How to lower your business costs

Cutting your software costs

I want to help you save money and I am never going to ask you for anything in return.

Every year I save thousands of pounds by not spending any money on software. This whole exercise began when I was looking at NetSuite pricing as I needed one system to manage the key functions in my business. Most of the essential tasks I have to perform on a daily basis in my business are done using free software. You will not learn this trick on any business course. The majority of small business people I come into contact dont know anything about this subject and thats a tragedy.

Do these 3 things right away to start saving money.

• Take 10 mins everyday and carefully search for each category of tool you need.
• Capture the detail of everything you find (and your experiences) on Evernote.com ($0).
• 10 minutes each day evaluating your findings.

It took me about for weeks on and off spending max twenty minutes a day to discover all of the tools I am ever going to need. OK, fast start for you a small selection of the tools I use everyday that work well and you should take a look at.

Below in the right hand column you will find the software that you probably have purchased or recognize and on the left you will find the software that will not cost you a thing.

Here we go:

Just type the name of the free product to the search engines

One system to manage customers and accounting

salesorder.com pricing: free NetSuite pricing - really expensive

Sorry I couldnt resist this one...

Creating and writing Documents

Google Docs pricing: $0 Microsoft Office pricing - at least $100

Or

OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org)

Sharing ideas online

Bubbl.us pricing: $0 Mindjet pricing - at least $200

Making videos

Jing pricing: $0 Camtasia Studio pricing - at least $300

Teleseminars

DimDim pricing: $0 AdobeConnect pricing - at least $200/month

My thanks to the NetSuite pricing incident for the inspiration to write this up and help you out.

More soon...