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Lately, I’ve been wondering where that phrase came from. Surely it was some sports pep talk designed to rally the team to go for a big win. I can see where that would fit but why do I see that kind of attitude crop up in relation to everyday life?

Lose 100 lbs in four months.

Make a million dollars in a week.

You get the idea.

Is it possible? Sure.

If you’ve ever watched The Biggest Loser you’ve seen people lose 100 lbs in four months.

But they have put their entire lives on hold to focus on that one area of their lives.

I personally know folks that have made a million dollars in a week.

But they didn’t start out making that kind of money. Nope, most took about 10 years to grow to that point.

Is going big the only way to go? I don’t think so.

I think that too often we get it in our heads that unless we’re able to “Go Big” we shouldn’t even try. Or we try to “Go Big” and get overwhelmed.

Why can’t we just “Go?”

I’m of the opinion that any progress is good. Sometimes it’s small steps but at least we’re moving forward. Actually, I believe that compounded small steps add up to BIG change. Not only big change, but LASTING change.

You might not lose 100 lbs in 4 months, but you might lose 20 lbs in those 4 months just by eating a few less bites and moving a few minutes more each day.

You might not make 1 million dollars in a week, but by focusing on your business consistently and making small steps of progress, you might make an additional $10,000 this year.

I don’t know about you, but 20 lbs less and $10,000 more is better than finding myself in the exact same place in a year. Or even worse, 20 lbs heavier and $10,000 more in debt because I tried to make some huge effort and failed…and gave up.

So, as you look to 2010 and start picturing what you want to accomplish I encourage you to DREAM BIG, but break it down into small, realistic steps.

Just go.

I posed a question in a social networking site that is geared toward business folk. The question was – As an entrepreneur, what do you know now that you wish you’d known when you first started out?

For the most part, the input was excellent. But there was one response that surprised me.

“If at first you don’t succeed, quit.”

I know, right? I mean, I had to read it a couple of times to make sure I read it right.

Perhaps he was just being facetious. Perhaps not.

As entrepreneurs…or really even as human beings…we’re going to come up against obstacles. We can either use the obstacle as a convenient reason to quit. Or we can see them for what obstacles really are – opportunities.

Opportunities for growth.

Not all obstacles can be overcome, but they still provide room for growth. Just as a poker player analyzes the table to decide whether they should stay the course, raise the stakes or fold, we need to analyze what lies in our path instead of reacting by immediately throwing in the towel.

I’ve been noticing a lot of articles about young entrepreneurs lately. I certainly don’t want to downplay their accomplishments; I only wish I’d had their gumption when I was 25 years younger. I certainly had the ideas; I just never had the courage to step out of my comfort zone.

However, I want to point out that while they are indeed courageous and talented and admirable, I’m just a whole lot more impressed when people who are older take the leap toward their dreams.

How much more courage does it take to leap off the entrepreneurial cliff when you have a family to support? With things like braces. And college tuition. And the garage or bedroom that their young entrepreneur child is working out of.

And a mortgage to cover?

And when your family and friends are much more likely to say whatareyaNUTS???

I find myself in awe of many mid-life start up entrepreneurs and this article is going to show you that you CAN follow your dreams, even if you’re 30, 40, 50 or beyond. To quote part of the title of a book from one of my favorite authors, Barbara Sher, It’s Only Too Late If You Don’t Start Now.

I’ve come up with some examples to prove it’s true.

Some of the following people are very famous names that you will most certainly recognize, some may not be known worldwide, but they are still very worthy of admiration.

Ray Kroc, Founder, McDonald’s Corporation
Went from being a milkshake machine salesman to a partner with the McDonald brothers at the age of 52. Six years later, Kroc was 58 and when the brothers wanted to limit the franchise of the restaurants, he bought out the McDonald brother’s stake in the restaurant chain.

Colonel Sanders, Founder Kentucky Fried Chicken
At the age of 40, Harland Sanders was running a service station and serving chicken dishes out of his living quarters. Later he moved to a motel with a restaurant that seated 142 people and worked as the chef. At the age of 65 Sanders used $105 from his first Social Security check to start the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

Julia Child, Chef, Author and Television Personality
In 1951, at the age of 38, Child along with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle began to teach cooking to American women in Child’s Paris kitchen, calling their informal school L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes (The School of the Three Food Lovers). The three worked on a cookbook together which was eventually published in 1961.

