Should a business use Windows Office Live? It is free, but does it give an appearance of un-professionalism? Is there a way to have it there for free but get there by re-direction?

What if you likened it to cutting coupons? If you save money on something, does that make it “less” valuable? Isn’t “50 free business cards” better than homemade ones?

As a nonprofit, I leverage as many free opportunities as I can. We use OpenOffice.org, Google products (docs, G+, etc), Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (all free) but that doesn’t mean I jump on every one … I use the same kind of research I would if I was buying a product.

I’ve also bartered, too. For example, I have partnered with a InLinkz in a way that allows us to use their link-collecting/sharing protocol on all of our book reviews on the website, and we give them ad space on the blog and website.

I guess I say all that to say, I don’t completely dismiss a company … particularly a small / new / emerging business just because their cards (which most likely will get tossed in a pile or thrown away) aren’t “high end.”

@deairby – When it comes to websites, professionalism comes first.  Anything that possibly takes away from that professionalism can hurt your credibility.

Considering how inexpensive some of the alternatives are as well as the benefits they include, I would think first about how you want your site made.

I rebuilt my website this summer in Wordpress and have it hosted on Bluehost.  I think I pay a whopping $5 per month for the hosting.  That is about 60% less than I was paying for another system earlier that was template based.  The template based system did not allow me to do everything I wanted and also had horrible SEO returns because I could not customize the tags and such.

I highly recommend Wordpress.  It is completely customizable and has great SEO returns – and is very user friendly.

Also – I am not sure how Windows Office Live works, but if you cannot have a domain that is all your own then skip it.  For example, there are two versions of Wordpress… on one my domain would be http://www.todaysvirtualedge.wordpress.com and on the other my domain IS http://www.todaysvirtualedge.com.  The existing domain belongs to me and also aids in SEO.  So make sure that the domain name is not a subdomain of the company you are using.  (I hope that makes sense)

@rich-brooks – When I first started my business, I obtained the free business cards BUT paid the extra $2 to have the printing company name removed from the back (it was completely unprofessional to leave it on there).  What I didn’t like was that the cards were a bit of an odd-size… if you added yours to a stack of regular cards, the cards were shorter.

I quickly changed over to a local printer who I love and who makes “normal” sized, professional cards for me.

As for other software, there are a lot of free systems out there that I use.  I am a one-woman business so I have to watch where the money is spent.  Obviously the social media sites no one would blink an eye at.  As for other software, most of the time my clients don’t know I even use it because I use it on the back end.  So it doesn’t really matter if it is free or not.