Unfortunately, that’s how most people realize you must be self-hosted to do certain customizations on a Wordpress blog.

Thankfully, hosting companies (such as Bluehost) have applications that offer a one-touch setup even the most technologically challenged person can understand.

Just follow the steps below and you’ll have a custom, self-hosted Wordpress blog in under 30 minutes.

Creating a Wordpress Blog Using Fantastico De Luxe

I used two guinea pigs for this article to prove just how easy (and quick) the process really is.  Jamie was switching her blog over from the free Wordpress site so she could showcase some of the awesome health products she sells on a daily basis.

Jennie was also blogging on the free Wordpress site and wanted to update to a more functional and customized theme.

Both blogs were set up in 20 minutes flat.  Here’s how:

Step One: Register

Click here to sign up for Bluehost.  You’ll be given a free domain name (or the opportunity to transfer your existing domain) for only $6.95 a month.

Step Two: Setup Wordpress Using Fantastico De Luxe

Log-into your control panel and click the button for “Fantastico De Luxe” near the bottom of the page.  You’ll be taken to a screen that looks like the image below. Then click on the link for Wordpress found on the left side of the page.

And while Bidmycleaning.com offers a practical solution for anyone looking for a little extra help around the house, their business model is equally useful in showing small business owners how to keep tech costs low and maximize profits.

BidMyCleaning.com launched in April 2008 with virtually no budget for software and technology costs. These constraints prompted Bidmycleaning.com’s CEO, Raymond Akers, to utilize free and low cost products such as Open Source and Freeware to bootstrap their web startup.

If you are unfamiliar with these products, Open Source is a community of programmers that develop and improve upon existing source code and offer their work to the public free of charge for general use or modification.  On the other hand, Freeware is open to the public, but licensing rules restrict how the company uses or modifies that software.

And while “free” in the tech industry is sometimes a dirty word in terms of quality, Akers is extremely happy with his decision to use free and low cost products.  He offered the following advice to those toying around with the same idea:

“It goes without saying that the first benefit of Open Source is that it is free.  In this case however, free does not mean that it is a pared down or inferior solution to a product you would pay handsomely for.  Today’s Open Source software products are in most cases as good as, or sometimes even better than the expensive alternatives.

Another benefit is that the Open Source community is a lot like the Social Media community, in that it is very cohesive with lots of people willing to engage with you and provide really great support and guidance.  There is ready information-sharing and many devout (or fanatical) followers who generate a large, well organized knowledge base which is accessible to you for free with a Google search.  Free code libraries, extensions, components, platforms and/or addons are readily available.  Your largest cost is likely to be your development talent, and so their ability to save time by using canned code where it makes sense will be invaluable.

Development tools are another area where you can save by using the Eclipse or NetBeans IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) together with the powerful debugging features of the FireFox Web Browser with the freely available Web Developer Addons.

Finally, when looking for free solutions don’t forget Freeware - it may not be Open Source but it can be useful for filling some gaps in your technology plan.”

This business plan proved extremely successful for the executives at Bidmycleaning.com, as their savings allowed them to shift their focus to marketing in an effort to increase awareness and bring in customers.  The small startup out of Houston is growing rapidly and is now active in cities throughout Texas and California including Dallas, Fort Worth, San Diego, Orange Country, Los Angeles, as well as Chicago, Philadelphia and New York.

However, if you’re still skeptical regarding the power of free software, the owners of Bidmycleaning.com invite you to check out their platform to see for yourself just how functional a “low cost” site can be.
Oh, and while you’re there, use coupon code SPARKAT  to save  $10 off of your next house, carpet or window cleaning courtesy of Mr. Akers.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W120

As a web publisher, frequent conference speaker, mom, and hobby photographer, I take a lot of pictures. I even studied photography in college for two years. So when I was offered the opportunity to check out the new 7 megapixel Sony Cyber-shot, I jumped all over it.

