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Chances are that by now you’ve created your Christmas list—a list of the wants and wishes you deserve to have after a long, economically depressing year of slaving over your small business.

The bad news is that, although the recession has caused an overall slashing of retail prices, it’s not likely that anything on your list is completely free. You’ve still got to shell out some bucks to make the holidays special for you and your families. The good news? There is one list of goodies, which are all free—Mashable.com’s list of “270+ Tools for Running a Business Online.”

Probably the most comprehensive list of current web applications, Mashable.com’s list is a veritable buffet of functional alternatives to costly software programs. Check out the main categories in the list’s breakdown:

• Accounting, Billing, Invoicing, Estimating & Contracts
• Calendars & Scheduling
• Charts, Diagrams, and Whiteboards
• Collaboration & Workgroups
• Conferences, Presentations & Meetings
• Crowdsourcing, Networking & Community
• Customer Relationship Management, Customer Service & Contact Management
• Database, File Storage & Information Management
• Email (Marketing)
• Employee Management, Payroll & Human Resources
• Feedback
• Marketing & Publicity
• Money Making & eCommerce Solutions
• Office Applications
• Organization & Management
• Phone & Voicemail
• Task Lists, Planning & Project Management
• Time Management & Tracking
• Virtual Office Platforms
• Website Tools
• Industry-Specific
• Miscellaneous (e.g. Resumes, Contact Management, Research, etc.)

The list, which is described as the crème de la crème of web apps, covers every area of business management and resources that one can think of. But though every application is summarized and sourced for your convenience on their website, Mashable.com doesn’t (as of yet) provide any reviews of the applications they mention.

As a member of the ChooseWhat.com team, I promise not to sit idly by while you spend your valuable time testing each service. That said, this post is the start of my series of web apps reviews.

So look forward to more detailed info in the near future. In the meantime, if you have some time during the holidays, feel free to have a look at the Mashable.com list for yourself.

Pick just a couple of the best-sounding, most applicable web services, and try them. You’ll probably be surprised and enlightened at what you learn.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

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FaxCompare.com
PBXCompare.com
Tax-Compare.com

Today we’re continuing the theme of finding solutions and opportunities despite the recession.

At Zilker Ventures, we believe that, though it’s important to be frugal in a tight economy, the worst thing you can do is to stop spending completely and to halt any potential for the growth of your business. The truth is that opportunities exist in both bad economies and in good ones and you can make of them as you will. That said, there are several bits of good news for entrepreneurs and start-ups:

1. Entrepreneur Peter Justen says that there are some advantages of starting a business during an economic downturn (via “Starting a Business in a Downturn”, BusinessWeek.com).

These include:

• the ability to get retail at lower costs
• office and warehouse space at lower costs
• being able to more easily negotiate with landlords
• cheaper and readily accessible office equipment and furniture
• less competition
• soft ad rates
• more mutually beneficial partnerships to increase business survival

2. Stacy Perman explains how labor is becoming a buyer’s market, as large corporations lay off more and more employees. These employees have tended to flock towards small businesses, which benefit by the influx of cheap, good, readily available workers (via “What Layoffs Mean for Small Employers,” BusinessWeek.com).

3. Whether they’re out of a job or just venting frustrations about the limitations of today’s economy, people are networking more. Using social network sites can potentially be a good thing. They provide an outlet for anxiety and frustration and allow people to share experiences, empathize with one another and support one another. The friends and contacts you make today could be your gateway to better jobs or even better employees in the future (via “The Recession: My Facebook, My Therapist,” BusinessWeek.com).

4. Yes, it’s a bad time. But are entrepreneurs letting it faze them? They never have, and they aren’t now. There are reports of studies, showing that small business owners and entrepreneurs are maintaining positive attitudes and that optimism is rising. Take this one for example:

“I think we need to change the mindset,” said Travis Sims, owner of Extreme Entertainment. “Instead of cutting back, we need to explore how we can grow. We have to remain positive and remember that the strong will survive. It’s all about meeting new people and building positive relationships,” (via TMNews.com).

