If you’re starting off on-line, it’s good to know what you should pay for and what you should use for free. Here’s my guide:
Website: WordPress
My favourite is WordPress and for newbs a free wordpress.com account is the way to go. It allows you to play and figure things out, before going all out on the .org version. If you hate the .com, don’t even bother with the .org!
Website Back ups: Vaultpress
If your content is precious on WordPress, then you’re going to want to back up everything! Your developer won’t be doing it unless you’re paying them a monthly fee. So check first. Vaultpress is a $15 a month plugin and service which monitors and backs up every file on your server. If anything goes wrong, a quick click can put it back. The free choice is backing up to Dropbox. For most blog/website setups the standard Dropbox 2gig limit is all you need.
Content: Flickr
I pay for photo hosting and have happily paid $25 a year for a long time. But you don’t need to. Flickr will hold everything you give it, with the limitation that you can’t create galleries and sets without a paid account. If you don’t care and just want to house your shots, then a free account will do!
Outsourcing social media: No!
I’m against it. This is ‘social’ media, not ‘broadcast’ media. You have to be on the end of the line when someone talks directly to you! If you’re paying for it, you’re lazy, you’ve got too much money and you’re business will suffer as soon as you stop paying for it. If the problem is, you can’t find the time, then you haven’t been convinced of the benefit enough to prioritise. Or your process (inspiration, topics, content, etc.) isn’t readily at hand to make it easy for you! Learn to find a way to do it yourself. Outsourcing social media is as dangerous for a business as giving someone else (another company) your mobile phone. Don’t do it.
Business Docs: free.
I use Google Docs for all my business and it serves me fine. I could pay for business apps, but I don’t see a need for it. I could pay for Google support (advised), but I do not, currently.
Invoicing: Pay!
That’s enough from me. I may return and add more services later.
Mark