Let me start out with the Pro’s:

This camera gives a GREAT first impression - it is adorable. I was given a pink one, and my teenage daughter immediately started ‘borrowing’ it before I could get my hands on it. But it also comes in black, silver, and powder blue, so it’s not just a girly camera. The back LCD screen is very large for such a portable camera. And that tiny size is one of the biggest plusses of all - I could fit this camera in my pocket if I had to.

It is also very easy to use - I cracked the user guide only once, but it turns out I didn’t really need to. Settings are intuitive and it gives plenty of options for shooting up close, in low light, in portrait mode, and also has a video setting. It also has some smile-recognition technology so that it knows when to snap the shutter at the right smiling moment (great for kids pictures). That being said, I didn’t use that setting very much because I prefer to have more control over my photos.

And now the Con’s

Like I initially stated, I’m kind of a photo nut. So I pushed this camera to it’s limits - and found those limits sooner than I wanted to. I also compared results to my way-more-expensive Fuji camera, which was completely unfair, because these two cameras are apples and oranges.

The biggest drawback I found was that the auto-focus feature left a lot to be desired. It held up well in the middle of bright, sunny days. I’d even say the image quality rivaled my Fuji in bright light. But even as the sun was getting low in the sky, pictures were blurry. It also had a hard time figuring out what to focus on sometimes, even when my camera subject was smack-dab in the middle of the frame.

My other complaint was that any photo taken in less than bright mid-day light was also very grainy when you tried to blow up the photos (viewing or printing). That’s where my camera “elitism” turned me off.

Who would this camera be good for?

If you are picky about photo quality, need a reliable focusing mechanism, or need to professionally reproduce your images, the Cyber-shot DSC-W120 isn’t your camera (unless all of your shots take place between 10:00am and 2:00pm).

But I could have given this camera away to readers, and I can’t bear to part with it - here’s why:

1 - This camera really is IDEAL for my teenage daughter. She LOVES this thing, doesn’t care about my picky photo quality quirks, and was able to use it immediately without any help or instruction. In fact, from now on, the camera will be hers and I will “borrow it back” from time to time. She is ecstatic.

2 - There are times when I don’t want to risk bringing my big expensive camera to places (sandy beaches, swimming pools, etc.). I’m completely willing to sacrifice quality for the peace of mind I get knowing I will still get fairly decent pictures and my expensive equipment is safe at home.

3 - For web publishing, 7 megapixels is completely overkill. Even 800×600 photographs need to be reduced in size. So this camera has come in handy to take quick shots when I don’t need the high-resolution power of 7 megapixels.

Disclosure :: Sony provided this camera to me for free with the request to review their product. They also encouraged me to write a fully honest review, which I have done (as you can tell!). Sony did not pay any money for this review and did not receive anything in return from me or my company for taking the time to review their product.

Buy the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W120 on Amazon

One of the things I love to do for our Sparkplugging Advertisers is give them a little extra coverage on our network. This is never something that they pay for directly, I just like to spread the word about other small businesses who have supported our site. Since I actually turn away more advertisers than I take on, these companies really do rock.

For small business owners looking go further in the areas of customer service and overall professionalism, consider checking out the professional voicemail service by Professional Voice Greetings. They create audio recordings to be used for voicemail and on-hold messages that can be uploaded to almost any phone system (including cell phones).

This service is a cheap and easy way to gain credibility with clients and further your own business agenda all at the same time.  Starting at $34.99, potential clients can choose from over 20 different voice samples and submit a script for a 30 second message (background music optional).  For an additional $4.00, you can create a professional on-hold message, which would allow you to showcase your products and services while your customers wait for further assistance.

A professional voice greeting can:

• Give your business added credibility
• Enhance the professional presentation of your business
• Turn your phone system or voicemail into a sales and advertising tool (and I think this is an especially attractive option when you have WARM LEADS waiting to talk to you!)

Additionally all their voice messages are:

• Recorded by professional voice talents with years of experience in
  TV and radio
• Available with optional background music
• Specialized for Phone and Voicemail Systems

Best of all, the website has a clear and simple “upload tutorial page” that walks you step-by-step through the activation process.  Even the most “technologically challenged” business owner can take advantage of the service with minimal assistance.