In general, due to the recession, small business owners and entrepreneurs have been compelled to rethink their business models and to re-design to meet customer demand and to stay afloat. If these businesses succeed now, we have every reason to believe they will flourish in better times.

Setting yourself up for future prosperity and success isn’t such a bad thing. It’s actually a glass half-full kind of thing.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

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FaxCompare.com
PBXCompare.com
Tax-Compare.com
Email-Marketing-Options.com

With economic pressure weighing you down, you’re more than likely looking for ways to cut costs without laying employees off the week before Christmas. Here are a few ideas.

Ditch the fax machine.

No fax machine means no paper or toner. Typically the monthly fee you pay an internet fax service is less than the cost of a dedicated phone line, and you have no long distance charges. Companies like MyFax offer an internet fax service that can significantly cut your costs. Want to look into more internet fax services? Visit FaxCompare.com.

Buy in bulk.

If, as a single small business, this won’t work for you, look for other small businesses that may be willing to join you in a sort of co-op purchasing plan. That way you can both take advantage of volume discounts you wouldn’t be able to get on your own.

Get a cheaper phone service.

When comparing the cost of a virtual PBX service, like Phone.com, to a traditional PBX system that requires you buy hardware, it is easy to see which one is cheaper. The initial cost of a typical online PBX service is around $30. There is no hardware that needs to be purchased and you can use any phone, including cell phones, to receive calls through the system. You should expect to spend several thousand dollars on a traditional phone system before you plug in the first phone line not to mention that a traditional PBX system must be physically installed and set up which will add extra costs. MyFax also offers a virtual PBX phone system at my1voice.com. To compare more PBX providers, visit PBXCompare.com.

Hire monkeys.

Not only can creating novelty bring in business but you literally pay them in soy beans.

Shelley Moore
ChooseWhat.com

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FaxCompare.com

On Friday December 12th, 2008, the state of Indiana filed a lawsuit on Friday against Texas-based company Envarion Corp. for sending a record-breaking number of junk faxes.

Junk Fax Lawsuit

Faxed advertisements from Envarion were sent to 57 different counties in Indiana and garnered 1,842 complaints, which is the largest number of recorded infractions since the state’s Do Not Fax law was enacted in last year (source: InsideIndianaBusiness.com).

Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter is quoted as saying, “These fax offers are frustrating for business owners who bear the brunt of the costs of unsolicited junk faxes. We don’t want Indiana citizens wasting their time sorting through unwanted piles of paper each day. Home-based businesses also have the added frustration of interrupted privacy during the owners’ time spent with family.”

Understanding Why Unsolicited Faxing Happens

Junk fax lawsuits never fail to surprise me. No matter how many states enact anti-junk fax laws, the problem of receiving unsolicited advertisements through fax machines doesn’t seem to disappear. This lawsuit is just the latest case of unwanted faxes to surface in the news. And it likely won’t be the last.

Though we can’t be entirely sure of the reasoning behind sending junk faxes, we can guess that companies who do it either don’t realize the consequences of sending junk faxes (which isn’t very likely) or choose to disregard the consequences in favor of large-scale advertising through a relatively low-cost medium. The latter reason is also the reason why we still find spam e-mails in our inboxes despite the CAN-SPAM Act and other anti-spam legislation.

Realistically speaking, laws can only do so much. Despite the fact that we have laws that are supposed to deter people from despicable actions, there is a small minority who will break the rules for their own gain. That said, when a threat to our privacy and freedom exists, good sense dictates that we ought to take every measure available to prevent something bad from happening.

In other words, be proactive.

Solutions

Let’s use spam email as an example. If you keep getting spam emails sent to your inbox, what do you typically do? Do you automatically call up your email host and complain that someone is violating the CAN-SPAM Act and then wait for them to take care of the problem? You would probably make sure to follow appropriate procedures to eliminate spam on your own first. You’d mark the messages as spam, add them to your blocked senders list, be careful not to open similar messages in the future, and report the sender to anti-spam organizations and blacklists.

If we can be proactive when it comes to email, why can’t we be just as proactive when it comes to faxes? After all, junk faxes can be much more costly and more time-consuming than junk emails. Faxes waste paper, toner and the time you could have spent sending or receiving necessary faxes.