Ed Sullivan, Entertainment Writer and Television Host
At the age of 47, Ed Sullivan went from being a newspaper columnist to being the host of the weekly Sunday night TV variety show – Toast of the Town – which later became The Ed Sullivan Show.

Jo Fuchs Luscombe, Former Connecticut State Representative
After spending most of her life as a stay at home mom, Jo entered the world of politics. At age 48, she ran for and won a seat in the state of Connecticut’s House of Representatives. After eight years in the seat, she became the Republican Minority Whip.

Mary Orlando, Owner, Mary Stuart House
At the age of 62, Mary purchased the historic home she had lived in as a child and turned it into a successful bed and breakfast.

Jean Karotkin, Photographer and Author
Jean had never taken a professional photograph before but as a breast cancer survivor she, at the age of 46, had a vision and dream for photographs of other survivors, showing their strength and beauty. Five years later, she had not only pulled her dream into reality, but was exhibiting her work at the Houston Center for Photography and was featured in top magazines like Oprah and Rosie.

Rainelle Burton, Author
At fifty-two, after working twenty years at Michigan Blue Cross and dealing with dyslexia, homelessness and depression, Rainelle Burton published a critically-acclaimed first novel.

 Jim Minick, Owner, Home Care Georgia
At age 51, Jim was fearful of being laid off. So he started an elder-care business in 2003 that helps people with daily tasks at home, such as getting dressed.

Poppy Bridger, Owner Anaheim Test Labs
Poppy worked as a PhD chemist for 45 years and retired at the age of 69. On her 72nd birthday, she was offered an opportunity to buy the lab she had worked at. She took her savings and went back to work.

Sylvia Lieberman, Creator of Archibald Mouse Books
Sylvia wrote a children’s story as part of a course in Writing for the Juvenile Reader. The instructor recognized her talent and urged her to seek publishing. However, it wasn’t until she was a grandmother that Sylvia’s book was published and appearing on bookstore shelves.

 Happy Entrepreneuring!

Katherine

I’ve been catching up on some of my reading and found a great article with some very practical nuts and bolts tips for how to impress a loan officer in Entrepreneur magazine. You can read the article at their website – Entrepreneur.com – at http://tinyurl.com/ycavnzh

Happy Entrepreneuring!

Katherine

I love the movie Meet the Robinsons. Yes, it’s a kids movie but it has a great message:

“Keep moving forward!”

That’s one of the many messages of the movie, but it’s my favorite. In the movie, Lewis wants to give up when his experiments don’t work out the way he wants them to. Then he meets a family that helps him understand that failure is useful and should be celebrated as a learning experience rather than a reason to give up.

I’d been frustrated because I hadn’t been able to allocate my time the way I wanted and development of a product I’m working on kept getting pushed to the background. I always try to make the best of any situation, but I was fighting the urge to be a little whiney and wallow in the frustration.

Do you ever feel frustrated when your plans get waylayed? Tired of pushing, especially when it doesn’t look like you’re making a whole lot of progress? In the beginning it can look like that a lot. And in the middle. And 10 years down the road.

It can feel that way, but Keep Moving Forward. Even if it’s baby steps. Those baby steps will add up to ground covered and eventually position you to take the leaps when the opportunity appears.

Happy Entrepreneuring!

Katherine

Here at Yanwe, we strive to bring you good information to help you in your business. As someone who is just getting acclimated to this whole blog, SEO, meta whozits stuff, I found the following article a great read. Short, sweet, to the point and not filled with a lot of tech speak and jargon that went right over my head. This is from Jarom Adair at Internet Marketing for Business Owners. You can find the original article at this link:

http://tinyurl.com/metfay

Enjoy and Happy Entrepreneuring!

Katherine

Meta Tag Basics: The Good, The Bad, and The Useless

Meta tags are little bits of code usually inserted between the tags on your web site. There are some very useful meta tags out there while others are a waste of time (one of which surprises most people).

With the exception of the title tag, people don’t see your meta tags unless they look at your web site code. Here’s what each of them do and whether you want to bother with them or not.

Meta title:

This is a very important meta tag. Each of your web site pages can have a unique title and search engines pay special attention to what the title of your web page is when ranking each page of your site.

People also see these titles in the tabs in their browser. This page is titled “Internet Marketing For Business Owners » Blog Archive » Meta Tags: the Good, the Bad, and the Useless” (not that you can see the entire title–it’s probably too long to read it all).

