ sites.

Robots.txt Checker
This is a “validator” that analyzes the syntax of a robots.txt file to see if its format is valid as established by Robot Exclusion Standard
or if it contains any errors.

Keyword Suggestion Tool
This free tool will show top keyword phrases from Overture.

Link Harvester
Link Harverster allows you to deeply query the Yahoo database and gives a good amount of link details.

Density Analyzer
This tool will allow you to find common words and phrases on your site.

SEO Book
Good resource documentation about Free Search Engine Optimization Tools on SEO Book.

Website Spell Checker
One of the worst things you can do is publish a misspelled website. This site will help you identify those mistakes.

This real case is about the owner of the small business who, luckily, was in-tune with the ever changing technology and saw the opportunity to save money and increase productivity.

The owner, let’s call her Mary, managed a staff of 75 and was struggling with the following problems:

• It costs have gone up despite the recession
• Her company was using POP3 email and she was constantly juggling email between her iPhone, a laptop and her office desktop
• Sharing files between employees was a nightmare
• Calendar sharing was out of the question
• As the company grew, backups were a daily challenge and called for expensive upgrades

Mary contracted a local IT provider that had only one answer – Microsoft Exchange; a costly answer that required not only new hardware and software but also a boat load of extra hours for conversion, administration and training of the staff.

Mary contacted me and I offered a simple (almost free of charge) solution – Google Apps. Google – in their infinite wisdom (I mean that literally) presents an alternative to what the IT company suggested; an alternative that can be setup in minutes and solves all the problems listed above.

All you have to do is make some simple modifications to your domain and email setup. Here’s what Google Apps offers in terms of email:

Email, IM, voice and video chat

Each user gets 25 GB of email and IM storage (50 times the industry average).

Anytime, anywhere access to your email

Gmail is securely powered by the web, so you can be productive from your desk, on the road, at home and on your mobile phone, even when you’re offline.

Sync with Outlook & BlackBerry

Get the benefits of Apps on familiar platforms

Search and find emails instantly

Spend less time organizing email and find emails quickly with Google-powered search for your inbox.

Get less spam

Powerful Gmail spam filtering helps you stay focused on what’s important. Postini filtering lets you customize your spam protection. 

These are all free and very easy to setup. On top of all these, several other applications deserve to be mentioned, like:

• Google Calendar Agenda management, scheduling, shared online calendars and mobile calendar sync.
• Google Docs Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Work online without attachments.
• Google Groups User-created groups providing mailing lists, easy content sharing, searchable archives.
• Google Sites Secure, coding-free web pages for intranets and team managed sites.
• Google Video Private, secure, hosted video sharing.

How does Google do all this without charging? Well – there is a charge of $50 per user per year which for Mary amounted to about $3750 per year. This only in the event that 25GB of email is not sufficient for your users. Compare this and the cost of implementing what the IT company proposed and you’ll see the immediate benefits.

How is it possible that Google can do this? It’s gotta be some kind of conspiracy theory abut I cannot figure it out yet…When I do I’ll let you know. In the meantime, save yourself a bunch of money and a whole lotta of headaches with these awesome Google Apps and you won’t regret it. The link to this great time and money saver is: http://www.google.com/apps/

Cost Savings for Mary
She opted for the free version of the Google Apps and saved a little over $43,000 this year alone. Huge savings for a small company. Maybe she can give some bonuses to her hard working staff instead of throwing them away for unnecessary technologies.

I use Google Apps every day no matter what computer I use. In fact right now I am writing this from an Internet Café. In the Philippines! Via email. Totally secure, totally sweet…

“What Should I write about? Who would be interested in what I know?” I hear this a lot when entrepreneurs start being active on their blogs. They are all experts in their field of interest but somehow they assume everyone else is too.

What do you think? Try it out and let me know if this method works for you.

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Birds do it. Bees do it. Even dull blue algae do it. So what’s the big deal about SEX? Sex is one of the hottest buttons in marketing and those who use it know that this primal instinct is guaranteed to bring tons of eager customers that ultimately translate into fattening the bottom line for their clients.Every single day, humans engage in two basic emotions – sexual and romantic. Let’s face it – without them there would be no human race.
A strong and intelligent marketing specialist plays these emotions through visual and suggestive messages and engages the customer on three levels – emotional, mental and desire.