So if you’re looking to polish your professional image in the cheapest way possible, Professional Voice Greetings may be of value to you and your company.  It’s my personal belief that small business owners can never go wrong investing in tools that promote professionalism or future credibility with clients.

What I also love about MOO is that they are so incredibly versatile. They are integrated with Flickr, Vox, even Facebook, which makes it a snap to create products out of your own photo collections, no matter where you have them. They also have ready-made collections from fantastic photographers & illustrators.

Personally, for business use, I love that you can pack a pound of branding into an ounce of pricing. Everything MOO.com carries is less than $20 a set. The print quality is phenomenal, as is the paper stock. With just a little bit of photo cleanup in a program like Photoshop, you can take pictures on your front porch and turn them into an entire set of pro-looking promotional tools (Yes, that’s me. On my porch. And my 13 year old daughter took the pictures too - talk about low-budget!).

[CraftBoom has a tutorial on polishing up photos just like this one]

Since I’m working on heavily promoting my speaking career this year, I made a whole set specifically for this purpose, including notecards, stickers, and the MiniCards (business cards). One afternoon of photos and photo retouching turned out this set (that I’m quite proud of, thank you very much)!

MOO products are really a must if you are a creative - you can’t get cheaper and more high quality materials made of your own illustrations, crafts, design work, or photography. They are also perfect for coaches, authors, speakers, or anyone else that is promoting their personality as part of their business. But what’s cool is that you can also have fun with them and make sticker books of your kids’ drawings, make flash-cards, retail hang-tags, wedding thank you notes, pretty much anything you can imagine.

Yes, I know this sounds like a big, fat, sappy commercial. But that’s what MOO gets for making me fall in love with them.

But last week Lorelle VanFossen from Lorelle on WordPress clued me in to two Firefox Greasemonkey scripts that have absolutely changed the way I am able to respond to people who want to join the conversation on my blog.

What is Greasemonkey?

It’s like a Firefox Add-on/Plugin that allows people to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit. They are usually created to make a web site more readable or usable. Do use caution in installing them, just like with any other plugin or freeware, because they can be created for malicious reasons. But these two are safe and you will LOVE them.

WordPress Comment Ninja

WordPress Comment Ninja makes it a snap to respond to as many comments as you want to all from one screen. This means you don’t have to go out to your blog, navigate through multiple posts and pages, and you don’t have to wait for pages to reload to continue the conversation.

On your Comment Page in your WordPress Admin Panel, Comment Ninja adds a “Respond” option, which opens up a dialog box right on the page. You can enter your response and it automatically adds a link at the beginning of your comment to direct it to the person to whom you are responding to. You can then either post the comment to your blog, email it directly to your reader, or both. And it will take care of any and all of that for you while you are responding to the next commenter.

Akismet Auntie Spam

With comment spam reaching epic proportions, I gave up on trying to find ‘false positives’ that Akismet thought was spam, but in actuality was a comment from a real person. I mean, how can you seriously go through 30,000 comments trying to find 3 or so real comments - or sometimes none at all. You could spend all day looking for that needle in a haystack.

Enter Akismet Auntie Spam, which sifts through all of your spam comments, shortens each to one line, and groups multiple entries into one line. Suddenly 30,000 spammy comments fit nicely on one manageable page, and you can then scroll and find the legit comments, which are quite easy to identify.

The first time I ran this script, I found more than 7 false positives (Sorry Dane!), even from people who had commented previously on my blog. I suddenly wondered just how many conversations never happened because I was prevented from ever seeing a reader’s response! But the best part was that I never had to read through the 186 comments that “noggroona” left for me.

Can I suddenly turn this into millions? No. Is it encouraging and am I on the right track? You bet.

Here’s my secret :: there is no secret to success with PPC marketing. Even my mentor who is currently grossing $25,000 a month will tell you there are no easy answers and that what works for him may not work for you.