Titles should include key words you want that page to rank well for, should be unique to each page, should describe that page and it’s contents, shouldn’t be longer than about 60 characters, and you want to avoid excessive use of commas (,). You don’t want a title that says “The best deals on hats, bags, shoes, belts, shirts, pants, socks, and gloves” because all the commas might make search engines think you’re “key word spamming” (see How to break a search engine’s heart for more info on this and other things that will get you in trouble with search engines).

Meta description:

This is the description of page as it shows up in search engines. For example, if type in IMFBO.com in Google, the description under the IMFBO.com listing says:

“Internet Marketing for Business Owners is full of tips and strategies to help you increase your web site traffic and convert site visitors into paying customers.”

That specific wording is not seen anyplace on the web site itself, but if you look at the code on my site it says:

 That’s where Google gets it’s description.

Don’t get too fancy with your description. Keep it to under 200 characters because search engines will only display about that many to your site visitors (20~30 words).

If you don’t have this tag in your page header, search engines will choose what your web site description will say using wording they take from your web site. My site description that Google chose for me originally said:

“Site Links. Login Main Article Page Getting Started Affiliate Program. Dear Jarom: I bought a couple “How to Market Online” guides from some other web sites …”

…not very descriptive, was it?

Meta robots

If you’re interested in bossing the search engine spiders around, you can tell search engines what to index and what not to index on your web site (if you’ve got information you’d rather the world not know about). See the Thwarting the Search Engines tutorial for details on this meta tag.

Meta forward

This is a trick affiliates use a lot. If you’re an affiliate for a web site and your affiliate link is AffiliateSite.com/Xip7uu34npq and you’d rather pretty the link up so it’s not so weird looking, check out How to Pretty Up Your Affiliate Links. This works any time you have a long link you’d like to shorten or make it look nicer.

Other tags

There are other meta tags

<META NAME=”Author” CONTENT=””>
<META NAME=”Date” CONTENT=””>
<META NAME=”Channel” CONTENT=””>
<META NAME=”Revisit” CONTENT=””>

Search engines pretty much ignore them.

Meta keywords

Here’s the short answer: Search engines don’t look at keyword meta tags anymore. You can pretty much ignore this tag. This surprises a lot of people.

The long answer: Years ago (circa 1999~2000) when search engines were still figuring things out, meta keywords were something that search engines would use to find out what a web site was about. If someone included the key word “football” in their keyword meta tag, the search engine would make a note that the web site was about football.

Oops, she did it again

Around that time, Yahoo released their search statistics and revealed that the #1 searched for term that year was “Brittany Spears”.

What happened next? Every web site that wanted to get some free traffic added “Britney Spears” to their keywords meta tag, regardless of whether their web site was about Brittany Spears or not.

The result was that anyone looking for information on Britney Spears would find a bunch of web sites, very few of which were actually about Britney Spears. If people don’t get their Britney Spears fix for the day, they stop using the search engine that sends them to bogus sites.

Once the search engines saw this, they started ignoring the meta keywords and instead started looking at the text that is actually on the web site to figure out what the site is about. This made the Britney Spears fans much happier.

Search engines today might glance at your meta keywords, but if your meta tag has “football” in it the search engine will verify that “football” is a major theme in the text of your web site before they list you as a football site.

Oops, she did it again…and again and again

By the way, Britney Spears has topped Yahoo’s search engine list seven times in Yahoo’s history between 1994 and 2009.

Yours in success,
-Jarom Adair

It’s Friday afternoon and you’re just wrapping up the finishing touches on the last batch of widgets. You look at the clock on the wall and think, “Whew, I made it through another week.” Then it hits you. You have checks that need to be deposited, the week’s invoices still need to be sent out and you promised Mrs. Chalmers and Mr. Dobson that they’d both have their deliveries on Monday. As all that sinks in, you scramble around the recesses of your mind to remember what time the last Fed-ex drop is so that you can keep your promises to your clients and have their product to them on Monday. So much for having the possibility of a weekend.

Sound familiar?

As your business grows, you will inevitably have times when there is more work to do than one person can manage. So, what’s an entrepreneur to do? You could always hire another person, but you should weigh that option carefully. Adding to staff creates more than just an added salary. There is the additional overhead that encompasses another body in your office space and unless you’re consistently overwhelmed, hiring another body as a “just in case” for the peak periods means you may be paying someone to sit around during the non-busy times. Alternatively, outsourcing may be a good fit for your needs.

