5 Free Business Applications You Need To Do Business On The Web

1. WordPress - It’s almost impossible, and very inadvisable to have any kind of public business without a blog. WordPress is the easiest blogging/CMS there is, and also the most feature-packed. The plugins directory is huge, and with the number of developers working on plugins, themes, and improvements to the WordPress base, you need to use WordPress.

2. Google Analytics – You’ll never know how much traffic you’re getting, where they are coming from, where they are going, without an traffic analytics tool. Google Analytics is free and has tons of features – the interface can be a bit puzzling at first, but my advice is to figure out one report/feature at a time (say, 1 per week). Pretty soon you’ll be a Google Analytics pro and can actually use the information to make more traffic (and more money).

3. Freshbooks – I use this for all my freelance invoicing – it really is a snap to set up and use, I promise. And I hate invoicing!

4. Twitter – Use Twitter. And a blog. Combine. Repeat. USE TWITTER.

5. Google Webmaster Tools – Can’t tell you how many times this has answered many questions about Google Page Rank algorithms, and where to improve my SEO.  Invaluable.

6. Delicious – I work on several different computers, and I am always using google to search for solutions to tricky programming problems, or graphics resources for projects, etc – so Delicious is one of my most used applications – being able to store bookmarks on the web and access them from anywhere is beyond useful – it’s necessary.