It’s been a tough month trying to make ends meet so I’ve been done a bit of research on different business tools.  Most are to make my life a little bit easier, make our business processes more efficient and start my journey to earn passive income through my blogs.

Card.ly

A simple online business card tool that lets you write a bio and include all your social media links and websites. As an entrepreneur and consultant, I work with different projects all the time.  I may represent myself as a call center consultant but at the same time have to let potential clients that I have a service to offer through my business.  I’ve thought of printing two different cards and give out what is appropriate but I end up giving both anyway.  This tool makes it easier.  I now only have to put my online card link along with the business’ website.  Just remembered, why not do this for ProFora altogether, since we have tons of links.

Kiwi

A new Twitter client for Mac users.  I downloaded the program and though it has great potential on the aesthetic side, the first version doesn’t compel me to switch.  I love the fact that you can choose from different themes and it has the ability to save hashtags and group them for later viewing.  I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t search for a tweeter and easily follow them with one click like Tweetie.  A shortcut would’ve been helpful.

Entrecard

This is not new and have seen it for a long time being used by bloggers all over the world.  This is the only time I’ve tried and set up my account.  Hey, it’s free not unless I decide it’s worth spending money on.  I had difficulty putting the widget into my 2 blogs because of the theme and the size is not standard. As of this writing, only 1 has been approved.  I like it because it gives me the power to advertise my blog and find out more sites for me to read.

Fullseat

I’ve been looking for a web tool that will help us register webinar attendees with a separate form plus accept payments at the same time.  We’ve opened an account with Eventbrite but haven’t really used it to its full potential.  I discovered Fullseat, which seems very new, noticing there are functionalities that don’t quite work yet.  It’s easy and I like it because it’s FREE!  So far, they are not asking for a percentage of any sales from registrations.  I have to wait a little bit more for them to publish their complete version before I decide to use this for ProFora.

Clicky

Real time web analytics in its finest.  I haven’t tried this yet but it says you can monitor sites and see visitors as they enter your virtual real estate.  It’s acts like a spy.  The demo showed that there was 1 visitor (me) on that page, showed what operating system I was on, country of origin, and browser I was using. How cool is that!  A bit creepy but cool! The pricing plans are affordable but restricted by the number of features and sites you can have. I plan to start the free trial during the holiday break.

I have other tools but will write about it on the next issue.  Hope the list made you think of trying some of them. Let me know if you’ve tried them and comments are encouraged.