PaySimple Tips

Try this free service for sharing files of any size over the web.

This commercial site provides valuable resources for small businesses.

Use this calculator to help compare time and cost for flying vs. driving on your next business trip.

These 7 playlists provide music to work by based on your particular business situation.

Download this whitepaper for research on website product pages and help with improving the product pages on your website.

New limits on debit card transaction fees go into effect on October 1, 2011. Learn how they may affect your small business.

Read about the increase in the allowable deduction for business miles that begins July 1, 2011.

10 must see videos for entrepreneurs.

The Small Business Influencer 2011 competition is on now. Nominate a person or organization that has made a significant impact on small businesses in North America.

Read this article to learn how to back up your online email, social media, and online document accounts.

Use these resources to identify and protect yourself from phishing and spoofed emails.

Use these Google Search Techniques to track packages, perform calculations, find sports scores, find mortgage rates, get locations for area codes and much more.

Listen to this monthly radio hour devoted to small business topics.

A listing of over 50 small business events to be held in 2011.

Use the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager to control privacy and security settings for Flash applications accessed via your web browser.

Learn more about the new Google + 1 feature that enables Google to transmit a users site ratings to their social networks via an additional line added to Google organic and paid search results.

Learn more about the new Google + 1 feature that enables Google to transmit a users site ratings to their social networks via an additional line added to Google organic and paid search results.

This article covers the different credit scores that lenders use to evaluate a small business owner when making credit decisions. It provides links to detailed FICO and VantageScore explanations along with links to an article comparing the two, and links to free services that provide information about an individual's credit.

Use email marketing to engage your customers. This free service enables you to manage a 2000 address email list and send 12,000 emails per month.

This free tool can help you use Twitter to build your brand and grow your business by providing a real-time list of questions you can use your expertise to answer.

If your accounting needs are simple, try this free web-based software package.

This free program from the Red Cross enables you to assess your business for disaster preparedness, and provides tips, tools, and resources you can use to improve your disaster preparedness and recovery plans.

Try these tips and tricks to enhance your Gmail account.

Submit your entry by May 31, 2011. Write an essay or produce a video explaining why your business benefits from a .com/.net webiste and you may win $25,000.

Use this free OCR program to convert scanned files, .pdf files, and extract text from graphics.

Use these resources to learn how to write and distribute press releases, and how to create a great press area on your webiste.

Learn about how Google Analytics can provide information about how people find and use your website, and how it can help you make improvements.

Free sources for photos, textures, templates, and vector graphics that you can use for any small business need.

Use these tips and tools to create content for online videos and to optimize them so that they are found by your customers.

Check out the Wired Magazine How To Wiki where you’ll find some really useful advice for solving troublesome business or technology problems.

Use this free tool to help determine salary range for any position based on your business location and size.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) has revamped its website to make it significantly easier for small business owners to find the resources they need.

If you are still using Microsoft Office 2003, Office XP, or Office 2000 use these tools to easily convert docx, xlsx, and pptx files.

This list, created by the editors at strategy + business magazine, highlights their choice for the best book of the year in each of the following categories: The Economy, Leadership, Innovation, China, Human Capital, The Human Mind, Management and Biography and History.

Learn how improvisational acting techniques can help you be a better sales person.

Use this handy screen to see which elements on your web pages are well positioned for most users, and which need to be moved for better visibility.

Learn about social media coupons, including Groupon, and get help deciding if they are right for your small business.

These websites provide free courses given by experts in business, finance and economics (along with other non-business related topics).

Be prepared for this year's holiday shopping. Watch the Chase Paymentech Cyber Holiday Pulse Index to track holiday sales each day from November through January.

These resources provide help with website design and optimization.

Thanks to a new law, you may be able to start earning interest on small business checking account next year.

Visa offers a useful set of tips and tools to help its merchants protect themselves, and to help them better serve their customers (who are also Visa’s customers). These free downloads are available to anyone—not just merchants accepting Visa—and provide advice and best practices applicable to any small business.

While success can definitely be attributed to your hard work, acumen, and determination—wouldn’t it be nice to know if it’s also written in the stars? Check out Business Horoscopes to find out.

Free research studies from the SBA provide in-depth research on a wide variety of topics relevant to small businesses.

