http://thefrugaltechshow.com Getting the most out of every dollar is critical for every small business. Here are some ideas to help you get started with setting up phones, sending faxes, and web based meetings. Distributed by Tubemogul.


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Well, another area that you need to explore is great. I have got the computer, I have got my multifunction device, I am pretty well set there. Well, how I do communicate with the world? Now that's a good question, and -- so I am kind of just thinking about, well, of course, there is the standard telephone line and by the way, always have a dedicated line for your business. Don't ever try to use your home phone in your business. Keep the two totally separate. There are all kinds of things you can do. Now depending on the image you want to make with the public, there are answering services out there that can answer the phone for you. There are all kinds of things. But at the most basic level, decide whether you are going to use the service from your local telephone company, for business class one, because you probably would want to have your business number listed in the Yellow Pages and that's going to be a function of that. And the price on those are around $45 or more a month plus your long distance charges and so forth. But that's going to give you, I think, peak reliability, but it is kind of an expensive way, that no one thinks and if you want a dedicated fax line, that's going to cost even more money on your bill. A happy medium, and I think a good alternative is a company like Vonage. Now what Vonage does is it uses your broadband connection to deliver a standard phone jack or two that you can use for your business and I personally -- we use Vonage here, it's $34 a month is what I pay for one Vonage line and I have all your features such as voice mail and there are other features to the thing, I use Simulring a lot them rings at my office phone and my cellphones somewhere amount about customers, that can still get right through to me. I am not a big fan of voice mail, I will be honest with you. I like the in audio attendance and all that. That's just my personal opinion. When I call a business, I want to talk to a human being, I don't want to play voice -- I don't get involved in voice mail generally. I definitely don't want to sit there and play 50 questions with a machine. I just find that irritating. I don't know -- maybe you don't. But Vonage is certainly -- and you can also for like about 10 more dollars a month you can get a second Vonage line just for faxing and I have tried that and people have had, I will be honest with you mixed results by using Vonage line for sending faxes. I personally tried it. I had a lot of problems with getting faxes go through and I have a dedicated fax board, a very good one about a $500-$600 board and it just had handshaking issues calling other fax machines using the Vonage line. So, I could go to alternative for faxing, you might consider this as a little company called Send2Fax and I think for 12 bucks a month, you can send or receive upto 200 pages of faxes a month. They come in your Outlook email, you can send a fax through the web, either there is a plugin for the office we you can print to, Send2fax and get it out there. And I think, that makes a lot more sense than possibly using the Vonage in the standalone fax line. And finally don't forget about -- I have talked about the Skype before. I love Skype, I think it's for -- especially they have their own little office, branch office and remote workers, there is some -- wonderful way to communicate. So I kind of use a combination of Vonage for my primary business line and then I have a Skype account with Skype out that I use to make outbound calls where I am not tying up our business line and then I use Send2fax for faxing. And the Skype account is 3 bucks a month for unlimited outbound calling in the USA and Canada and I think it's, if you do want an inbound number which we had, but I didn't really use very much, it was like $18 for three months, so was that 6 more bucks a month. So, I am talking $10 a month for a Skype account. And of course, if you have a Skype, if you have your laptop and you go to a motel room or whatever where you can just plug right into that and fire up your Skype account and there is your phone, you can take your phone with you wherever you go and that's a very cool feature. But the Skype also has some you know it has the chat capability, file transfer and also video conferencing which they are getting into in a very good way and I think their major version 4 release of Skype is going to have significantly improved voice or not voice but video conferencing involved. And then we are talking about, as far as traveling, we will eliminate travel from your your home office as much as possible, money is tight when you are getting started and you are spending money on computers and laptops and all those accessories and you are buying a PC and you are buying a multifunction machine. Look investigate a service called GoToMeeting, it's only $49 bucks a month, you can have upto 15 people in your meeting, you can share you PC, they have got Voice over IP for conferencing and you can record your meetings, really it's less than to tank a gas anymore and you can be so much more productive with hosting your meetings online as opposed to face to face. Now people are busy out there and you can spend a whole lot of time wasted, unproductive time in face to face meetings, that you could do very well from your home office and do a really sleek professional job. So, I definitely recommend a GoToMeeting.