5. Online Tools.

There is a whole host of online tools you can use to help you with your business including email formatters, newsletter formatters, sales letter and press release formatters, as well as wizards to help you build your web site.

Below are some of the best:

Pertinent Inc. - http://www.pertinent.com - Offers a free press release creator, as well as a sales letter generator.

Free Online Wizards - http://www.thesitewizard.com/wizards/index.shtml - This site offers everything from a wizard to help you syndicate your content to form creators and drop down menu creators. Lots of tips and articles too.

Email Formatter - http://www.formatit.com - Tired of getting emails with a ton of >>>>> in them? You can use this site to strip those tags out, as well as reformat your emails to any width. Great for formatting articles too.

6. Business Software.

You can find thousands of dollars in free software to help you build your business by searching through software sites online.

My favorite is Freeware Home: http://www.freewarehome.com. You'll find over 7,000 applications at last count here, and they're all free, full sized versions of the program.

Two applications you won't want to be without are:

Open Office - http://www.openoffice.org - Formerly Star Office, this open source application is the best rival to Microsoft Office. You can use it to do everything from convert your documents to PDF, to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. There's also a version for MAC, making this a must see application when you can't afford other expensive applications.

Banana Cash Books - http://www.banana.ch/banana4/eng/bc4_cashbook.shtml - Although this single entry accounting program accepts just about any currency, if you want to use the accounting method the IRS recommends for small business, this nice little free program will definitely do the trick.

7. Business Education.

Once you have your business up and running, it's a good idea to stay up to date with your business and marketing knowledge.

There are a lot of great ways to do this including forums, article directories, mailing lists, and newsletters.

There are also some great resource heavy sites out there you can benefit from. Below are three of my favorites:

My 1st Business - http://www.my1stbusiness.com - Run by Ben Botes, you'll find plenty of ecourses, seminars and more covering small business, ecommerce, marketing, and other topics. You need to sign up for an account, but it's free, and definitely worth a look.

Free Marketing Resources - http://www.jdbmail.com/ - Run by Jimmy D. Brown, one of my all time favorite marketers, and quite frankly, one of the best, you'll find audio, ecourses, and other resources in plain English that can teach you how to market online. Jimmy doesn't just teach you what to do; he shows you how to do it, and he spells it out. It doesn't matter if you are a complete newbie, or if you have been marketing for some time. You'll benefit from Jimmy's excellent teaching.

Ebook Directory - http://www.ebookdirectory.com - Run by Noel Hynes, this is the most comprehensive collection of small business and Internet marketing ebooks on the Internet, and they're absolutely free. You'll also find plenty of other ebooks here including motivational, writing, and a whole lot more.

There are plenty of free resources on the Internet to help you build your business. The trick is learning when you should buy products and services for your business and when you can get a freebie that will do the job just as well and sometimes better.

A quick search of Alexa, http://www.alexa.com, will help you find some of the best.

Jinger Jarrett is a former military journalist and newspaper reporter who teaches and consults on article writing. You can get her latest ebook, (it's free), "100+ Best FREE and Paid Resources for Writers, Internet Marketers, and Small Business