Cheap and Affordable Ways To Create A Virtual Office For Your Small Home Business

By MoneyBlueBook

If you run a small home business on the side like I do, it's not always easy to project a professional image without breaking the bank. If your business is new, it's unlikely you have the financial means or even the budget to afford a commercial office space, a secretary, a furnished meeting room, or any of the usual business amenities. However, depending on your budget and needs, there are affordable options out there.

Rent A Shared Office For Meeting Room Or Virtual Office Needs

More established small businesses might be able to look into renting a shared or serviced office space through a workplace solution company like Regus. These business office rental locations are usually fully furnished with desks, meeting rooms, functional kitchens, and business amenities like secretarial service and a professional front desk to handle clients, mail delivery, and customized call answering. They provide a professional working environment without the long term commitment. I would know - I'm currently working a contract project at such a location.

Rental offices are a good alternative for small but growing businesses looking to expand but don't want to deal with the hassle of property ownership or long term commercial leases. However, many small business owners run things from their own homes. For them, there are virtual office solutions available:

1) Telephone Service

Sharing business phone calls with your personal home line isn't a good idea, especially if you get a lot of incoming business calls. Dialing out is fine, but for incoming business calls how does one line

By MoneyBlueBook

How was your Christmas? Did you spend it all day with family and friends? Or did you manage to sneak out to watch Aliens vs. Predator like I did. Yes, I was one of those that ducked into the theaters on Christmas afternoon to watch this winter's biggest sci-fi blockbuster movie on opening day. Only this time, I was sorely disappointed. It wasn't even the movie itself either (although I thought it could have been better). It was my realization that I was paying way too much money for the opportunity to be crammed into a stuffy hot room with a crowd of noisy, obnoxious people, to watch a movie on a blurry movie screen operating on technology that probably hadn't been updated in several decades. Watching the latest movie release at the local cinema simply isn't what it used to be anymore. Why are movie tickets so expensive nowadays? Times have changed and I wonder if it's time I did so too.

Movie Theater Tickets and Concession Stand Snacks Are Outrageously Overpriced

Christmas day afternoon I went to see the new Aliens movie with my brother. Going with the Christmas spirit, I decided to pay for everything. For two expensive movie theater tickets I shelled out a total of $18 at about $9 each. Two popcorns and two small sodas tacked on another $16 for a grand total of $34 for two people. Now, if I was a father with a wife and 2 kids, and assuming everyone bought the same customary number of snacks and

By MoneyBlueBook

I had Lasik surgery a few years ago and it completely changed my life for the better. For those considering the procedure, I highly recommend it wholeheartedly. Particularly for those people like me who spent the majority of their lives dependent on corrective lenses, Lasik will truly transform your life in an almost miraculous way. Freedom from glasses and contact lenses has been such an amazing and liberating experience.

The procedure is considered elective by most health insurance companies and the cost can range between $3000 to $5000. Although the cost has gone down over the years, it's still quite an expensive procedure. But if you can afford it, the potential benefits greatly outweigh the limited health risks and possible fear factor. It's one of the best financial expenditures I've ever made for myself.

My Background Of Wearing Glasses and Contact Lenses At An Early Age

Since I was little kid I've always had terrible eye sight. I started wearing glasses during second grade and my prescription only worsened and thickened over time till they essentially became bullet proof eye guards. I went from thick plastic frames and lenses to sleeker wire frames and ultra thin prescription, but with my horrendous eyesight of -7 in the left and -8 on the right, it was impossible to reduce the lens thickness by much.

I'm not particularly vain but I guess I always felt constrained with having to wear such thick glasses and being recognized by my thick "nerdy" goggles. Since my vision was so bad, I was basically blind without

By MoneyBlueBook

I am part of a new generation of technology dependent people. Since the explosion and mainstream adaptation of wireless internet, cellular phones, iPods, and the growth of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and even real time chat, I've become very dependent on technology and the digital medium. I've already transitioned the bulk of my important documents into digital format and thrown away all of my old audio compact discs in favor of mp3's. I've discarded the practice of receiving paper bills through snail mail and have already converted all of my bank and credit card statements into e-billing exclusively. I've substantially cut down on paper transactions in favor of direct deposits, ACH electronic transfers, and online payments through PayPal. With a few keystrokes and taps at my computer keyboard, I can shift my bank funds around from savings to broker to checking. My legion of credit cards are all enrolled in automatic debit payment, which automatically withdraws money from my attached bank account to pay off each month's credit card statement balances.

Everything has become electronic and my life has grown significantly more organized, paperless, and automated. I've aggregated my bank accounts, credit cards statements, investment brokerages, frequent flyer plans, hotel plans, and other reward point plans into my Yodlee powered Fidelity Full View account aggregation program where I can monitor everything from a single online access point.

However, this dependency has one obvious downside and weakness - I am heavily dependent on the reliability of computers and the internet.

By MoneyBlueBook

I've written about trying to find ways to make free or cheap international phone calls to landlines in the past. There are numerous voice over IP services that allow users to make free PC to PC calls, but it's hard to find cheap and affordable ways to dial international landlines. After much searching, I think I've found an interesting lead. The service is called InternetCalls. It's not 100% free but it's very affordable, that is, if the terms stay the way they currently are. The site looks promising but I don't want to get my hopes up just yet. By the way, I'm not getting anything for plugging them.

Its Marketing Touts Its Free Features, But It's Not Really 100% Free

Like many of these voice over IP services, the company attempts to advertise and promote itself as a free internet phone provider. It does offer a 1 hour calling trial period (that times out every few minutes), but after that you'll have to pay a small periodic fee to continue using their service. The free calling plan is currently limited to only a select group of countries.

In order to make free phone calls you'll need to top off your account by making a small monetary deposit which can be done via payment methods like PayPal and credit cards. The credit deposit remains unused so long as you make your calls to free destinations. Each credit addition is 10 Euros, which is about $15 and needs to be replenished every 4 months. Essentially

By MoneyBlueBook

Since my parents and a few of my friends and relatives live overseas, I'm always on the hunt for ways to make cheap international phone calls. Domestic calls are never a problem because I just use my cell phone minutes where long distance charges are already included.

I've looked at the international phone rates of traditional land line carriers but none can compare to the cheaper prices offered by online voice over internet protocol (VOIP) services like Skype.

It Was Good While It Lasted

I've tried many different programs over the years. Some have been absolutely wonderful but sadly many ultimately went out of business due to unsustainable business models. One of my past favorites was FreeCalls365, which allowed users to call landline phones using their PC's. They made money from ads that were displayed on their dialer program while you talked. They've since gone out of business.

A few other dearly departed programs include AllFreeCalls and Yak4Ever. These two companies were closely related and started out as AllFreeCalls before it shut down and later resurrected by a new operator as Yak4Ever. Both companies exploited the same Iowa state telephone law that allowed them to provide free international phone calls to users. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) kickback scheme they utilized was based on the FCC's own requirement that large telecommunication companies pay part of the fees incurred by rural telephone providers. By partnering with local phone companies in Iowa, AllFreeCalls and Yak4Ever were able to take advantage of a legal loophole that allowed them to