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. My experience with NetSuite pricing inspired me to set my self the task of finding low cost systems to run my business. I have learned that I can easily complete most of my key business tasks using software that I paid nothing for. Only the Lord knows why this stuff isn’t evryday knowledge for most business folks. Even the most savvy of small business people know very little about the methods I am give you here.
Perform these three simple tasks to start saving money.
- Use ten minutes of your day looking for the free software tools.
- Capture the detail of everything you find (and your experiences) on Evernote.com ($0).
- Devote ten minutes each day to test drive everything you found.
I would do this exercise for about one month to get a list together and implement all of the software you nedd. To help you get a head start here are some of the tools I have found and use on a regular basis.
OK, this is easy on the right I have listed the paid for equivalents to the free software tools you can start using immediately at zero costs (please note that some of these may have “upgrades” that offer more features at a cost).
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.
I will be publishing a long list here in the near future…