For that reason, I strongly advocate using internet fax services. One of the biggest advantages of using an internet fax service is that your service provides you with an online interface that allows you to see where an incoming fax is coming from and who’s sending it. Your received faxes are stored on hosted web space that you can access through a login. This feature allows you to choose the faxes you wish to print and to delete the faxes that you suspect are junk. If you wish to tie your fax account to an email address, you can view the received fax in your inbox and easily delete junk faxes.

With an internet fax service, you are also able to alert your provider to junk faxers and easily block them, or simply choose not to print them. The service can potentially save you from a lot of grief and is as low as $10 a month, which is cheaper than the cost of a dedicated phone line.

It really is that easy and that sensible. And it’s there for a reason. Please, for the love of God, I don’t want to hear any more about junk fax problems in 2009. Start using internet fax today.

For more information about online fax services, please visit FaxCompare.com.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

ChooseWhat.com

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As much as we’d like to ignore it, tax season is coming. As a small business owner, there are important dates to recognize long before the dreaded April 15th. The following dates are taken directly from the 2009 Small Business Tax Calendar on the IRS website.

February 2nd
Furnish Forms 1098, 1099 and W-2G to recipients for certain payments made
during 2008, and Form W-2 to employees who worked for you during 2008.
Deposit FUTA tax owed through Dec if $500 or less. File 2008 Form 940,
Form 941, Form 943, or Form 944 if you did not deposit all taxes when due.
Certain small employers: File Form 720 for the 4th quarter of 2008. File
Form 730 and pay the tax on wagers accepted during Dec 2008. File Form 2290
and pay the tax on vehicles first used in Dec 2008.

March 16th
Corporations: File 2008 forms as required: Form 1120 or 1120A calendar year
income tax return. File Form 7004 (Automatic Extension) and deposit estimated
tax. S Corporations: File Form 1120S, 2008 calendar year income tax return.
Provide shareholders a copy of Sch. K-1. S Corporation elections: File Form 2553
for S Corporation status in calendar year 2009. Electing Large Partnerships:
Provide Form Sch. K-1, 1065-B to each partner.

April 15th
File applicable 2008 return: Individuals: Form 1040, 1040A, or 1040EZ. Pay the first
installment of 2009 estimated tax. Partnerships: Form 1065 for 2008; give a copy of
Sch. K-1 to each partner. Electing Large Partnerships: File a 2008 calendar year return.
For Household Employers: File Schedule H if you paid $1,500 or more to a household
employee. Deadline to make corrective refunds in excess of prior year’s elective deferral
limit. Corporations: Deposit the first installment of your estimated tax for 2009.

As an individual, you may feel like you can put off preparing your tax return until March or even later. Be aware, however, if you’re planning on using TurboTax or TaxCut, their prices tend to increase mid-February. So file early and save yourself some money. Other online tax software sites will let you begin to enter your personal information now and alert you when the option to e-file becomes available.

The options are endless when it comes to tax software – now available as an online service, a downloadable program, or a CD-Rom. Tax-Compare.com offers side-by-side comparisons of the different companies and their respective products, taking the legwork out of the decision making process.

Shelley Moore
ChooseWhat.com

Tax-Compare.com
FaxCompare.com

I’ll be honest: email marketing really hasn’t ever been cool. It had major problems from the start and it didn’t take much time for email marketing to become virtually synonymous with spam. And it very much deserves the label.

What separates email marketing messages from spam is the ability for receivers to opt-out (i.e. remove themselves from a mailing list)—the signal of respect for the message viewer and his or her privacy. Yet, a study released just last month (Nov 2008) from the deliverability firm Return Path states that many of the best-known U.S. brands handle their email marketing efforts poorly. Participants in the survey included names like Wal-Mart, Staples, Sears, Disney, the New York Times, Kraft, Fisher Price, BMW, Expedia, Hertz and Marriott.

According to the report, 20% of the companies surveyed continued to send email messages to recipients after they had requested to unsubscribe, and at least five companies admitted to sending emails 10 days after they’d received an unsubscribe request, which is a violation of the federal Can Spam Act.