COSMOPOLITAN
While standing at the “15 items or less” checkout line and constantly scanning for more than 15 items in the people’s baskets in front of me, the Cosmopolitan magazine caught my attention. It wasn’t  the provocative Lady Gaga’s outfit who I assume was getting ready to go night-night right after the picture was taken, nor her almost orgasmic semi-smile but the shocking headlines.

Whoever designed the cover of this illustrious magazine is very cleaver and knew that people in line like me will eventually get bored of scanning every inch of the perfectly Photoshopped flesh proudly exposed by the half-naked prima donna and sooner or later will start reading the headlines.

Here are a few:

• 50 Things to Do Butt Naked
• Find Your G-SPOT – Directions so clear, They are like GPS
• Sex up your eyes (with this awesome spring trick)
• Speak his sex language – We decode the secret clues men send in bed

And the best of all:

• THE SEX ARTICLE WE CAN’T DESCRIBE HERE!

At one point I glanced again just to make sure this was Cosmopolitan and not Playboy.

HOT FEMALE VICE PRESIDENTS
A couple of years back, while the entire country got a whiff of Sarah Palin’s “vast” history and geography knowledge, the website/blog trendhunter.com ran an article entitled “Female Vice Presidents”. In the heat of the presidential elections, one would think this might be a cool and informative article to read, especially when Caribou Barbie descended upon Washington with a vengeance. Minus the helicopter and the Remington. Well – it actually received only 30,000 hits. The blog article, not Sarah Palin.

The smart people at Trend Hunter tried something else; kept the article in its entirety and changed the title to “Hot Female Vice Presidents”. The “new” article got over 1,100,000 (for the mathematical impaired that’s over 1 million) views and was featured on CNN, Fox Business News and Associated Press.

HOT MODEL SELLS SALADS
While watching TV with an out-of-town friend – George, he alerted me to a very sexy commercial involving Kim Kardashian and some sort of salad. After viewing it he immediately vowed to stop by at the local Carl Jr and get a salad.

Here’s the video that got my friend all hot and bothered over a salad:

HOT & SEXY BLOG PHOTOS
Recently I was searching ways to add a Google map on a web site and I stumbled upon a very well put together video tutorial that explained in terms I even can understand how to do that. At the end of the tutorial, I was presented with a link to the video creator’s blog. The name itself made me curious – www.easykiss123.com.

Upon entering the blog I was a bit surprised to see that every article was accompanied by a semi-provocative picture featuring great looking women. They were all in good taste and most have quite an interesting twist.

Here is a screen-shot of this blog:

If the title of the article doesn’t entice you to open and read the articles, the photos definitely do the job, tickling your curiosity and pushing your desire button. I have to mention though - the articles and the video tutorials are top notch and drip of helpful information for any blogger or webmaster out there.

Conclusion:
Careful (and in good taste) wording and imagery choice can have an astounding impact on the viral potential of your marketing message. Next time you are launching a new product or service see if you can sprinkle a bit of emotion into your message and the results might just…surprise you.

Now back to my Cosmopolitan article “50 Things to Do Butt Naked”…maybe I can learn something new…

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Here’s a short but comprehensive list of things you can do to generate at least $250 per day:

• Place Google AdSense ads on your website/blog: https://www.google.com/adsense
• Head over to Yahoo Publisher Network and add their ads to your site: https://publisher.yahoo.com/portal/login.php
• Do the same thing by accessing Commission Junction: http://www.cj.com/
• …as well as Link Share: http://www.linkshare.com/
• …and also Azzogle Ads: http://www.azoogleads.com/corp/index.php
• But mostly ClickBank for tons of affiliate links and ads: http://www.clickbank.com/index.html
• Don’t forget to check this one out too: http://www.hydranetwork.com/
• You can also sell links directly on your site with http://www.text-link-ads.com/ or Text Link Brokers at http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/
• If you love to write about stuff and want to get paid for it go here: http://www.reviewme.com/

All that is left is promote the heck out of your website/blog to build traffic and thus vital click enablers on your ads. Now, don’t go nuts and include every one of these links or you might run the danger of transforming your site into a 24/7 rotating carousel of ads and links and I’m not sure that’s such a great thing; it wouldn’t be for your readers. Good luck!

