They say, "Nothing in life is free."
We say, "HA!"

For solo professionals shocked by the outpour of cash at every swerve of the entrepreneurial road, the Internet is a benevolent force.

Need proof? Check out these AWESOME tools and necessities that'll have you weeping with joy because they're either FREE, or they're RIDICULOUSLY INEXPENSIVE considering the bang they deliver for the piddly investment!

Freebies
Neevia Document Converter eXpress
http://convert.neevia.com
Need to create PDFs? You can buy Adobe Acrobat 7.0 for $299... OR you can go to this magical webpage, upload your document (up to 1MB), and get the job done lickety-split for zilch. (Converts images, too!)

FreeMind Mind-mapping Software
http://freemind.sourceforge.net
In case you haven't heard of it, mind mapping is used to help the stuff of your brain go "Splat!" on your preferred canvas in an organized and wonderfully visual way. Words and ideas are linked and arranged around a central key word or idea, so it's perfect for planning projects, right down to the most minute action steps. Radical!

WordPress Blogging Platform
www.WordPress.org
Typepad starts at $4.95/month for one author on one blog. You can use Blogger for free, but it can't sort your posts into categories. Now, WordPress? It's free, you can create as many blogs with as many authors as you want, and you can create categories to help your readers, prospects and clients find the information they want a lot faster.

Audacity, for Recording and Editing Sound
http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Got an interview you want to splice and dice? Wanna get your feet wet playing with audio to see how it can help your ventures? Audacity's a great place to start. It's pretty intuitive - kind of like Microsoft Word for sound - where you can see your recording in front of you and cut, copy, and paste to your ear's delight!

Resources
A-Ha Audio, for Audio Hosting and Phone Recording
www.AhaAudio.com
This link sends you to Audio Acrobat (and tells 'em we sent you!). It's one of the coolest, fun, and easiest to use services for capturing and sharing audio. It spontaneously generates phone lines with unique extensions to record anything from five-minute testimonials of people bragging about your service to two-hour teleclasses and conference calls that you can download as MP3s or put on your website in streaming audio.

You can get creative with it, too. Lani used it to collect 37 stories about her mother and burned them on CDs for her mom's 60th birthday. Great gift, and super easy!

A-Ha Cart, for e-Commerce, Relationship Building, and Affiliate Management
www.AhaCart.com
This link'll tell the very polite and helpful people at Kick Start Cart that we sent you to them. Despite the name, Kick Start Cart offers so much more than an online shopping cart. Depending on your needs and goals, they offer four different levels of service and a wealth of marketing tools, too - multiple mailing lists, autoresponders, affiliate programs, custom sign-up forms for your website, newsletter and ezine service, ad tracking stats, and more!

Psst...
We know it's a big step (financially AND emotionally) to commit to monthly services like A-Ha Audio and A-Ha Cart. If you'd like to talk to fellow biz guerrillas about how either of these services could help you with your business, call us at 214.615.6505, ext. 8105 for a FREE 15-minute chat, and we'll do our best to help you out with your decision-making.