17 Inspired Ideas To Save Your Business Tonnes Of Money

Your humble computer could be the route to dozens of money-saving ideas that will save your business a small fortune over time. 

1.   Firstly, if your computer doesn’t have an internet browser programme, you’ll need to install one. The most popular (and, unfortunately, the most prone to viruses) is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but you can install Mozilla’s Firefox completely free by clicking onto www.mozilla.com

2.    Start by looking at the applications you use on your PC – most likely you need a word processing programme like Microsoft Word, and you might also use a spreadsheet programme like Microsoft Excel and a presentation system such as Microsoft PowerPoint. But what if the license fee is just too much of a stretch? Don’t risk using unlicensed or illegal copies (that goes for everything here), there are free alternatives you can use instead! Visit www.openoffice.org and download Opensource Open Office, which provides free versions of equivalent Microsoft programmes, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

3.    Google has progressed from a simple search engine to an incredible source of great programmes and systems. Get yourself a Google account by clicking “Sign In” in the top right corner of the Google homepage. Once your account is set up, you can access their free calendar, spreadsheet programme, and the latest development, iGoogle. iGoogle allows you to personalise your Google homepage with calculators, horoscopes, translators, currency converters and much more.

4.     If you’re looking for a web presence for your business, but nervous about the costs, you could start by using one of the many web-hosting companies available. For example, a fully hosted 10-page website from www.123-reg.co.uk will cost £1.99 a month, and you can personalise your design from over 300 templates in dozens of different colours. It won’t be the perfect solution for every business, as the scope may be too limiting, but it does provide a fully editable site, so you can update and republish your information as you like. And over time you can learn exactly the features you want and need for your site.

5.     Once your website is established, you’ll want to keep track of the people who visit and the pages they look at when they get there. Get yourself to www.statisfy.com and register to download a piece of free code that you add into your own web pages. Then log on to Statisfy to see exactly how many visitors your site is getting, what search engines they use to reach you, the links they click in your site, and how long they spend there.

6.    And a well-liked site with lots of visitors will make you very popular with the search engines like Google. So get yourself back to www.google.co.uk and download the Google Toolbar. Amongst other things, this nifty device will sit in the top toolbar of your web browser (see Idea 1) and provide a Page Rank for every site you visit. Firstly check your own site – you should be aiming for a ranking of 3/10 or more – and then check your competitors!

7.     All this online activity might make you nervous about computer viruses and spyware. Viruses infect your computer and damage your systems and programmes; spyware is less obvious, but just as dangerous. It sits in the background, monitoring your computer and potentially transmitting information to someone else over the internet. Viruses and spyware can record every keystroke you make on your keyboard including user names, passwords and credit card numbers. The first thing you should do is ensure your Firewall is switched on. This is almost always included as standard with your computer. Then visit www.lavasoft.com and www.grisoft.com to download Ad-Aware and AVG, both of which are free to domestic users.

8.     Not only does switching your computer off at the end of the day save on electricity, it will also help to protect you from viruses too. Also save money by making sure you switch off the lights, and don’t leave any equipment on standby.

9.     If you have a handful of computers in your shop or office, all connecting to the internet through a wireless router, you need to focus even more on your online security. Wireless routers are much more susceptible to hackers and viruses than traditional wired connections, so increase your protection accordingly.

10.     It could be that your phone bills are the biggest drain on your cash. If you ring a lot of 0870 numbers, these could be costing you around 10p per minute. Keep your cash to yourself by visiting www.saynoto0870.com, a brilliant website which provides hundreds of alternative landline numbers.

11.    And if you want to be able to receive faxes, but a fax machine and separate phone line are too much of an expense, it’s possible to turn your PC into a desktop fax with www.efax.com. You get your own special number which people can fax you on and faxes are then converted into email format. The only problem with this system is you're given an 0870 number which costs people faxing you up to 8p per minute during the day (see Idea 10!). This system does provide a service though, so it works well.  Just make sure you let people faxing you know how much it will cost, as effectively they’re subsidising your free fax machine.

12.    All those phone and fax numbers need to be stored in some sort of orderly fashion, but forget your old address book! Instead, get yourself to www.plaxo.com and sign up for a free Plaxo account. This online address book has the added (huge!) advantage that the details you hold you can be updated and amended by the person they belong to. So no more calling out-of-date phone numbers.

13.   So you’re now getting lots of contacts from your fantastic website, but maybe it’s time to boost the content? Uploaded documents are a great way to keep your site visitors updated and informed, but if you’ve gone to all the trouble of creating beautifully set-out, interesting, informative documents, the last thing you want is your visitors seeing a complete mess when they open it on their own system. PDFs (Photographic Document Format) are the answer. These documents look the same on any computer, and they can’t be edited. But Adobe Acrobat Writer, the system for creating PDFs, isn’t cheap. Instead, click onto www.sourceforge.net and get a copy of PDF Creator for free.

14.   Or maybe you’re ready to go a step further and put some audio clips onto your site? Audacity from www.sourceforge.net is a free programme that records and edits sound clips on your PC, although it does have limited support available from Sourceforge themselves.

15.    And possibly you’re ready to take online payments from customers who visit your site? Google Checkout, Worldpay and Paypal all provide excellent, secure, payment methods that can be easily linked into your site with small pieces of code. Like any Merchant Bank, they charge a small fee for processing the credit cards, but unfortunately there’s no way to avoid this.

16.    Could it be that your own bank are the source of some of your money disappearing? If your bank is charging you high rates for regular transactions, take a trip down the High Street or visit some other banks’ websites. Almost all High Street banks offer free banking for 12 months to 2 years, although check the small print for areas where charges may still apply. And if you do your banking online, you can avoid even more charges.

17.    And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Join up with hundreds of like-minded businesses on free online forums like www.4networking.biz and share ideas, support and information.

Date: Jun 1 2007 9:21AM
Category: BUSINESS EDITORIAL