Your Nerdy Best Friend

MailChimp has definitely become my favorite newsletter provider for my business newsletters, and since they have a robust free level, I have often recommended the service to individuals who just need a quick newsletter — like when they’re raising money for charity by running a marathon and want to be able to share their journey with friends and family.

But for individuals, MailChimp pointed out that its software can be overkill. Why design a whole newsletter when all you really need is a nice group email blast? So MailChimp made TinyLetter a part of its company. TinyLetter is a free group email blast program that lets you create a mailing list and a simple newsletter. The marriage of those two companies makes MailChimp the perfect go-to provider for free and super-bargain newsletters for anyone.

Watch the following video for an overview of how easy it is to create a newsletter with TinyLetter.

It’s no secret that many, many awesome people have found themselves dusting off their resumes and setting off on a job hunt during this challenging economic period. I ran across JobSpice, an easy, fast way to import your LinkedIn profile into their fields and create a basic, downloadable resume within minutes. You need to watch my 2-minute video to see how easy it is!

Get the book! Upgrade to Free: The Best Free and Low-Cost Online Tools and Apps is just ten bucks on Amazon.com!

I’ve written before about Microsoft Office Accounting Express, which is an awesome free accounting tool (and a Beth Favorite) that works like QuickBooks, at least for amateurs like me.

Someone sent me a link to FastDue, which is intriguing as well. It’s got the same kind of invoicing capabilities and also lets you accept PayPal. But the coolest thing is that it contains a library of business document templates, such as contracts, non-disclosure agreements, etc. People are always asking me where to get agreements, and I like that they’re right here in the system.

FastDue is free for now — they pay for themselves with ads. I read they may switch to a standard/premium structure, which I would guess means you may be able to choose not to have the ads.

FastDue.com – Move Your Business Online.

In today’s social media world, we’ve all come to rely on the kindness of strangers. That’s why docstoc works… people share copies of legal, business, tech and educational documents with the community, allowing other community members to download them for free.

I did a quick search for an example business plan, and docstoc came back with thousands of documents. You can sort by ranking or popularity and really take a shortcut to creating your own documents.

You can also upload and sync your own documents, keeping them private if you like, for an online storage backup.

Docstoc.com – free legal forms and business templates.