Step 1 :: Have a good offer

This is the easy part. You can either promote your own products, or someone else’s products via affiliate marketing. But whatever it is, you’ll do better with an offer that is legitimate and high quality.

Surprisingly, I’ve even had good luck sending PPC traffic to specific blog posts, so even those of you with only blogging experience can make more from your websites than you are currently making on just organic traffic to your site.

Step 2 :: Have a good landing page

A landing page is where you will send the people from the search engines to hopefully buy your offer. This is where things get a bit tricky and a LOT of experimentation is in order. But here’s what I’ve learned from my best landing pages:

• Don’t leak your traffic
  This means that the only things on the page are links to buy, or to sign up for something requiring the visitor to give you their email address. This isn’t the place for links to free resources or irrelevant ads.
• Do make the page EASY to understand in under three seconds
  This doesn’t mean you can’t have a lot of information. It does mean that you need to let your visitor know why they are there and convince them to read more :: fast.
• For intangible products, the higher the price point, the longer the page should be
  You will need to sell, sell, sell on this page if you are pushing anything priced higher than $30-$40. This doesn’t apply to higher priced consumer goods, especially if the visitor knows what they are looking for. An example would be a certain brand and model of a laptop - all you want is a buy now button with a features list.
• Make the sale fast and easy
  If your visitor has to go through 5 pages to just get to your shopping cart, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Step 3 :: Set up your PPC campaign

Although Google is easiest, it’s also the most expensive. But all paid search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Adcenter, Enhance and Search123) follow the same basic premise:

1. Build a keyword list
2. Write your text ads
3. Set your bidding budget

Again, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to what works here. Two people selling the same product and bidding on the same keyword might have a very different conversion ratio based on the landing page and text ad that is written. So although it is a risk to perhaps lose a little money in your testing phase, once you get it right, you can put your campaign on auto-pilot and let it make money for you (checking periodically, of course!).

A few more tips for success:

• Try at least 5 different text ads, and add one or two every few days. Search engines will automatically rotate your ads to help you determine which ones get the most clicks - drop the ones that underperform.
• Bid on very highly targeted keywords - which still could mean hundreds. Include common misspellings and know the editorial guidelines of the search engine. “Blog Hosting” and “Hosting Blog” are considered the same with Yahoo, different with Google.
• Do a lot of keyword research - Google has an excellent free tool in their AdWords system, plus Aaron Wall has some excellent free keyword resources.
• For serious keyword research, I can’t recommend KeyCompete.com
  more highly - it tracks and pulls competitor keywords for you.
• Test, test, test - have I made this point abundantly clear yet?!

Most search engines have some kind of free coupon to get started - here’s a few of them to give your PPC campaign a low-cost kick-start:

Technically, these offers require anywhere between $5 and $50 to get started, so aren’t exactly free. Combined though, they offer $300 worth of PPC (Pay Per Click) and text link advertising for $125.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search $5 for $25 worth of clicks

Yahoo Sponsored Search is second only to Google’s power - and Yahoo’s paid ads appear on a wide network of big sites, including CNN and AltaVista. They also have an extremely helpful user-interface and a how-to section.

Enhance Interactive $50 for $75 worth of clicks

Enhance Interactive is a niche search engine marketing company that serves ads for a variety of sites, including Dogpile, VeriSign, OpenList.com and MyZip.com. They also have testimonials from big players such as BizRate and HotWire, as well as some advertising alternatives such as paid inclusion (flat fee guaranteed inclusion in search results).

Although some companies require a minimum of up to $.10 bid per click, Enhance has a very low $.03 minimum bid per click. So the money spent with smaller search engines can potentially go much farther than with the big players.

Search123 $50 for $70 worth of clicks

According to the Search 123 site, their visitors come from portal pages, a Spanish language network, niche content sites and some branded search directories. They also are unique in that they offer free account set-up, keyword research and expansion, and account management and optimization services. None of the other search engine marketing companies do that!

