45 Ways for Entrepreneurs to Save Money in Recession

There are many excellent online services that are either free or cheap, which can knock thousands of dollars off the cost of setting up an online business. Some of the ones I recommend you consider are:

1)    Skype (www.skype.com) to communicate with colleagues. Calls are free. I don't think the quality is good enough for using it for all customer communications.

2)    Jajah (www.jajah.com) for cheap landline calls. Calls are up to 98% cheaper than telco charges

3)    Truphone (www.truphone.com) for mobile calls between friends

4)    Sim4Travel (www.sim4travel.com) if you travel a lot and want to use your mobile phone whilst overseas. Receiving calls whilst travelling are free and making calls are cheaper than normal roaming rates

5)    DimDim (www.dimdim.com) for web conference calls where you can share your desktop, slides, videos, etc. Free for up to 20 people

6)    Google Sites (www.google.com/sites) to share files and collaborate. A free instant intranet. Free

7)    Google Calendar (www.google.com/calendar) to share activities with your team (and family!). Free

8)   OpenOffice(www.openoffice.org) rather than buy expensive Microsoft Office. It's free and will probably meet all of your needs

9)   FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) for mind mapping. An excellent way of capturing all of your thoughts on a subject or issue on one page. Free

10)    AVG Free (http://free.avg.com/) as your anti virus solution. It is as good as most of the commercial software products

11)    Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) for backup. It costs $49 a year for unlimited data. A small price to page for peace of mind

12)    KeePass Password Safe (http://www.keepass.info/) to manage your passwords. Free

13)    CutePDF (www.cutepdf.com) to create PDF documents rather than spend hundreds of dollars on Adobe software. Free

14)    Freshbooks (www.freshbooks.com) a cost effective service for invoicing clients

15)    Photoshop Express (www.photoshop.com/express) . If you are a light user of photo editing software use the free online Photoshop solution. It has all the most used features in an easy to use interface

16)    If you do need to buy software have a look if the manufacturer offers discounts for students, teachers, or education. The savings can be huge. However be aware that this discounted versions cannot be used for commercial purposes

17)    Consider becoming a software beta tester to get free versions of the latest software

18)    Always search for a voucher code. Most online services offer discounts. Very often you can do a search online to find a current discount code. For example do a search a on "GoDaddy promotion code" or Godaddy discount code" and you will immediately find codes that will give you up to 25% off domain name registration

19)    PayPal (www.paypal.com) . If you need to take payments online PayPal is now the most cost effective solution and much easier to get approval during tough times, when the banks close their doors to new merchants.

20)    Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) for free audio editing

21)    Jumpcut (www.jumpcut.com) for free online video editing

22)    Wordpress (www.wordpress.com) for a free blogging solution

23)    SubHub (www.subhub.com) for an advanced hassle-free website and monetisation solution

24)    Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) for a free way of monitoring what people are saying about you, your company and your competitors on the internet

25)    Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) for excellent free webs stats package which will enable you to track all of the visitor activity on your website

26)    FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) for a free FTP solution which enables you to easily manage files on your server

27)    Get images for your site from the micro-stock photo sites including iStockPhoto (www.istockphoto.com) and Fotolia (www.fotolia.com)

28)    Focus on building organic traffic  through publishing regular, good quality articles. This will avoid you having to spend money on Adwords and other expensive online marketing

29)    Blog. If you haven't started a blog, it could be the right time to do it. A good blog can build traffic which can be directed to your main online business

30)    SugarCRM (http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/) for managing your customer information. For a simpler but paid solution try Kayako (www.kayako.com)

31)    Buy hardware that is one generation behind the curve. The improvements in each new release are getting smaller and the out-of-date models are always heavily discounted. In most instances you'll never notice the difference.

32)    Upgrade your old PC rather than buy a new one. By simply buying a new processor and a bit of extra memory an old PC can spring back into life

33)    Consider one of the new low-cost Netbook laptops which are selling for £300/$499. They are capable machines that are ideal for working and surfing on the road

34)    Buy multifunction devices where possible. There is little point in shelling out for separate printer, scanner and copier when a single machine like the excellent Canon Pixma IP610 will take care of all these tasks

35)    Keep your old monitor. Screen technology is changing slowly so you'll probably see little improvement from upgrading your monitor

36)    Sell old kit immediately. If you have old hardware sell it on eBay as soon as you stop using it. Hardware values depreciate very quickly

37)    Many simple tasks can be outsourced. If you have simple repetitive tasks that need to be regularly undertaken such as data entry or outbound calls, consider outsourcing them via websites such as eLance (www.elance.com) and oDesk (www.odesk.com) . Be wary of outsourcing big and complex software development projects. Most go horribly wrong!

38)    When any contract is coming to an end - mobile phone, broadband, insurance, etc - phone the supplier and threaten to cancel. Many companies have special offers to retain existing customers

39)    Turn off devices on standby. According to research 10% of all energy consumed in the home and offices is from devices on standby.

40)    Save paper and ink by printing on both sides of a sheet of paper in draft mode. Most modern printers have a duplex option which will automatically print on both sides of a sheet of paper

41)    Haggle on all major purchases. It goes without saying that you should negotiate on all major purchases you make. There are a lot of discounts and reductions to be had in a recession

42)    Offer customers longer contracts for a discount. Lock in your revenue streams for as long as possible

43)    Identify which countries are still prospering and target your sales at them. At the moment all oil producing countries are worth looking at

44)    Avoid cutting your prices; instead give away more value e.g. online businesses giveaway a free downloadable ebook to all customers. It costs you nothing, but can provide customers with significant value ( if the book is good!)

45)    Focus on keeping your existing customers happy. It is much easier and cheaper to look after existing paying customers than continually having to find new ones

Despite the fact that we are heading into a recession, internet entrepreneurs should always remember that online business is projected to keep growing year-on-year for the foreseeable future.

Be wise with how you spend money, know that establishing an online business can take time and always look for ways to make multiple revenue streams. This is the time for entrepreneurs to take some risks. A business established in recession is usually lean and mean, and very well placed to boom as the economy improves.

To misquote Rudyard Kipling:

"If you can keep your head whilst all about you are losing theirs … you'll be wealthy, my son!"