Once upon a time, before you’d made your first sale or contacted your first client, there were some big ticket costs heading your way as soon as you turned on your office computer.
Starting a small business is as much about establishing a revenue stream as it is about minimising costs, and software is a great example of the dramatic savings to be made from a quick internet search.
There are those that say nothing in life is free, or there is no such thing as a free meal. Well I would say that those people are wrong. A little investigating can save you a bundle.
– Along with conquering the world, Google provides free software for key facilities – think word processing, spreadsheets and slideshows. So while they’re no longer called Word, Excel and Powerpoint, they no longer cost thousands to license across all your office computers.
– Open source software is another great way to save. Technically, it means you can go in and modify the code (and there’s a community of developers out there constantly improving the program for you). For the tech-averse, it means free programs that can save you a fortune.
– Wikipedia (another freebie) has an exhaustive list of available programs and categories, which include everything from anti-virus software and invaluable accounting, data-storage and back-up systems to more niche products like ‘Bible study tools’.
We started Mozo – a website company, no less – with zero software costs. And if you think it’s not worth making the switch to a new system, think again: a recent report from Standish Group shows open source software saves consumers about $60 billion annually.
Why not throw your costs into that pile?