Google and MSN Adcenter are infamously vague and inconsistent with their coupon offers - I suggest just hunting around on the internet in the hopes that you can uncover a deal from them that is unexpired.

PPC is not for everyone - but for anyone who is making money off of their website, it’s really a must to at least test it out. You don’t want to be leaving money on the table!

So when Franklin Covey has a sale, my ears perk up.

Here’s a sample of some of the cool things they are clearing out:

Swanky Bags	Addictive Productivity Software
Adorable Planner Covers	Manly Laptop Bags

The reason is simple. Direct response marketing works.

I’ve worked with several email marketing providers over the years, and choosing the right company or system will be based on your marketing goals, customers and your business model. All of these solutions are best for smaller businesses, because larger business will usually require a custom solution.

All of these email marketing solutions offer:

• FREE trials to help you determine if they are the right product for your needs
• Built-in CAN-Spam compliance tools

For Simple Email Marketing Needs

Most providers either charge on a monthly or per-email basis. But if you have a small list that is geared more towards client retention or education, the return on investment for ongoing fees may be difficult to justify.

TemplateZone’s High Impact Email Basic and Professional are the perfect solution. The one-time cost is easily justifiable and the program walks users through the campaign creation process step-by-step. It also plays nice with Microsoft Office, so you can mail merge. With templates and drag and drop file creation, this is one of the easiest tools to use.

Check with your ISP’s (internet service provider) terms if you plan on sending more than 250 emails a day. All ISP’s have some restrictions on how many emails you can send at one time/one hour/one day to ensure you aren’t spamming.

TemplateZone offers a 30 Day Free Trial

For Intermediate Email Marketing Needs

I’ve written before about how much I like Constant Contact. They charge customers based on how large your email subscriber list is, so it’s a very affordable solution in which what you pay is commensurate with what you’re likely receiving in profits. Plus, until you have over 100 subscribers, you won’t pay a thing.

Constant Contact’s product is super-easy to use, and I actually prefer their response tracking and reporting over that which I get from my current provider. Additionally, they have an extensive free tutorial section on their site, which has beginner to advanced level tips for optimizing your campaigns for the best possible results.

Constant Contact offers a 60 Day Free Trial

For Advanced Email Marketing Needs

When your needs have grown beyond sending newsletters, then consider the following two companies. Both of them are slightly different but highly recommended and respected in the industry.

AWeber

AWeber is a combination of regular email marketing and autoresponder services. An autoresponder is simply a delivery system that automatically delivers emails on a schedule or based on a customer action, such as when a new subscription launches a pre-written series of emails.

Although a little more challenging to learn and set up, using autoresponders is a seriously cost-effective and time-saving way to keep in touch with clients, because most of the delivery is automated. AWeber has all of the niceties of Constant Contact (including the swanky reporting) along with unlimited delivery of emails, autoresponders, and whatever you want to send.

Since some of the biggest names in internet marketing use AWeber, I can unquestionably recommend it. If they offered an integrated shopping cart such as Professional Cart Solutions below, I’d be mighty tempted to use them, too!

AWeber offers a 30 Day Free Trial

Professional Cart Solutions

I love Professional Cart Solutions, and I use their products on my own sites. Not only is it a full-blown email marketing and autoresponder service, but there is also a shopping cart feature that allows individuals to sell their own products and services and the entire transaction is handled automatically - including follow up emails to customers.

As an added bonus, their cart also has a built in affiliate program - so that it is easy to set up a process to have other people sell your stuff. The only drawback I’ve found with this company is that if I want to track specific click-throughs in emails, I have to do that on my own by using redirects or a service like TinyURL.

Again, setting up the emails and autoresponders with Professional Cart Solutions and AWeber is a little more work than the first two solutions, but the added functionality makes it worth it to save so much time further down the road. This service is also the one with the most scalability, meaning that as I grow my business, I know that whatever I need to do can be done with Professional Cart Solutions.

Professional Cart Solutions offers a 30 Day Free Trial

Then voicemails started piling up and my ‘inbox’ got full. What a pain - I didn’t notice it for weeks!