Outsourcing has gotten kind of a black eye in the past few years as more and more big businesses are shipping jobs out of the country. However, when it comes to tailor made help for a small business’ needs, outsourcing can be your best friend.

When you’re first starting out, doing everything yourself is often the best way to do things. It helps keep overhead low and you can dip your fingers into the beginnings of every role in your company and set the processes in place just the way you want them. You can “try on” different solutions and quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t. If you’re thinking ahead, you can also use the hands on experience in the beginning to help you decide which functions you will be able to delegate to someone else and in what order you want to peel those duties away from your core activities, the things you love that drew you into business in the first place.

In the not so distant past, telecommuting was a young business model and technology was growing exponentially to keep up with the demand for newer, faster, more reliable ways to keep in touch and work efficiently. Consequently, in today’s business environment, working across the world is almost as convenient as working across the hall. There has also been a surge of experts and professionals who have opened up their own shops making quality assistance more accessible than ever for small business people – from bookkeeping, to billing, to engineering, to warehousing/shipping/transportation to payroll and HR services to IT services to administrative support – there are thousands of quality companies available to help meet your needs.

The key to a successful collaboration with any company you outsource to is clear communication. Know exactly what duties you want to turn over. Talk to a few different companies to see which would be the best fit for you. Also, just as you would with a potential employee, talk to other companies that use their services. Reputable resources should be happy to turn over references. Many companies will offer packages in varying levels that empower you to decide what level of service you need right now. As your needs grow, you can upgrade your level of service incrementally with that company which is a great way to manage your costs.

Delegate, don’t abdicate! As small business people, we’re often so relieved to not have to deal with the parts of the business we didn’t enjoy that we tend to turn over the tasks and forget about them. You can’t just call across the office to check on a project so make sure you maintain the communication and create clear deliverables and deadlines. You may not be performing the details of the tasks anymore, but they still contribute to YOUR business.

The options for outsourcing are only going to grow in the current economy as more and more professionals find themselves transitioned out of their corporate jobs. Many of those professionals, unable to find a suitable opening often choose to start their own venture. By opting to do business with outsource companies, you not only get a level of experience you’d be unlikely to get for the same price in an employee, but you foster a stronger economy and a stronger foundation for your own company.

Happy entrepreneuring!

Katherine

© Yanwe

I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It
By Barbara Sher

Are you one of those people that were born knowing what they wanted to be when they grew up? No? Me, either. I spent years taking aptitude tests, personality tests, skills assessments and everything else I could find to try and help figure it out. I kept waiting, hoping that I’d come across the perfect assessment tool and suddenly the clouds would part, a ray of sunlight would burst through illuminating the answer and a heavenly choir would rise with the appropriate soundtrack. That never happened either.

So, I kept searching. I attended seminars. I tried on jobs. I read books.

And years went by. Still I was no closer to having an answer to the question of which direction I should point my vocational ship.

One day I was in a bookstore, perusing the shelves for the latest in career soul searching material when I saw a title that created a mini version of my desired moment of illumination. “I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It.” I thought “EXACTLY!!”

I snatched it off the shelf, raced home and started reading. The epiphany continued. At first I skimmed through the reading and skipped over the exercises. Then I went back and actually did the work. This book did more for me to help me discover my direction than any other book I’ve read.

Having said that, it wasn’t the perfect tool. Yes, it pointed me in the right direction but it took a bit more refining to fine tune things. But just having a direction was incredibly freeing! I’m very much a planner and it didn’t do a lot to help me in that area. However, that’s also part of what spurred me to start this website. There are lots of folks out there who want to help you figure out our dreams – this one was the best fit for me. There are also lots of folks who want to be your cheerleader along the way while you make it happen. There aren’t a whole lot of folks out there who will help you plot a path from choosing a direction to making it happen so I wanted to help fill the gap.

Anyhoo, if you’re still searching and unsure of the direction you want to go in when you grow up, (although I’m not sure if I ever really want to grow up) this book may be a good fit for you, too.

Happy entrepreneuring!

