Leverage Free and Cheap Tools For Your Business

http://www.sennza.com.au/ | Twitter: @sennza

LEVERAGE FREE AND CHEAP TOOLS FOR YOUR BUSINESS Lachlan MacPherson

RUNNING A BUSINESS

Ø  What are the “time sucks” in running a business?

Ø  Finance / Accounting

Ø  Sales

Ø Marketing

But, All very essential

XERO Ø Home grown in New Zealand

Ø Automate your accounting

Ø Bank feed connected to your account

Ø Automatic reconciling

Ø Set up recurring invoices

Ø  Automated late payment reminders

Ø $50/month

Ø  Compare this to a bookkeeper’s cost

Ø  In the cloud

Take the pain out of accounting

http://www.xero.com/

MAILCHIMP Ø Add customers to mailing list while you sleep

Ø Schedule emails into the future

Ø Drip feed emails over time

Ø Measure your success:

Ø See email open rates

Ø Bounce backs

Ø Click through rates

Ø  Track sales

Ø  FREE up to 2000 emails

In a nutshell -> Find out what works for you!

http://www.mailchimp.com/

WHAT IS A BLOG? Ø Time sensitive news

Ø  Dead Simple publishing

Ø  Easy for people to follow and subscribe

Ø  Easy to start a conversation with commenting

Ø  It’s a timeline for your business.

Who has heard of WordPress?

WHAT IS WORDPRESS? Ø  WordPress is an open source content management system

Ø  WordPress powers 16.5% of the top 1 million websites

on the web

Ø  54.1% of the top 1 million sites that use a CMS are

powered by WordPress

Ø  22 out of 100 new domains purchased in the use

WordPress WordPress is to the web as MS Word is to Desktop Publishing

http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management/all

DO YOU LOVE YOUR WEBSITE? Ø  Content hasn’t been updated in years?

Ø  Maybe you don’t even have a website

Ø  If you do, you pay way to much to have it updated

Ø  Do you even know how successful your website it?

Ø  How do you measure this success?

What do you hate most about your website?

WORDPRESS Ø Open Source

Ø CMS / Publishing Platform

Ø Schedule Blog / News posts

Ø  RSS Feeds

Ø Visitor Participation, through comments

Ø  Scheduling of posts

Ø Auto post to Social Media (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter)

WordPress is open source and free to use

http://www.wordpress.org and http://www.wordpress.com/

BARE MINIMUM Ø Domain Name

Ø Hosting

Ø Theme

Blue Host 1 Click WordPress install

http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/09/one-click-self-installation-

of-wordpress-with-blue-host/


http://www.bluehost.com/

WHAT IS A PLUGIN? Ø WordPress has over 13,000 free plugins!

Ø  Many, Many paid solutions available.

Ø Plugins are like apps for you website.

Ø  Forms, Polls – Gravity Forms $39

Ø  Automated Backup – Backup Buddy $39

Ø  Shopping Cart – WooCommerce $0

Ø  WP Super Cache - $0


http://www.gravityforms.com/, http://www.ithemes.com/plugins/,

http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/

WRAP UP Ø Automate you Accounting (as much as possible)

Ø  Automate your marketing. Get their email and start a

conversation.


http://www.gravityforms.com/, http://www.ithemes.com/plugins/,

http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/

Technology

Leverage Free and Cheap Tools For Your Business