With Vonage, you can get your voicemails delivered automatically via email. But for cell phones, there’s not many options out there, especially if you brain is hardwired into your email inbox, like mine.

But GotVoiceoffers voicemail –> email delivery for all major cell phone providers, and they offer a 14-day free trial to see if it’s worth it to you.

Like I said, if your email inbox is your central organization spot for all things to do, getting voicemails delivered via email is totally worth it!

Unfortunately, “Free” on this one is something I wasn’t able to find. But I did find some deals for you:

Branders.com has a coupon for $50 off your first order - they sell branded pens, pencils, erasers, and just about anything else under the sun. They also have FREE samples, so at least there’s a little bit of free action going on over there.

Thanks for the request and keep them coming - I’m happy to hunt down deals for you!

So here are some free meditation resources for you to clear your mind and get centered. (Then come back later for more business goodies!)

Meditainment has an excellent free guided meditation called “The Secret Garden”.

Learning Meditation has nearly 20 different guided meditations from the 10 minute Fulfill Your Own Potential to the short and sweet Work Break.

FreeMeditations.com has an extensive collection of written meditations from a variety of disciplines, including Buddhist Meditations, Christian Meditations, all the way to the Pink Bubble Meditation.

The Meditation Society of Australia offers tons of free meditation resources in both audio and video format.

BrainSync produces my favorite meditation CD called the Universal Mind Meditation, but also has a free guided meditation by the same author, Kelly Howell.

Yes, Shoestring Smarts is all about free. But I would be remiss in not mentioning these excellent meditation resources that are totally worth the price:

Although already mentioned, Kelly Howell’s Universal Mind Meditation is absolutely excellent, and is meant to be listened to as you fall asleep. I’ve experienced excellent results from this CD, which incorporates law of attraction suggestions with relaxation techniques.

Pzizz is a cross between a guided meditation and sophisticated ‘nap technology’ (plus it’s gotten raving reviews from listeners like me!!). The software generates a unique sound clip every time - and it induces a nap that is both energizing and totally addicting. You can buy the program as software (Mac or PC) or as a iPod-kind of listening unit = or grab the free software demo!

Yeah. Right. If you think that then you’ve never worked at home. But even when the kids and life get out of hand, keep your office a clean haven if only for the following reasons.

Ten Reasons Why You Need an Organized Home Office

1. Sometimes being able to shut the door to the rest of the house is better than a Calgon escape. Don’t blow the opportunity when it comes!
2. Ever written off expenses on a home office deduction? Two words: IRS Audit.
3. There’s enough distractions at home - the last thing you need is a distracting work area.
4. Kids make enough messes in the rest of the house - you need somewhere to go to feel sane.
5. Would you ever get anything done in an office job with a pile of laundry on your desk?
6. Ever had a client meeting over dirty diapers? Nice. That’ll close the deal for ya!
7. Do you really want to spend as much time looking for your pen as I do looking for my keys?! Trust me - you don’t.
8. Moldy dishes don’t belong on your desk, they belong in the kitchen sink or on your husband’s bedside table.
9. I dare you to write a legible email while SpongeBob is on in the same room - go on, I dare you!
10. Desk set, $1000. Computer and phone system, $1400. An actual conversation with another adult? Priceless.

Free shipping on orders over $50 at GetOrganized! No coupon necessary. Free Shipping will be reflected at CheckOut.

As a former print designer, I was always nervous about giving a print job to a new printer. But my research shows that iPrint gets pretty strong positive feedback from their customers, with the most common complaint being that the business cards didn’t get cut accurately.

