Some of the best money savers for home and business are on the Web for the taking: free fax, free e-mail, free voice mail, and more.
For free Web-based faxing, eFax.com is fast and easy. In about 2 minutes, eFax will provide you with your own fax number and the capability to receive and view faxes for free on your PC. Replace your fax machine altogether by forking over $2.95 per month for eFax Plus. This lets you send, forward, and preview faxes from any PC as well as convert a received fax into a Word or Excel document via OCR. You can also send faxes for free with Fax4Free.com.
Selecting a free e-mail service is a bit trickier, since you have more than 500 to choose from. TeleBot offers a three-in-one deal: free e-mail, voice mail, and faxing. And both Telebot and Planetary Motion's CoolMail let you call in to check your e-mail by phone. For a complete list of free e-mail services, visit www.emailaddresses.com.
Along with free e-mail, Web-based calendaring, and collaboration, Zcentral.com offers a nice chunk of Internet storage too. You get 20MB of space in which to store any files you want, which can come in handy for small offices or far-flung teams that need to share documents.
You can even getfree voice mail and videoconferencing. Visitalk.com lets you send and receive voice and text messages via the Web—you can have up to 10 in your in-box at once. Another handy tool, Pagoo Call Catcher, intercepts calls that come in while you're online. The caller can leave a message that will pop up seconds later on your PC. Cost starts at $3.95 a month—much less than a second phone line.
Steals and Deals
Membership does have its privileges. If you own your own company, joining the Small Business Benefit Association lets you in on discounted life, medical, and dental insurance; legal services; office supplies; moving services; security systems; floral delivery; and more. One of the SBBA's most valuable features is its collection agency service. SBBA membership costs $9.95 to $14.95 per month, depending on the services you want, plus a $59 enrollment fee.
Joining a members-only Web superstore such as Value America or Netmarket can save you money too. Value America is free to join and offers a 5 percent discount on all orders. Netmarket costs $69.95 per year (you can try it for three months for $1); it offers a 10 to 15 percent discount and a low-price guarantee.
Home or office long-distance phone bills going through the roof? Keep them under control with the help of TeleWorth's free TeleRate comparison site. Punch in the first six digits of long-distance numbers you call regularly, and TeleRate will shoot back a list of telcos that offer the lowest rates.
If you balk at dropping 20 clams or more every month for an Internet connection, check out Surfree.com, which has all-you-can-eat access for $14.95 a month. Far from being a bare-bones ISP, Surfree.com offers reliable connections and 24-hour tech support. NetZero offers totally free Internet service. Tiny ads pop up as you browse and read mail.
Make Money
Watching your account balance grow is even more fun than saving a buck or two. The Internet is a gold mine of tips and tricks to keep the money flowing into your coffers.
You don't need an MBA to run a small business or balance your checkbook. But it wouldn't hurt to check out the tools and resources at Quicken.com and MSN MoneyCentral. Quicken.com offers excellent small-business resources and personal-finance tools, while MoneyCentral focuses on individual finance and investing information. Office.com's Business Tools offers businesses a dose of practical applications—how to create a customer-service plan, for example—as well as profiles of companies that have hit it big.
Want to make your first million before 30, retire at 50, or just put your kids through college without going broke? We hear you. Unless you're Warren Buffett, you could probably do better with your investments and planning. And getting affordable advice from experts can't hurt. Enter DirectAdvice.com, a round-the-clock Web-based financial planner.
Fill out a 20-minute survey detailing your financial situation, and DirectAdvice.com will return a personalized plan for investing, saving, and more. Membership isn't free—you'll pay $75 a year for advice and planning tools—but you can update your information and check your plan as often as you like, or make changes when your options vest or you change jobs.
Store It on the Net
Sidestep the most common road-warrior trap: forgetting to move the file you need from the company network to your notebook's hard drive. Store such documents on the Internet instead. X:drive gives you up to 25MB of free, password-protected storage space (your files are encrypted on X:drive's servers too). That's about 10 PowerPoint presentations, 200-plus Word or Excel files, or thousands of GIF files. And soon you'll be able to buy additional chunks of space. Add your X:drive to Windows Explorer by downloading a small plug-in.
No More Paper Cuts
Sick of writing out a dozen bills a month by hand? Pay off your creditors online instead. If your bank isn't with-it enough to offer this service, check out Paytrust or StatusFactory.com. Both offer complete online bill payment for less than 10 bucks a month. Get weekly or daily reminders, pay bills automatically or with a click, and review bill details on the Web. Paytrust charges $7.95 per month for up to 25 bills, with each additional bill costing 50 cents. Bill payment with StatusFactory.com costs $8.95 for up to 15 bills or $29.95 for up to 25 bills (this option includes additional services).
Call Your Lawyer
But before you do, check out Lawoffice.com. The site houses a law library's worth of legal info for your business and a searchable directory of a million-plus attorneys. The articles are so straightforward you'd never know attorneys wrote them.
Profit Alert
It doesn't do much good to check the stock market every few minutes if the securities you're tracking stay flat. Save yourself the trouble and let Alert Me Now's Stock Alert System notify you via e-mail, wireless phone, or pager when there's good or bad news about your portfolio. E-mail alerts are free, but it costs $60 a year to be notified via pager or your digital phone's short messaging service.
Find Venture Capital
You're sitting on an idea as big as eBay, Yahoo, and Amazon.com combined, but you need investors. Where do you look? Where else? The Web.
Idea Cafe's Financing Your Business
Ignore the overused café metaphor and head straight for the Getting Investors section.
MoneyHunter
Find investors in the Golden Rolodex, download sample business plans, and master the industry verbiage.
Nvst.com
Use its investors contact database to tailor your search. Try it for 90 days for $59.
U.S. Small Business Administration
Visit the financing section to learn about the SBA's many loan and capital programs.
Venture Capital Resource Library
Don't miss its directory of venture-capital firms and an assortment of VC resources.
Advertising 101
It's the Yahoo of Internet advertising info. Best for small companies that are just getting their feet wet on the Web, the Internet Advertising Resource Guide categorizes links to hundreds of sites that offer additional info as well as services. It's an excellent jumping-off spot to sources of Internet demographics, pointers on legal and ethical issues, and site-design primers.