The reason behind the flubs is not entirely clear. They could have occurred because marketers, in spite of potentially ruining their reputations, attempt a last ditch effort to keep customers, or simply because they don’t realize they’ve made a mistake (via Top Firms Fumble Opt Outs: Return Path, DirectMag.com). The latter, however, could easily be remedied by marketers surveying their email list and asking for customer feedback.

Whatever the case may be, receiving a bunch of unwanted email messages from a company always results in negative consequences. In light of the reports about big businesses, it’s understandable that small businesses have under-utilized or ignored email marketing tools.

But the fact is that successful companies, who often see an increase in revenue of 50% or more, continue to use email marketing tools to reach customers effectively and instantaneously. That’s why people like me keep writing about it. If utilized correctly, email is a powerful, valuable means of marketing online.

Jeremy Saibil, director of deliverability at Campaigner, says that email marketers should empathize with email recipients to fully test the deliverability and effectiveness of emails before sending them. He advises:

Have your IT folks set up a pristine, never-before-used e-mail box. Take this new address and subscribe to all of your own marketing programs. Now take a step back and put yourself in the shoes of your users and ask yourself how many e-mails you send a week as a company (The e-mail deliverability blame game: Marketers need to look in the mirror, DMNews.com).

–Sage advice from a representative of Campaigner, a leading email marketing software provider who has just announced plans to focus on three key areas of improvement for their service in 2009:

1. Targeting (through highly customizable, segmented lists)
2. Personalization (through use of stored personal attributes features for message tailoring)
3. Deliverability (through third-party deliverability firms like Return Path)

It may be a while before small business email marketing providers catch up with bigger companies in terms of performance, but at least these service providers now recognize the need to improve based on the best practices of email marketing. It would be nice to have lower-cost software alternatives that can perform and be as functional as higher-end options.

But full responsibility for your marketing efforts should never fall solely on your service provider. You should take the time to make sure your email messages are worth someone’s time and interest. And that means choosing a service provider who can meet your expectations. In an economy like ours, marketers can no longer afford to waste time and money on ineffective practices.

For a comparison of the top email marketing options on the market, please visit Email-Marketing-Options.com.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC
ChooseWhat.com

By now every business person has become well-versed in all of the tricks and tips to save time and money in the midst of a recession, the bulk of which are related to using online tools and web applications in place of costly hardware and software. Using various web tools to increase efficiency and decrease cost is something I’ve discussed at length in earlier posts about internet fax services, hosted pbx services and Google Apps and Zoho. Now add to this list of cost-effective solutions OpenaCircle.com, the first site to offer completely free web conferencing service.

Advantages of the service include the ability to share desktops with co-workers, colleagues and partners and the option to utilize blogs, wikis, texting and other social networking tools simultaneously with video and audio to share information.

The majority of web conferencing service providers have thus far tended to offer free service for a trial period, after which the user is prompted to select from a tier of service plans. OpenaCircle.com, however, offers full access from the get-go to web-based “meeting and information-sharing spaces,” which are private and fully equipped with convenient work tools for presentations, A/V conferencing, storing/sharing files and planning and scheduling meetings.

Here are some of the best features:

• Secure, private rooms
• Permanently open 24 hours a day
• Create a new circle for every customer, project or team
• Live presentations and desktop sharing
• Advance schedule meetings, presentations and events

What I love is that the bigwigs at OpenaCircle.com explain on their blog the positive implications of utilizing web applications not only on pocketbooks, but also on the green initiative. Here are a couple of quotes from the blog:

What will drive business travelers to go GREEN isn’t a sense of creating a smaller carbon footprint or being a responsible corporate citizen (though 40% of frequent business travelers say they are concerned). No, it is the simple fact that it doesn’t make financial sense anymore to travel to “get the sale.”

Just think about how much bandwidth you have at home compared to what you have at the office. Sure, you have a large pipe coming into the office, but shared amongst how many people. And what if 1/3 of those users are sending live video or sharing their desktop.

So, maybe going GREEN might mean also, sending your workforce home. Think about it – less office space, a smaller carbon footprint, and your workers not having to drive into the office (Jul 30, 2008).