Katherine

© Yanwe

Today I went into a store to purchase a pack of gum. At the end of the transaction, I said, “Thank you.” The clerk’s response was, “Not a problem.” Am I the only one who hates that response? I mean, every single time I hear it, which is getting to be more and more frequently, I want to respond that of course it’s not a problem, it’s your JOB and you’re being PAID to do it! Whatever happened to phrases like “Thank you” and “You’re welcome” and all the Sir’s and Ma’am’s we used to be taught were just plain good manners? Whatever happened to businesses caring about their customers and treating them well so they’d return and buy from them again? In an age where common courtesy isn’t so common and quality customer service is non-existent, an easy way to set your company apart is to care.

I’m no stranger to being online. I signed onto the internet for the first time in 1997 when I was working at a university and the world wide web was still a novelty. I’ve also had websites before and learned a little bit of software so I could build one myself. However, I am new to the whole ecommerce bit and selling products from my own site instead of using a tool like an auction site or Amazon.

A long time ago, I learned the benefit of not reinventing the wheel, so when I was revamping and expanding my website I started looking at other folks’ sites and seeing what they do and how they do it and trying to figure out what might be a good fit for me. I’ve even signed up for a couple of “free offers” to get more information on the particular system the sender recommends. So far, I’ve been shocked, although I guess I shouldn’t be, at what passes for a quality product.

One person sends me TONS of emails. Now, I know that in the end they want me to buy something and I really don’t mind paying for a good product, but come on, at least make an effort to get it right. Mr. Ton O’Email (not his real name) seemed like a great find…at first. “Let me send you this free information” his site says. I think that sounds great, plus he was recommended to me by someone I know so I plug in my “Junk” email address, the one I use when signing up for contests, email responders, etc. My first email from him was full of “important” information telling me how great he and his products are and if I don’t believe him, just go to so and so’s site at such and such location and they’ll tell you, too! I click the first link. Site not found. Ok, so the web changes every day and no one can keep up with every little thing. On to link #2. It’s something completely different in a language I can’t read. From there, it was much the same, but with only 75% of the links touting his brilliance still in existence, I was less than impressed. So, I emailed him and said “Hey, Mr. O’Email, you might want to update your autoresponder emails because several of the links are bad.” No response. And again, I know folks can’t respond to all the emails they get, especially ones as wonderful and busy as he tells me he is. But that was about 5 months ago and another person I know signed up for his free information just a couple of weeks ago and everything was still the same. Needless to say, I never did spend any money with him.

Conversely, in my ongoing quest, I came across someone who actually acts like they care about you and want to help. Carrie Wilkerson, the Barefoot Executive has been an awesome help to me in the past few weeks. Yes, she still has products to sell, but the free information she gives is quality information. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for when I found her, but I purchased some things from her that are beneficial to me and my business.

So, what was the difference? I could say, quality products. Carrie puts just as much quality and thought into her free offers as in the items with a price tag. Her links work, when she says she’s going to send something, she does and her site is relevant/current. But to sum it up into one thing, Carrie cares and Mr. O’Email does not.

Mr. O’Email is just looking to make a quick buck from those he affiliates for and I’d be surprised if he has any sustainable ongoing business. I could be wrong, that’s been known to happen, but I kind of doubt it because lately his emails have been more frequent and more frenetic, almost pleading for me to come sign up for his latest deal.

However, I can tell that Carrie truly cares about the people she’s trying to help. Has she ever personally sent me an email that’s not most likely an “autoresponder”? No. Does she still have products to sell? Yes. But at the core, the heart of who she is, it comes through loud and clear – “I want to help you get to where you want to be. Yeah, I may have some tools that will make it a lot easier, but I also have a lot of good information just sitting here for you to make use of it.”

I love that.

Zig Ziglar said, “If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

Do you care? At the core of who you are and what you’re business is about, do you care? Or are you merely trying to amass as many transactions as possible before you move onto something else? I don’t know about you, but I want to help people. I want to offer quality products and services to help people get to where they want to be. Long before I ever went into business for myself, I was already asking people about their dreams and aspirations and asking why they weren’t going for it and let’s figure out how to make it happen. It took me a long time to actually start putting a price tag on it because it was just something I loved to do, I didn’t really see it as a viable vocation in Middle Oklahoma where coaches worked with teams in things like football and basketball and such.