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Commenting on blogs similar to yours is one quick way to promote your own blog/website. I discovered this a while back but wanted to beef up a bit my own blog before jumping on the “comment on other blogs” wagon.

Although a lot of them are very well designed I found it hard to write about some mistakes I kept on seeing on other blogs. In fact I have learned a lot.

The most important thing to remember is this:

Scan not read

People do not have the time to read a whole lot now-a-days (unless they are really interested in a particular subject) so “Good bye Reading” and “Hello Scanning”. In order to capture attention you have to create breaks in your text such that the human eye can easily scan, stop and read small bits.

This can be accomplished by using colors, bold fonts or a combination of the two.

Here’s an example of bad text on a blog:

Bad Blog Structure

Now here’s something I would scan rapidly and read portions of it (if not the entire post). Notice the titles, bullets and other breaks in the text.

Good Blog Structure

If I made it a goal to comment on several blogs each day, this approach will save me time and rapidly move onto the next one. In the same time I retain some good information because the major points in the blog captured my attention.

Sometimes even a picture comes in very handy by tickling the viewer’s curiosity so use them in your blog. Don’t just copy some image from Bing or Google images. Besides being copyrighted, you won’t get brownie points on originality either.

So, bloggers out there – make your readers’ life easier and incorporate these tricks into the flow of your post:

• Write posts that are 500 words or less (this is just under 360 words)
• Break the post in several chunks of text (each chunk consisting of 3-4 sentences)
• Emphasize titles, important ideas or key elements in your text for easy reading
• Do use bulleted lists (just like here)
• Ask questions and spark interest such that comments are welcomed
• Draw conclusions at the end of the post

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First of all – familiarize yourself with basic SEO jargon like: internal/external links, meta tags, titles, pagerank, etc. 

This way at least you know what the SEO company is talking about when they make the sales pitch.

Personally, I noticed that the shady ones are often hiding behind geek lingo trying to paint you in a corner by throwing these words at you, thus proving that they know what they are talking about.

You can cut that conversation short and find out how credible and professional they are by asking 5 little questions. Here they are:

1. What kind of results should you be able to see and how long will it take to get there?
2. What experience do you have in my industry and how long have you been doing this?
3. Show/send me examples of your previous work and success stories. Can I contact some of these people?
4. Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
5. What other marketing services do you offer besides SEO?

Just keep this list by your phone and take notes while they answer these questions. I’m sure you are a pretty seasoned business individual so you should be able to spot the shady ones right away. You can download a quick and easy PDF document of “Questions to ask a SEO company” right here.

According to Jupiter Research almost 40% of people searching the web actually purchase something. In all cases, they focus on page 1 and sometimes page 2. The percentage of info seekers decreases tremendously starting with page 3 of any search engine.

The dirty little secret you probably don’t know is that 72% of all people who search Google click on the organic search results, ignoring the paid ads section. I do. Don’t you?

Based on these findings, logic will tell you that your website/blog should be listed on the top 1-2 pages of every search engine page. To accomplish this you’ll need a solid and powerful SEO behind your site.

So does SEO matter? Heck Yes!

Here are some things you need to understand before you hire a SEO company or even contemplate on doing yourself SEO for your site:

 1. SEO is an ongoing activity and it stops when your company doesn’t need a web presence anymore.
This is not a “set it” and forget it” task. It’s a long time strategy that needs constant attention and fine tunning as you go.

2. SEO results are not immediate nor permanent.
Whoever is telling you otherwise you should seriously dispute their knwoeldge of the web.

3. If you want to do solid SEO (mainly based on fresh content), think of your site as a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Update it as much as you can and you got yourself a dynamic and fresh site every time.

4. Tag everything (images, links, video, etc.) and link to relevant sites.
Link internally between your pages and ask others to link to your site.

5. Pure SEO is not about TRAFFIC – it’s about QUALIFIED TRAFFIC.
What good does it do that your site list on position 2 on the first page for a “company that sells oranges” when you in fact are “selling space ships”?

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Step 1: Create a sitemap.xml using this free site: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Step 2: Use Google webmaster tools to get Google to crawl your site: www.google.com/webmasters/

Step 3: Feed the Googlebot your sitemap by directing it to your robots.txt file:
[within the robots.txt file include this line: Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml]

Step 4: Submit your sitemap to other search engines:
http://submission.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml