We don’t know about you, but we make on average 20 to 30 phone calls a day—more than half of those to people we call for the first time, and in 90% of the cases, we only got a phone number so we have no idea where these people live in or near North America.

This can be problematic—especially for people who live in Alaska, on the West Coast, on the East Coast, in the Maritimes, or on some of the islands in the Caribbean. That’s because there is a big difference of time between someone living in Halifax and someone in San Francisco: 4 hours to be precise.

If you don’t want to irritate or even alienate a client or prospect by calling them at 11PM or at 6AM, you’d better know where they live before you dial their number. That’s easy to do if you have a list of all the area codes in North America and other places nearby.

And the best place to find that FREE list (that also gives you the time differences) is on this site: http://bennetyee.org/ucsd-pages/area.html

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This is one of those tools we use 10, 20, sometimes 30 times in a day. Can’t live without it. And best of all, it’s FREE!

As you’ve probably noticed recently, email marketing—one of the most effective tools in any e-marketer's toolbox—is being suffocated by a growing deluge of spam.

The problem is so extensive, in fact, that many ISPs are being proactive about halting the spread of this scourge. Many have implemented filtering software that "scans" email for certain "triggers," which may include certain phrases, formatting, and aggressive writing styles.

Unfortunately, some of this software can be (generously) described as being overly sensitive. And just like the hapless dolphin that gets caught by the tuna fisherman by mistake, so too are legitimate Web marketers being "red-flagged" by this software.

What to do to avoid that fate? Use SpamCheck to keep your email out of the junk folders!

It’s fast, and easy to use. Takes a couple of minutes to find out what is (potentially) wrong with your email that needs to be fixed before you send it out to a dozen clients, or a hundred leads.

You compose your email as usual, but just before you send it, you copy-paste it into the SpamCheck Form, click the submit button, and voila! In seconds, they'll return a Spam Score and recommendations on how to reduce the likelihood of your email being filtered.

Use SpamCheck every day, for EVERY email you send. It’s Free!

Get it here: http://spamcheck.sitesell.com

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It doesn’t take an accountant to figure out that free beats cheap. Hence the explosive growth of Skype’s long-distance phone service over the Net.

The catch is that it costs zip only for PC-to-PC calls to other Skype users. Still, that’s more than 130 million people. And once you download the software, you can make free conference calls or video calls through your webcam, and have calls to your Skype number forwarded to your mobile or home phone.

Reaching the non-Skype universe is dirt cheap: unlimited calls to any phone in North America for US $29.95 per year, and minuscule per-minute rates elsewhere , such as US2.1¢ to the U.K. or France.

If you deal with a lot of people in the four corners of the world (webmaster, suppliers, copywriters, joint venture partners, clients, your downline, etc.) ask them all to get on Skype (it’s free) so you all can yak with one another without the meter running.

Sign up for free at www.skype.com

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It’s almost too cute to be a serious business tool, but ClipClip will save the day when you want to show part of a Web page to someone (say, your webmaster, a client, a lead, or an associate) who’s not sitting at your PC.

That’s because this easy-to-install browser add-on lets you highlight any portion of a Web page, then email it without altering its appearance, just as if you’d torn a strip out of a newspaper and handed it to someone. (It works with Internet Explorer and Mozilla-based browsers such as Firefox).

Amazingly, the hyperlinks stay intact, allowing your contact to click on any part of the clipping as if they were on the original site. And because every clipping is added to your personal library on the site, it provides a visual alternative to the bookmark lists of traditional browsers.

Get it for free at www.clipclip.com

Popular alternatives (that we do not use and have not tested or heard about from our contacts):
Clipmarks: http://clipmarks.com
ScrapBook: www.scrapbook.com

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[NOTE: we’ve added this useful tool under the heading "Communications" because we consider it a great communication tool between us and our leads & clients, particularly them communicating with us by answering the questions in our surveys…]

Online surveying has made a vital business task—finding out what your clients and prospects think of your company—cheaper and easier. One of the Web’s oldest and more popular survey tools, SurveyMonkey is still the best.

A clear interface makes it easy for respondents to complete a survey, guarding against a results-skewing high dropout rate.

The free service lets you ask 100 clients up to 10 questions each, and, unlike some rivals, doesn’t slap ugly banner ads on your survey. You can upgrade to the US$20-per-month plan for features such as an unlimited number of questions, inclusion of your logo on each survey page, a choice among types of questions (e.g. multiple choice or open-ended text) and a smooth way to export your results to Excel.

Check it out at www.surveymonkey.com

Popular alternatives (that we do not use and have not tested or heard about from our contacts):
Zoomerang: http://info.zoomerang.com
Survey Gizmo: www.surveygizmo.com

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