So, how about it? Are you giving your customers the best chair or hair cut or carpet cleaning or widget or whatever that you possibly can? Do. You. Care? If you don’t, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re struggling in this economy. Now, I know there are plenty of businesses that offer spectacular service and/or products that are still struggling but I’m not one to rail against the President or Congress or whomever under the guise of the economy. The economy goes in cycles. There are good years and bad years, round and round it goes; always has, always will. I’m a proponent of the fact that if you are wise in the years of abundance, you will more easily weather the years of leanness.

There are many companies that could avoid failing if they simply stepped up and set themselves apart by offering a quality product or service for a fair price. I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to pay more for something if it’s a pleasant experience. No kidding, there’s scientific proof that people don’t usually spend money for the it, they spend money for the experience and if the experience is good, they’ll come and repeat it.

Can your customers tell that you care? If not, you may want to figure out a way to reinforce that you do. Hearken back to a day of quality and service and take notice to how your clients/customers respond. Don’t be surprised if you start feeling better about life in general as well. I know that when I see the light of satisfaction spark in a client’s eyes it makes me feel good, too. More importantly, take note of how many start coming back more frequently simply because they know that you truly have their best interests at heart.

Happy entrepreneuring!

Katherine

Fax machine? We don’t need no stinkin’ fax machine!

I’ve never been a fan of fax machines. It seems like their only consistent feature is jamming. And a new machine only meant jamming in more creative ways. I needed to get my home office set up; I knew that a fax was a necessary evil but I kept putting it off. I was less than thrilled at the prospect but I finally waded into the logistics of set-up. Little did I know that I had options – gotta love options!

When I transitioned into working at home, one of the issues I needed to look at was faxing. I have an all in one machine that has faxing capability but I wasn’t keen on having to toggle back and forth between phone and fax on a land line. I’ve had to do that before and it never worked well. I certainly didn’t want to have the added expense of installing a second line dedicated to the fax. I mean, when you’re just starting out every penny counts, right?!

I was talking about it with a brilliant friend of mine who asked, “Have you ever thought about a web based fax service? That’s what I use and it’s great!”

This woman is a financial genius, and when smart people talk, I try to listen.  I was more than a little skeptical, though. I had heard of efaxing before, but what I’d heard was that it was unreliable with faxes often ending up somewhere in the nether regions of cyber space instead of where you sent them. Also, that the file formats were greatly limited and needed a lot of storage space.

As soon as I got home, I fired up the trusty computer and started researching. Come to find out, efaxing has come a long way baby! Web based fax services are more reliable than ever. The more I read, the more I was persuaded.

• No paper and toner needed, saves trees, good for the environment. Like that. 
• Many allow you to choose your desired file format and include PDFs which is space efficient. Like that.
• Many have reporting functionality if you need to track the metrics of your faxing activity. Probably won’t use it, but like that.
• No phone line needed/monthly service fee is less expensive than having a dedicated line. Love that.
• No long distance charges. Love that.
• Was able to choose a fax # that closely correlated to my business #. Love that.
• Increased privacy; I always hated it when proprietary faxes were left sitting on the machine for anyone to read. Love that.
• NO MORE JAMS!! – LOVE that!

There are a several sites that break down the various services including price and a whole lot of technical stuff that makes my eyes glaze over. I’m listing two, because between them, they cover most of the services available:

http://faxing-service-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://www.faxcompare.com/

I personally use RapidFax and Metro Fax, one for a client and one for my business. I went with different companies just to avoid confusion. My personal experience has been good with both. I’ve had them for over a year and have only had one small glitch with RapidFax. They never figured out what happened, but instead of faxing all of the pages, only one went through. Luckily, I caught it and was able to re-send. It only happened once and I have sent hundreds of faxes. I just try to be diligent about checking the confirmation email to make sure all the pages went through. I also set up a web based email account for the fax # so that my Inbox didn’t get slogged with faxes. The services vary on how long they retain faxes on their server, but the incoming faxes and confirmation emails stay on the dedicated email account as long as I want to leave them there. I save some onto my computer, but most just stay on the email’s storage system. This also reduces my storage space requirements.

The days of the clunky fax machine taking up precious counter space are all but over. If you’re searching for ways to free up counter space, reduce costs, help the environment, or just plain don’t like fax machines, web based faxing may be a good fit for you. There are several services with many different options so there is sure to be one that meets your needs. If you’re still not sure, try a few on! Many of the services offer free trials.

Happy entrepreneuring!

Katherine

© Yanwe