I couldn’t make the point any better. OpenaCircle.com illustrates the notion that “going green” isn’t really a notion anymore. It is becoming not a matter of choice, but a matter of sustainability for businesses everywhere.

At the end of the day, “alternatives” aren’t simply for those willing to gamble or for those with the luxury of time to test-drive something new. They become part of your bottom line.

To learn more about online fax services, please visit FaxCompare.com.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

ChooseWhat.com

Sales and Stress Factors

It’s Cyber Monday, the first day of the online holiday shopping season—which is infinitely more exciting and less stressful than waiting in Black Friday lines to be potentially trampled upon and/or shanked by mobs of people clawing their way to a $300 Toshiba laptop.

The online research firm comScore has just predicted that online sales during these last two months of the year will remain unchanged from last year’s numbers ($29.2 billion). ComScore also reports that, so far, online sales have been down 4% this year and that half of people who are shopping online at this time are doing so from their work accounts (via CNNMoney.com).

Though sales are down this year, the reports of people shopping from their offices and work spaces perhaps reflect the current spending opportunities available to small businesses. This past year, the tax code was amended to provide more opportunities for small businesses to purchase capital, especially business activity-related property and equipment. President-elect Obama plans to extend and expand these allowances, promising to eliminate “capital gains tax on gains from investments in start-ups” and to create “a tax credit for businesses that offer workers health care” (CNNMoney.com).

There really are too many post-Black Friday and post-recession news items out there to take in all at once. Yes, some people bought things. Yes, some other people did not buy things. Is this a positive or negative thing? Should you or I be spending or saving? How should you prepare for the future of your business? How are you as a retailer going to reach your monthly quota?

Questions like these are freaking out employees of small business all across the globe, according to a recent article on ABC.com. The article cites an American Psychological Association study that finds eight out of 10 Americans to be anxious about the economy. Half of the 7,000 polled individuals claimed to be anxious about job security, while 53% of the individuals reported losing sleep over being able to provide basic necessities for their households.

How to De-stress

Fear and anxiety of such magnitude is bound to affect how one performs at work, so it’s important for employers and employees to help create a calming work environment. Kathleen Hall, founder of the Stress Institute, advises workers to listen to quiet music, repeat positive affirmation, eat healthy and exercise regularly by walking up or down a flight of stairs or around the office for a breather. Texting, emailing and lunching with friends and co-workers is also recommended (via kivtv.com).

Here at Zilker Ventures, we find that humor is the best medicine. Whether it’s a video on YouTube.com or an unbelievable message thread rant, funny things make the workplace a better place to be. So, share your favorite funnies with your co-workers, employees and managers. Just be sure not to make fun of the boss or to cross the PC line with your employees and to respect everyone’s personal sense of humor.

Today, I found a press release article on FinancialPost.com to be rather amusing. Promoting a recession-themed trade show aimed at helping small businesses, entrepreneur Columbus D. Pression provides the following statement:

[O]nly at Recession World can you learn from real-life experts offering creative new solutions such as buying real estate in Central America with no money down, awakening the dragon within, boosting customer satisfaction by using call centres in Nigeria and using the emerging science of voodoo to bewitch customers into buying more. All our experts are self-made millionaires who will be selling books and tapes at the back of the room.

The emerging science of voodoo? I kid you not.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

ChooseWhat.com

Google is my homepage, so every time I open my browser I see that www.Google.com, a site with 19 words and a data field, has a PageRank of 10. So what’s the deal with PageRank? Do high PageRank sites show up first when you do a search? No. In fact, if you do a search on Google for “search engines”, www.google.com doesn’t show up at all. Do the same search on Yahoo and www.google.com shows up in spot number 2, behind www.yahoo.com of course. If Google doesn’t manually interfere with their algorithm, and their homepage is a search engine with a PageRank of 10, why does their site not show at all in the search results?

This is what Google has to say about PageRank:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

That’s great information, right? Unfortunately, I couldn’t find that information on Google’s site. Instead, I found it on Wikipedia, which is only a PR 7 site. Google itself, on the other hand, gets a PR 10. When searching for Google’s own PageRank, wouldn’t you expect it to be easier to find information from Google, a PR 10 site, rather than Wikipedia at a lowly PR7?

