What happens to businesses when people expect to get things free? Especially small businesses? Surprisingly, an increasing part of our economy is based on the concept that customers get something for nothing.

The Internet is the prime example. Sure, you may (or may not) have to pay to access the Internet, but once you’re there, you expect to get information, entertainment, advice all free. Good for you. Good for companies that sell technology to Internet companies. But is it good for companies that create the information, entertainment, provide the advice?

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, explained the economics of giving stuff away in his keynote address. Anderson’s a proponent of the concept of giving things away free, and his next book, “Free: The Economics of Abundance and the Price of Zero,” is likely to further spread the gospel of that business model.

Moreover, people don’t value what they get free. Even Anderson recognizes this, “When the price of something falls to zero, you get waste.” People value what they pay for. A person who pays $100 for a ticket to an event is likely to show up; when they get it free, they’re just as likely to be a no-show. That’s why I advise entrepreneurs that even when you give your products or services away, especially to a prospect or current customer, you should always indicate the price, then waive it. It shows the true value.

Small companies are not in the same position to give stuff away free — whether it’s a physical product, intellectual property (content, music, art, consulting), or time. Their resources, both of money and time, are far more limited.

But the reality is that the “free” movement will continue, and small companies are going to have to grapple with this challenge. New business models are going to have to emerge for small entrepreneurial companies to survive.

By RHONDA ABRAMS @ Gannett News Service

Have you ever planned and implemented a direct marketing campaign only to end up with dead air? Not a single order or even a peep of a response. You’re not alone. But that never has to happen again.

Just register to attend this free seminar from Target Marketing on Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 2pm eastern and they guarantee you will learn how to diagnose weak points in your campaign before you deploy and what to change in under-performing campaigns to make them deliver. Plus,

•

• How to evaluate and hone your media and offer strategies to pump up response rates, lead-quality rates or conversion rates.
• •How to assess each part of your demand generation system to optimize your marketing ROI.

This session is for both B2C and B2B marketers, at companies of all sizes. A live Q&A following the presentation will allow you to get feedback from the experts on your toughest campaign challenges.

Mark your calendar and register now, just go to the Target Marketing site.

The folks over at FaxZero don’t think you should have to pay to send faxes, and offer free (ad supported) faxes from your computer in a one-page form. Faxes can be sent to any U.S. phone number (Puerto Rico included).

You can type in text to fax or you can attach a PDF file, Microsoft Word (.DOC) file, or Excel Spreadsheet (.XLS).

The free version of FaxZero has a two fax per day limitation. You can also pay $1.99 per fax that doesn’t have any ads on the cover page if you wish.

Especially useful if you still deal with industries that rely on faxes, these online fax services can help you save on fax paper, fax machine upkeep and keep digital copies of all your fax communications.

Life of an Internet Entrepreneur

As a small business owner, it often feels like everyone is trying to sell you something. But sometimes, companies give stuff away.

That’s the case with the online resource offered by Hewlett Packard Small Business.

Granted, they hope you’ll eventually buy something when the need arises, but the information and services can be a boon to business owners—and all of it’s free.

Hewlett-Packard Small Business has a wealth of free tools, tutorials and templates on its site geared toward small business customers.

One of the main attractions of the site is the Business Templates area (not surprising for a printer company), which offers about 700 pre-built designs for Microsoft Office, CorelDRAW, QuarkXPress and more. Most interesting to small business owners is the collection of agency-quality graphic design templates from StockLayouts, where you’ll find great-looking brochures, letterhead, flyers and so on.

But templates are just part of the story. Beneath the Learn & Use banner is a link to free online classes in HP’s learning center. These have the feel of genuine online college or post-graduate courses — complete with lesson breakdowns and even recommended prerequisites — and are taught by well-qualified instructors. You need to register and enroll for a given course, but all are free of charge.

HP offers a few dozen courses in all, broken down into specific areas such as Software & Technology, Business Skills and In-house Marketing. Recent additions include an introduction to using Adobe Photoshop CS2 and understanding Microsoft Vista Business Edition.

You’ll want to bookmark the page and check back often, as HP conveniently flags which lessons are new or updated and shows which new courses are coming soon.

Small Business Computing

A weekly look at the latest products and services designed to help you run a better business.

Now that we can do virtually everything online — shop, bank, communicate — most people have a laundry list of passwords to access their multitude of personalized accounts. For those of us with imperfect memory, it can be easy to forget which magic word will grant access to each site. A new software program may keep you from ever again being locked out of your shopping cart, banking site, or personalized news site.

Actioneer, a Cambridge, Mass.-based software firm, has developed a password-management system, which requires users to remember only one master password. After the user enters a single password, the Invisible Password Manager securely provides access for all other password-protected login sites.

The Actioneer system automatically extracts needed user names and passwords from triple-DES encrypted storage. Because users are not entering individual passwords via the keyboard, the Invisible Password Manager can help prevent identity theft by keyloggers and snoopers.

The Invisible Password Manager, which can be used on a desktop, laptop, or carried around on a USB thumb drive, is free.
CNN Tech

Do you have an original invention you want the world to know about? You could be siting on a gold-mine! The Oprah Winfrey Show is teaming up with QVC to launch a search on the next big thing! If you are the winner, QVC will provide you with on-air promotion to help you launch your product.

Up to 10 finalists from these events will get the opportunity to present their invention on The Oprah Winfrey Show and the studio audience will vote for their favorite.

The winning invention will be featured on QVC. For more information and a copy of the official rules, go here.

oprah.com

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

1. Firefox
http://www.getfirefox.com/
Replaces Internet Explorer
If you haven’t switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one thing’s for sure: the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox.

2. Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora
Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: it’s free, it’s full featured, it’s lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If you’re not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

3. Sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook’s calendaring functions
Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundation’s calendaring program. It’s extremely easy to use (I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two) and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if you’re using a laptop, and this is no different.

Read the rest of this entry »