Photo by Seth Anderson

I came across an excellent article on Entrepreneur.com about some of the best free tools to help small business owners.   I had been looking for things like this for my business a few months ago, and I wish I’d found some of these.

Here are my top 10 picks:

1. Dimdim.com: Open source web conferencing applicaiton.
2. Adrive.com:  50GB of online storage and backup.  If you are still using an external hard drive to store and backup your business files [Carolann is cringing], your business data isn’t protected from fire, flood or power surge.
3. Audacity.com:  Open source software for audio recording.  I *love* this and use my Skype headset to record guided visualizations.  You can edit your mp3 files, which means DANCE MIXES and KARAOKE!  Sorry, I got carried away.  There are tutorials on YouTube which make this free and easy.
4. Feedburner.com:  One way to get your blog traveling to other sites and more traffic back to yours.  Google just bought this, so I only expect it to get better.
5. Econnect.Entreprenuer.com:  Social networking for entrepreneurs.  I plan to be chatting out here more in 2009.  Will I see you there?
6. Project2Manage.com:  Collaborative project management solution.  Who really wants the pain of Microsoft Project and have to  pay for it, too?
7. BlogTalkRadio.com: Radio network for users to host their own shows.  I haven’t hosted my own show, yet, but I’ve found some excellent content out here.
8. Slideshare.net:  Turns Powerpoints and PDF’s into webpages.
9. Freshbooks.com:  Invoicing, time tracking and expense service.  This was easy.  I wish I could have all those hours back that I spent trying to figure out how to pay myself with Quick Books.
10. Google Alerts:  google.com/alerts sends you an email digest every time your search term or query comes up.  I use this to keep an eye on my name and Vivid Epiphany (in other words, to manage my digital footprint).

Peace and Prosperity,

Carolann