This free program will quickly analyze and defragment your hard drive, and in a little more time completely optimize it. It is a great alternative to the slow, less than reliable defrag utility that ships with Wundows.

Try this free alternative to Adobe Acrobat. Perfect for all basic .pdf reading and form needs, it also includes cool features like drag-and-drop .pdf creation.

Try this nifty windows calculator that includes all basic calculator functions and adds extras like a printable tape, re-sizable screen, and custom color schemes.

This site provides over 10,000 free True Type fonts.

As a small business owner, you should not only understand how current legislation affects your business, you should also understand trends in consumer spending habits so that you can effectively meet your customers’ needs. The Payment Cards Center provides resources that can help.

You probably have a handle on cash flow, accounts receivables, and collections for your business. But do you know how you compare to other businesses in your industry or to other small businesses in general? If you’d like to find out, participate in this free Benchmarking survey.

You know that you can blind copy recipients on emails you send. But did you know that you can also type private notes to them in the same email? With this handy plug-in, you can.

Use this free program to password protect and hide private files on your computer.

Watch this series of videos from small business owners who have overcome potentially business-ending obstacles.

This website acts as an IRS watchdog. Find out about IRS audit activity and criminal prosecutions. And, use its database to find a wealth of U.S. demographic information

This handy little utility helps clear-out the garbage from your bookmarks list. It finds duplicates, dead links and re-directed links and then lets you delete and update as desired.

This article provides a list of 21 sites that can help you find bargains, coupons and other deals for online purchases.

Not all great ideas—or even great business ideas—are great businesses. How do you tell if yours is not only a winning idea, but also a viable one for a profitable business? Check out this slide show.

This free add-on for Internet Explorer tracks the tabs you’ve opened, and clicking Alt + X opens the last tab you viewed-- Even if you shut down your browser. If you often close a window or tab by mistake, it can be a huge time-saver.

It’s never fun to contemplate disaster, but it is a business necessity. This website contains a wealth of information that can help you assess your business and put together your business continutiy plan.

We’ve all heard that the government is making it a priority to increase small business lending by providing incentives to banks to make small business loans. But, is it working? An April 2010 report issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta details the results of a small business lending survey suggests it may not be.

Windows provides a bunch of utilities that you can use to manage your programs and your disks, but often there are better choices. This free utility performs several basic Windows clean-up tasks very well.

Read these articles detailing recent developments related to small business taxes, and use these IRS resources to learn more.

Use this free software to program your computer to force you to take breaks. Easy to use and configure, the software will replace your work with soothing pictures on the schedule you set.

New study finds that companies who invest in and listen to their lowest-level workers can significantly increase profits and productivity.

As part of the Wall Street Reform bill, the Senate approved an amendment that would change the fees imposed on debit card transactions and change the rules governing the conditions a merchant can place on card acceptance. Learn more with these resources.

A Google Place page is a way for you to claim your small business listing on Google Maps, and to communicate and market to your customers. Learn more about Google Places, and how you can take advantage of new features launched in April 2010.

If you’re ready to start a search engine marketing campaign for your business, or if you want to enhance and optimize your current campaigns, try this free SEO software. It contains 5 modules that when used together can help you create a cohesive campaign for both organic and PPC advertising.

Check out these webinars, designed to address all aspects of starting, running and growing a small business can be viewed live or accessed at your convenience from the archive.

Everyone makes mistakes, and they are often a valuable learning tool. However, it's even better to learn from someone else's mistakes instead of your own. The following resources provide valuable insights from those who have been there.

Five free online courses that go over legal principles, and help you learn how to operate your business in a way that limits the potential for litigation.

Use the following links to include information about your business--such as your hours, your website, and a brief description of the products and services you offer--in the most popular online maps:

View a list of conferences, events and webinars taking place this year. Whether you're thinking about starting a small business, or need help with marketing, managing or growing your established small business, you're sure to find something in this list that's worth your time to attend.

Yelp is an online review site designed to work like a local yellow pages. It provides information and reviews about many business types in locations large and small. Find out if your business is included on Yelp and/or join the conversation.

The Department of Homeland Security has a government mandated goal of awarding 33.5% of primary contracts, and 40% of sub-contracts to small businesses in 2010. Use these resources to find out how your small business can do business with them.

If your business having temporary trouble making ends meet, the ARC loan program, sponsored by the Small Business Administration is designed to help. The program provides immediate interest-free loans of up to $35,000 to eligible small businesses.