For a while, my conclusion was that the whole PR thing is a scam and that Google is the only PR 10 site. I was wrong. The United States Federal Government’s homepage, www.usa.gov, is also a PR 10. The US Senate (www.senate.gov) is a PR 9 as is the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov) and fellow search engine, Yahoo (www.yahoo.com). The US House of Representatives (www.house.gov), the US Supreme Court (www.supremecourtus.gov) and all three branches of the military (www.airforce.com, www.army.mil and www.navy.mil) are all only PR 8s. However, if you’re looking for information on any of these organizations, I recommend slumming it with PR 7 Wikipedia.

W. Gaines Kilpatrick
CEO, Zilker Ventures, LLC

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Nothing says Thanksgiving like a Christmas tree lighting at mall with a past American Idol winner. Right? This past weekend, for some yet unknown reason, I arrived reluctantly at the Macy’s Christmas tree lighting and jingle at the Domain (Simon Malls) in north Austin, waiting for Jordin Sparks to perform. I never got to see her perform, or rather, didn’t stay that long. After the Austin Girls’ Choir performed in their 1800s wassailing outfits and prior to some guy with an acoustic guitar and a fog machine (or something equally ridiculous), the crowd was forced to watch a bunch of hokey commercials for brands that I assume can be found in Macy’s department stores, ready and waiting to be purchased on Black Friday.

The whole event put a damper on my entire weekend. Children lollygagged around, bored and listless, with not much to stimulate their minds—no activities, no play areas set up. The guy standing in front of me was heard to utter “This sucks” under his breath several times. The event, though described as a family affair, was clearly more targeted to adults—those humans with wallets and credit cards and the power to buy lingering inventory. It was no surprise that the new store Vivo Chocolato! was brimming with parents and kids alike. Chocolate, in my mind, is very much the G-rated version of an alcoholic beverage. Thinking about the economy makes me want to get choco-faced.

Thanksgiving isn’t even here, and it seems that people have been talking about Black Friday since before Halloween. Following the recession this year, the post-holiday shopping sale event has a special significance. It could actually make or break many businesses. That reality has caused many retailers to slash prices to such an extent that has never before been seen.

“In response [to the recession], retailers have been rolling out non-stop bargains. Wal-Mart offered 10 popular toys for $10 in October, Toys “R” Us has touted its “lowest prices of the season” and Gap Inc offered 30 percent off last weekend — all well before Thanksgiving,” writes Nicole Maestri (Reuters).

As I wrote in my previous Black Friday post, there are quite a few deals out there, and there is also plenty of time to buy. Many retailers are opening their stores as early as midnight and extending the sales through the entire weekend. Online retailers are planning to promote sales until Monday, which is aptly being called Cyber Monday.

As a small business owner, you’re trying to save money and trim spending during this time. But it may be wise to purchase while the deals are good and the equipment is low-cost. Thanks to a change in the 2008 Federal Tax Code, tax write-offs for property that directly relates to business activities (such as printers, scanners, projection screens, etc.) are at an all-time high (MarketWatch). It is likely that businesses will save more by purchasing now rather than by waiting until they have extra in their budgets.

If you’re upgrading your equipment from equipment that is used and not malfunctioning, then donate your old equipment to a place like Goodwill. You’ll get a tax receipt, which allows you to write off even more. It’s a good thing.

To keep up with consumers who are now thoroughly discriminating value from price, retailers will have to know exactly what consumers are looking to buy this season and shrewdly price items. The “price-as-product-feature” model is going to have to go away, at least for a while. Not many people are thinking that expensive is necessarily better anymore.

They’re going to have to evaluate the crappy coffee they buy every morning from Starbucks. Maybe people will finally realize that $5 really is way, way, too much for unhealthy additives that make the bland coffee taste better and the rather noisy, energy-wasting “barista ambience.”

For resources that can help save your business time and money spent researching products and services, such as internet fax services and hosted pbx services, please visit ChooseWhat.com

For more information on taxes and tax software, please visit Tax-Compare.com.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

ChooseWhat.com