Small Business Strategies: Web is wonderful for free help

— -- If you're thinking about starting a business but don't have much money — or running a business and need to save every penny — you can get many of the basic services to run your business absolutely free:

•Phone calls.

•Productivity software.

•Marketing campaigns.

And that's not all.

I have been watching the cost of starting and running a small business drop from the time I started my first enterprise. Even though I was working from my living room, it still cost quite a lot.

Now, thanks to Internet-based offerings, you can get a whole range of powerful business services for free on an ongoing basis. These are not trial offers.

Naturally, some companies offering free services eventually stop or go out of business. But in the meantime, you can take advantage of them.

What's the catch? The companies behind these free services are hoping to make money on you.

How? Primarily, they make money when you choose a paid premium service. They expect that your needs will grow. As they do, you'll require a higher level of service that you will have to pay for.

In a few solutions, providers use their free offerings as a vehicle to advertise their company. For instance, a free email newsletter service might put "powered by X company" at the bottom of your newsletter as a way of circulating its name among your clients.

In a few cases, you might see some advertisements as you use the service, but that's quite rare these days.

The free services below are ones I use myself in my business or that others I know use. Most of the business services I've listed are not only free, they're easy to use. All have very competent competitors, and often for a few dollars more a month, you'll find more features or options:

•Mailchimp email newsletter service. I'm a big believer in email newsletters as a key marketing tool for small businesses.

They're easy, fast and effective. A lot of great email services are out there. If you have a small mailing list, Mailchimp offers a limited free service (up to 2,000 names, 12,000 newsletters total in a month) that others have told me is easy to use. www.mailchimp.com

•Skype phone calls. Skype is perhaps the best know provider of voice over Internet protocol, better known as VoIP, calls.

With the free version, you can call between computers or mobile phones with Internet access, and both the caller and the receiver must download the free Skype software or app. You can do voice or video calls. It's a particularly good choice for frequent international calls with a person you know can install Skype.

With the paid version, you can call landlines or mobile phones. www.skype.com

•FreeConferenceCall. As the name implies, the service is used for holding conference calls. We use this all the time in my business, especially when we need to work with clients or contractors.

The service also allows you to record the teleconference if you like. Each caller pays his or her own long distance rates. www.freeconferencecall.com

•Dropbox file storage. Everyone in our office likes using this to store and share our files, especially when we're working on a project with writers and editors and want to make sure we all are working on the right version of a file.

The free version starts out at 2 gigabytes of storage per person, and you can earn up to a total of 8GB by referring friends. www.dropbox.com