Well, even the most meticulous (and expensive) of printing companies can make (and have made) this mistake, so for these prices, I’d totally give them a try:

iPrint’s Online Discount Coupons

• 25% off Business and Stationery Products
• 20% off Business Cards and Rubber Stamps
• 50% off Holiday Greeting Cards
• 25% off Invitations and Announcements
• 25% off Business Cards at iPrint.com
• 25% off Personalized Post-it(R) Notes
• 25% off Signs and Banners at iPrint.com!

iPrint’s Freebie Offers:

• FREE Rubber Stamp at iPrint.com
• FREE Full Color Address Labels

VistaPrint

VistaPrint has made their name by offering free business cards. They also have mixed reviews online - but as I read through them, the biggest complaints are from people that don’t read the terms or fine print. Personally, I want to say “DUH” to most of these people - if they are offering something (of real value) for free, you really should read through it all to figure out that customization is extra, you have to pay for shipping, and yes, they will market the heck out of the rest of their services to you. Yes, I’m sure there are exceptions, but for the most part, the reviews were good from people who understood the process and paid for their products.

If all that is worth it to you to get 250 free business cards (or a slew of other freebies!) that most people say is high-quality printing, then by all means, go for it! Just read through the fine print when you do it!

VistaPrint’s Online Discount Coupons

• Save 30% Off All Letterhead, Brochures, Flyers, Folders
• 50% Off All Magnets - All Sizes
• 50% OFF Premium “Custom” Business Cards
• 75% Off Premium “Custom” Business Cards
• Save 30% Off All Folders/Press Kits
• 50% Off All Note Cards, Announcements & Invitations
• 50% Off All Postcards
• Free Shipping on Orders over $50 at VistaPrint.com!

VistaPrint’s Freebies

• Free Business Card Magnets
• Free Full Color Business Cards
• Free Rubber Stamps
• Free Return Address Labels
• Free Personalized Note Pads
• Free Invitations
• Free Notecards

Kodak Creative Network

Although Kodak doesn’t offer as many free goodies as the rest of their competitors, you can actually upload your own artwork for their offers, providing you can provide files in a print-ready format. If you don’t know what that means, but do have the proper programs (such as the Adobe suite or Quark), then they have detailed instructions on how to save the files so that they will be print ready. They also offer unique sizes for their business cards and postcards. So although you get a little less for free from Kodak, it seems as though the quality and customization options are much better.

Kodak’s Online Discount Coupons

• Save 20% Up To $200 on your first KODAK Creative Network order - Use coupon code 20OFF67
• 20% off marketing flyers - Use coupon code 20OFF67

Kodak’s Freebies

• 25 Free color postcards - Use coupon code 25Postcard67
• 50 free business cards - Use coupon code 50BUSCARD67

But it doesn’t mean I don’t want one. And if I did have one, I’d be listening to cheap audio books all day long on it. And eBags has some killer iPod cases and with this coupon you can get 10% off.

You can sync two computers with up to 1GB of file sharing space with BeInSync’s free level of service. To jump up to 5GB and 5 computers, it’s only $5 a month (easy to remember, eh?!).

I could have totally used this when I did a lot of freelance work as a designer, or when I worked in an office and needed to take projects home. Emailing myself files or burning lots of CDs was a pain. 1GB is a pretty generous amount of storage.

Actually, as I’m writing this post, I’m realizing that even though I hardly use files anymore, my other desktop and laptop are no longer with us. :’( If this computer died I would be up a creek without a paddle and I would only have backups of my blog - no image files, business plan, photos, drafts, email archives, Nada. Zilch.

OK. I’ve sufficiently scared myself into signing up. You might now be interested too!

• Inspired Business Growth is part of the new Entrepreneur.com Blog Network and is dedicated to exceptional marketing, branding and entrepreneurship.
• eMoms at Home is my [ill-named] blog that is for anyone who wants to learn more about blogging and home business, not just moms!
• Shoestring Smarts is this new blog here, dedicated to marketing and advertising freebies and cheap stuff - because I love making money in my business, not spending it!

Today, I wrote two posts that would have been great anywhere - so I must ensure that you see them by cross-promoting like crazy

Ten Free Advertising Opportunities for Your Business

How to Plan a Successful Advertising Campaign

So if you want to read about cheap and free business building tools as well as learn the strategies that will create successful campaigns, you may just want to subscribe to all three blogs in one place!

