Running a small business is hard enough. When you find a really useful service that doesn’t cost a fortune, you feel like you’ve won the lottery! Here are four of my favorites!
#1 FIVERR
www.Fiverr.com is a site where services are offered for $5. You can find someone who will create a plastic decal of your logo or write a short jingle with your business name or write a great sales letter for you or about a zillion other cool services; for $5. There are some really super-creative services there to help you grow your business.
#2 Apache Open Office.
Microsoft Office has long been our go-to solution for word processing and spreadsheets. A great FREE alternative is Apache’s Open Office: http://www.openoffice.org/why/why_free.html. Open Office functions just like Microsoft Office, but without the big price-tag.
#3 99Designs
If you don’t have in-house talent to create logo, brochure, marketing materials, tee-shirts, flyers, etc, then when you need them it can be really expensive and time consuming to have those tools developed. www.99designs.com allows you to post a project; for example, a brochure that you need designed. You explain what you need and then designers actually do the work for you – lots of designers. You pick the design that you like the best. The quality of work tends to be excellent and the service is affordable, starting at $199 for a completed design project. The average number of design entries that you receive is 129, so you have lots of alternative creative approaches for your project. What a great service!
#4 RepRight
You have a great product or service, but you need a sales force. Sales people are expensive, between salaries, expenses, and payroll taxes. So what can you do? www.repright.com. RepRight is an online service that allows commission-only sales representatives and companies with products or services for representation to meet each other. You pay a commission when your sales team makes a sale; you don’t pay them until you have the completed sales. With www.repright.com, you can have a large and experienced sales team without the fixed overhead of a traditional sales team. This can be a great way to expose your brand and drive sales quickly.
Good luck with your business!