Online Business Services for Start Up Growth

Start Up companies require lots of support and today's entrepreneur can leverage many great online business services to set up their business and manage their success. There are so many different services available for small business owners to leverage to make their business more efficient, increase ROI, and stay more connected with your entire business. Online business services provide entrepreneurs the capability to stay connected with their team and monitor their sales forces success, find additional talented people around the world to work for the company, manage the companies brand and presence in online search engines and social media sites, and many additional components of a business.

The following are a list of several online business services that are especially great at providing Start ups support.  These companies are ideal for early stage technology start up companies.  Whether you are looking to find the right candidates to help you get your development done or need tools to manage your team and business, the following sites all provide services at a price point that is attractive for new businesses with very tight budgets.

If you are a start up that is looking to raise funding, the best place to be online is Angel list. Get a company profile and start making a presence for your business. There is several individuals that have written success stories about how they leveraged the network of investors in Angel list to raise seed rounds with large portions coming through the site.

oDesk is one of my favorite sites on the web for small business and entrepreneurs as well as for talented individuals that are looking to make some additional money.

oDesk is a freelancing company that is very popular and has a extensive global job marketplace and the platform consists of state of the art tools designed for accurate job monitoring of remote team members by the employers.

oDesk provides a marketplace for independent contractors to advertise their services as well as businesses to post job requirements and receive bids from potential contractors. oDesk has a comprehensive system that helps protect both the employers and the contractors. Employers can review candidates’ proposals and profiles when they submit a bid for a project. The system provides contractors the ability to take tests that helps demonstrate their skill level to potential employers on a wide array of different skills. oDesk supports several different skill sets from administrative work, sales and marketing, software development, engineering, design, management, and other consulting specialties. The projects can be set up for fixed or hourly rates and the oDesk system has software that ensures your hourly workers are being productive while signed in with screenshots of their work.

TheFunded is a online community of over 14,500 CEOs, Founders and entrepreneurs that discuss fundraising, rate and review investors, and discuss strategies to grow a start-up business. TheFunded is an excellent site to go to learn about the angel fundraising process as well as what institutional investors are looking for. This site can provide access to information about the different active Venture Funds. You can search by region and focus to identify investment firms that might interested in your industry. There is several resources inside the website to educate yourself. There is also specific fundraising events and activities conducted by thefunded.

Thefunded has a specific process for allowing new members to the full site, you must be the CEO of a company that meets their basic requirements to have access for free as there are areas of the site only visible to the member CEO's. The site still provides significant value to non members and is worth reviewing on a regular basis if you are considering raising funding for your business or in the process of raising capital to support your start up company.

Zoho has many different applications to support businesses with free accounts for all applications until your company grows and needs additional users. The Zoho suite of applications includes basics such as Zoho Writer a online word processing app, Zoho sheet a spreadsheet app, and other office software solutions. There is also many other specialized applications such as Zoho invoice to help manage your invoicing process or Zoho people which is a tool for managing the hiring and management process of your team.

The two best apps for Start Ups that need support with their business though by far are Zoho CRM and Zoho Creator

Zoho CRM is a complete customer relationship management solution that helps you grow your business. It empowers you to manage your sales, marketing, customer support and inventory in a single system. Set up a CRM system so that you can manage the activities of your sales team as well as maintain control over the data that is coming into your company through your sales person or team.

Zoho Creator is a database software that provides Individuals, Small Businesses and Large Corporations a secure platform to create Online Database Applications. Zoho Creator is a very easy tool to set up and create a basic web form to gather information from your customers that might be interested in your product or use it to set up a registration for a promotional giveaway or other marketing efforts. Zoho Creator has a built in email tool that allows you to quickly create an email response when data is submitted into the form so you can automatically notify the submitter that the company has received the data. Zoho Creator also allows you to export the data out in many different formats and reports for your use later.

The Grasshopper virtual phone service is a great way to quickly set up your companies corporate phone line. Easily set up the phone system with additional extensions for your employees or departments of the company, Forward your calls directly to your cell phone so that as a small business owner that is running all over to keep your business moving forward you wont miss the important calls that you need to be receiving. You can record the messages yourself and submit the voice commands or you can hire talent from several different voice options and they will record your messages set up your virtual phone system up with a fast turn around.

Here are some additional points about the Grasshopper service as listed on the website.

• Toll free or local number - local or national presence
• Unlimited extensions - for departments & employees
• Call forwarding - work from anywhere
• Voicemails via email - play online or on cell phone
• Manage online or by phone - no hardware to purchase
• Starting at $9.95

PitchEngine tackles PR with a social media approach. The platform allows users to create and distribute social media releases (SMRs), a new form of the traditional press release. PitchEngine is a modern publishing platform enabling users to create social and search optimized content that is consumer-facing – like digital flyers, press releases, real estate listings and more. PitchEngine has a proven track record and as reported on their website In 2010, more than 100,000 pitches were shared by 30,000 organizations looking to promote their stories out to not just journalists, but to bloggers, directly to consumers and other social influencers those that have large followings in different online communities such as facebook and twitter. PitchEngine’s concept enables brands big and small to experience exceptional indexing in major search engines. PitchEngine is a very affordable service starting at $29.95 after the first pitch which is free. PitchEngine supports your online marketing activities.

PRLeap is a great online press release distribution service.  They are low cost and even the most basic service will make sure your news items get indexed in Google News and other important news sites and places on the web.  The additional packages available incorporate Social Media support and other services that expand the reach your press release can have.  Make your Press Release easily findable on Google, Bing, Yahoo and more. PRLeap helps you manage your online reputation and drive more traffic to your website. It also makes it easy to share your story on Facebook and Twitter.

Pricing Starts at $49 , also available is $99 option and a $149 option.

The higher dollar value releases are allowed to be larger in terms of word count. The $49 is 600 word count, then 1000 word count and 2000 word count for the $149 option.  There is also an increase in overall distribution and social media capabilities provided with the different price ranges.