The 3 Blogs in One RSS Feed
The 3 Blogs in One by Email

Happy business building, everyone!

According to the Search 123 site, their traffic comes from portal pages, a Spanish language network, niche content sites and some branded search directories. Although the Yahoo and Enhance offers provide a bit more free PPC traffic than Search 123, these coupons can usually only be used the first time you sign up - so ANY a new source of discounted PPC traffic is worth it’s weight in gold.

This Search 123 offer states that if you deposit $50 into your Search 123 account, they will up your account balance to $70.

These are some of the SEO tools I use daily and some I dug up just for this post. Either way, your Google Juice drinks are on the house ’round here!

5 :: McDar’s Keyword Analysis Tool

This is a nifty little tool that let’s you know exactly where you rank for any term. It will also let you know the top ten results that your competitors might have. So for any search term, it will let you know if your site shows up at 10 or 1000 - and anywhere in between.

When I first started putting up web sites, I used to go through the thousands of results to see where I would find my site because I didn’t know these tools existed (embarrassing, I know!!) . By the way, you’ll have to click the Keyword AnalysisTool link in the sidebar because the site uses frames.

4 :: WebConfs’ Backlink Anchor Text Analysis

Most people know that the anchor text you use makes a big difference in how a page or site is ranked for certain terms. But until now, there was no single place to go to analyze the anchor text people have used to link to your site. This is a fascinating tool and I bet you get lost there for a long time… like I did!

3 :: SiteMap Generators for WordPress Blogs and Non-Blogs

Creating and submitting a sitemap to the search engines is one of the best ways to get your entire site indexed (the only way?). This is something I hadn’t done until recently because I 1 - didn’t understand how important it is and 2 - didn’t understand that it is the easiest thing on the planet to accomplish!

The WordPress plugin is a no-brainer - you turn it on, set it up in about 5 or less clicks, and you never have to think about it again. the non-blog version entails a few more steps, but is still easy. If you haven’t done this yet, take 20 minutes and just get it over with. The search engines will love you for it.

2 :: The SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool and Firefox Extension

If you want to know what keywords people use the most, then the Keyword Suggestion tool is for you. Before I start any new category on my site, pick a new domain name, or sometimes even write a headline, I will check this tool to find out what exact keyphrase or keywords will get the most search hits. This is because sometimes the words I use to describe something aren’t the same as the masses. There have been times when the difference between my original idea and the most popular phrase has been hundreds of thousands of searches - so it pays to know what people are searching on.

The SEO for Firefox Extension is a tool that pulls relevant marketing data for each search result right into your search window. It displays page rank, bookmarking links, .edu and .gov links, Alexa and Technorati rank, plus almost 20 more data points for each result - and it works in Google as well as Yahoo.

If you’re still on IE, it will probably make you switch to Firefox just to get the extension!

1 :: HitTail

I use HitTail all of the time to track both the terms people use to find my site and incoming referrals. Although you can do this in Google Analytics, I find their user interface to be a big pain in the behind to get to the info you want, plus there is a time delay.

With HitTail, the data is in real time. But even better, you can get an easy, clear view of your long-tail search hits on one screen. You can then flag phrases to follow up on, by including them into page titles, post content, and the like.

Although Shoestring Smarts is all about free, there are times when it is worth it to drop the few extra bucks to get the right tool or information for the job. These two recommendations really can’t be beat, and they really are affordable and will pay for themselves several times over:

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book has all of the information you need to put these tools into action - and then some. The SEO Book is both for entry level and experienced web masters, and it is the top selling SEO resource on the internet. It’s also endorsed by Seth Godin, The Wharton School of Business, and Darren Rowse himself (and eMom!!).

KeyCompete.com is a PPC user’s dream tool - and for those of you selling products or services, it is essential. For as little as $19 dollars, you can find out exactly what search terms your competitors are bidding on. You can then take this knowledge to launch your own PPC campaigns, or optimize for natural results so that you can get free traffic that your competition pays for. It’s a beautiful thing.