Inc.com provides a large suite of small business tools, templates, worksheets, and sample policies?over 100 of them?that you can access with free registration.

For the last tip of 2009 it is tempting to look back and summarize the highlights of the past year, but it's far more productive to look forward. The following resources do just that.

Use this website to find products that meet your needs, but do not contain costly but essentially useles frills. Read product category reviews that highlight must-have features, nice-to-have extras, and worthless add-ons.

Get this free event planning template pack. It provides a wide variety of templates that can help you plan and organize your next party, conference or event.

Read this new ComScore study for an overview and analysis of consumer online spending patterns from early 2008 through the third quarter of 2009, and for an in-depth discussion of the role a free shipping offer plays in the buying process.

Psychographics attempts to profile a target audience based on attitudes, impressions, goals and lifestyles. Which one are you? How should you effectively market to each profile? How can you be more aware of the marketing tactics being used on you? Learn more from these B2C and B2B resources.

Use this site for a large selection of small business templates, available for immediate download when you complete a short, free registration.

Participate in this Lessons Learned survey for small businesses. They're asking small business owners to submit one or two examples of their most memorable mistakes, how they overcame them, and what they learned. The results will be presented to students who want to learn more about starting their own small businesses.

Whether you want to model a new product concept, add dimension to your presentations and marketing materials, or simply create a plan to re-arrange your office, this free program will fit the bill.

The folks at American Express OPEN Forum asked 50 top small business bloggers to provide tips, insights and advice to small business owners. Read the resulting 101 tips on their blog.

Use this calculator to get a rough idea of how much you may be able to deduct for your home office based on your business earnings, the value of your home, and your yearly house-related expenses.

Use this free tool to turn still pictures into a cool video. You upload your pictures, choose display order and pictures to emphasize, and then pick a music clip. The tool goes to work, stylizing your pictures for maximum effect, synchronizes them with the music, and creates a movie. You can link to it from your website, or share it on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Try this easy to use calculator that enables you to enter a unit price for an item, and then creates a table that calculates selling price, profit margin, and actual profit for a range of mark-up percentages.

Check out the recently launched Information Week Analytics site. It provides a wealth of information that can help you make IT and other technology decisions for your business.

This free website contains videotaped interviews with business leaders in a variety of industries, who share their own experiences and best practices with fostering ethical business behavior at their companies.

Use this free service to find out what people are saying about your and your company in the social media space. You can create "profiles" containing keywords that it will use to perform a comprehensive searchm and then have the results published to a report, that is continually updated as new results are found.

Try Ecofont. It is specially designed with little holes in the letters, so that printing documents in Ecofont uses less ink (about 20% less according to the website). With small type fonts, between 9 and 12 point, you'll hardly notice the difference on the printed page. You can save ink, save money, and print greener.

If you have a small business project that needs market testing or funding, and traditional product testing and fundraising sources are beyond your reach, try Kickstarter-- a website dedicated to connecting people with great ideas to people with the money to fund them.

How's your business etiquette? There are plenty of business gurus who want to help you figure out where you're strong and where you can improve. Take one (or more) of these quizzes.

Understand your competition-- do a Competitive Universe Analysis. This analysis is a quick visualization of where your business sits in the total consumer marketplace. It uses a bulls-eye diagram, with your company at the center, to identify your first, second, third and fourth level competitors. Use this easy template to get started.

This August, 2009 report from The Center for Economic and Policy Research—An International Comparison of Small Business Employment— compares 21 "rich" democracies based on percentage of the workforce that is self-employed or employed in a small business.

Use this government website to find out about current and historical US employment and unemployment rates, or finding detailed labor information about your industry or your local or regional area.

Calculate your Net Promoter Score to measure customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the extent to which your customers promote your company and your sales efforts, or actually hinder them.

Preview your website in a number of Operating System--Browser combinations to ensure that it appears correctly in all environments. Use the free one-day trial of this handy online service.

Read this Blog to get personal financial advice aimed specificaly at small business owners.

Read this article to learn how to identify and manage risk for your small business.

Use these resources to learn about doing business with the U.S. government, as a US-based small business.

Try this great new site that provides free open-source and paid license alternatives to the most popular software packages.

