Business Website Advice

Listen and learn how online storage can help your small business.   In this article I combine three of my favourites - technology that has real benefits for small business owners, Bob Dylan’s XM radio show and wise words against working too much.  Online storage is very very easy. This is just a glimpse to get you thinking how it can work for you.

My focus is what online storage can do for you, cheaply and easily. I demonstrate by storing online, not on my blog,  a couple Dylan sound clips.

First let me demonstrate, before I discuss the storage software.

Listen to my wee excerpt from Bob Dylan’s weekly radio show where he dj’s on various themes. This is his hello from Bob Dylan’s weekly XM ThemeRadio . You click the link and can play it or download it. Easy as that.

Here’s another example. Dylan gives a music message for business owners to enjoy themselves, it’s later than you think! From the 30’s it became a hit again in the 60’s and is still be reworded today.  Click and listen to Dylan on Aging. 

Now about online storage and what you could use it for. Avoid huge monthly hosting fees. Put large files into box.net (or other online storage).

What type businesses can use online storage? Think artists, property agents, shop owners, professional with lots of files to show someone or share with others.  Academics, but they often have large network space available. The type of online storage I’m showing you is suited for small business owners.  Another - musicians. That’s just few.

Good for small guys as well as big business. You can be a dial-up user, you can be a small business, you can have a small budget (even zero budget for the free version) and still have huge files like music and video without bogging down your website or bloating your monthly hosting fees.

Avoid paying for big files on your website.  I showed you how you can provide a link to music, notoriously large files. You can have a small little website and not bog it down or bloat it up with huge audio or video files. But there are more advantages. 

5 main benefits for online storage for small business owners

1. sharing –you can load folders with anything you want: text, pdfs, video, music - then share them with outside customers or even internal employees.  
2. access — you (or any user you want) can enter from anywhere you can use the Internt.
3. collaborating -  store one document and whoever you give access to it can add to it, make comments, revise it.  Instead of sending one document around that gets multiple copies, this allows for one copy to be managed easily.
4. create a mini intranet-like capacity for small companies without a network - self manage a storage place online for documents that sales reps or ‘partners’ in the firm can access from whereever they meet clients.
5. monitor - your sales team’s documents or timelog or…you tell me.  The mind boggles at what you can view in an online storage depot.

Box.net is my choice for online storage.  In the past I used box.net to store my three DIY tools for sale. I’ve since moved to e-junkie to interface with PayPal.  Box.net offers  different sizes of ‘boxes’ with associated services and prices in US$. 

 I use the free version. Yep, you listened to clips stored for free in an online storage box. See, I said it was easy.

I promise to write more about XM Radio in another article. This article focused on online storage. 

Meanwhile, any of you using online storage already? Tell us about it please.

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