The NFIB Research Foundation Small Business Optimism Index report utilizes 10 index components to generate a Small Business Optimism Index—which surprisingly, is actually trending higher. Read the May and June 2009 reports here.

Try this free web-based tool for creating charts and graphs that can be easily published in your presentations, on your website, your blog, social networking sites, or even as an iGoogle widget.

Try this site to find data about how small businesses do business. The site compiles poll data on a variety of subjects,collected from 2001 through the present, into a single searchable database.

Check out this list of the best free software of 2009 to find useful business applications to add to your library.

Try this top rated, completely free anti-virus program to keep your computer protected.

Watch this video series for an introduction to keyword research, search engine optimization, and keyword marketing strategy.

The 2009 Economic Recovery Act can help small businesses by expanding the availability of capital. Find out about the SBA resources available to help explain the changes and help you get a loan or bond.

The National Small Business Week 2009 conference, held in Washington DC on May 17-19 will include issue forums, receptions, award ceremonies, and the chance to network with other small business owners from around the country. You can attend in person, or view live webcasts.

Use this free chat tool to create impromptu browser-based chat sessions without using usernames or profiles, and in rooms that disappear when you\'re done.

Try this free tool for managing and tracking time spent on freelance projects, or employee hours and rates.

Use this free tool to decipher Census data and make decisions on how to market your business, where to expand, or even where to close. Profile your customer base by zip code, and determine what your biggest customers have in common.

Use this free service to convert a wide variety of document, image, music, video, compressed, and even CAD files to common formats such as .doc, .jpg, and mp3.

To find business books worth your time, chek out F@stCompany\'s top 10 list for 2008

The next time you are contemplating a new campaign, use the Marketing ROI calculators on PaySimple's website, to determine how much you can affordably spend, what your break even point is, and where you begin making a profit.

Software programs for working with digital graphics are fast becoming an essential part of the basic small business tool box. While you can't expect to get the power of PhotoShop for free, you probably don't need all its functionality to create and edit basic graphics. Here are two free programs to try:

Read and contribute to the Wired Magazine Small Biz Wiki. It provides advice to small business from small business and covers multiple topics that help small businesses operate and grow.

Whether you need a business plan, a cash flow statement, loan amortization schedules, or a competitive analysis, the SCORE template page may have just the resources for you.

Idnetify your key competitive advantages and opportunities. Use PaySimple\'s SWOT template and instructions to perform a SWOT analysis on your company and on key competitors.

Try the Customer Acquisition Calculators on PaySimple's website, to help you analyze your customer acquisition efforts, and determine your optimal spend per acquisition and payback time.

eBay may not be the first thing that comes to mind for office supplies, but it can provide significant savings on commodity type office equipment and supplies. See the tip for some recent examples of items you can buy on eBay for much less than you would pay in typical bricks-and-mortar stores.

Try this valuable tool to help understand different markets in the US. It utilizes Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys and U.S. Census data to provide a breakdown of the customer base and business type in any US zip code.

How much office space do you really need and how much will it cost? Use this handy tool to figure it out.

Try this cash flow calculator to take measure of your business health. If you don't like what you see, use the calculator tools to make adjustments to several variables that affect cash flow, and see how these small changes can make a real difference to your business

Try this full-featured, free site that provides 100MB of free space, and multiple communication and collaboration tools

Find out how using paperless invoicing and automated recurring billing can make your business greener by saving gas and paper, and make it more profitable by cutting costs.

If you're still looking for that perfect holiday gift for a special customer or employee, check out the holiday gift slideshows on this site-- you're sure to find a winner in every price range.

We've all been there…stuck in automated phone system hell with no idea how to get to a person who can actually help. Fortunately, these two internet resources can help you circumvent the endless phone menus, and connect with a real live person.

Learn about the small business workshops run by the IRS in all 50 states. These workshops are designed to help you understand the Federal Tax system and how it applies to you and your business.

This great free resource brings you the full audio from lectures given at the University of Oxford (in England). Highlighted lectures are of special interest to small business, but be sure to go to the podcast directory to see all that is available.

If you have a pressing business question, you just need an answer from a reputable source, and don't have the time or the inclination to sift through terabytes of search results to find it, try this small business community.

Learn about free courses you can take to help you manage, market and grow your small business.

Use these tools to find out what your customers are saying about your company online in blogs, forums, and chat rooms.