REVIEWS
OUR REVIEW PROCESS EXPLAINED
The present website has been established to review IT (Information Technologies), communication, marketing and promotional tools, particularly tools which could be of use to the people in charge of the promotion of non-profits and charities, as well as to small, home-based businesses.
OVERVIEW PAGES: Categories will be created as necessary, and each will have an overview page of its own -- sort of a Sitemap for that specific issue. These category overview pages will offer a short description of each issue or profduct or service focused page, and links to all relevant pages.
FOCUSED PAGES: Each focused page will go over a specific product, service or piece of information, with links to informational and/or sales pages.
When possible, of course, we will give
PRIORITY TO OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE, OPEN-SOURCE INITIATIVES and other truly free resources. What comes to mind immediately here is Computer Operating Systems (Ubuntu), Office Suites (Open Office), Graphic Tools (The Gimp), etc...
Unfortunately, no-cost sources do not always exist, particularly when it comes to promotion and marketing- oriented products and services, or to establishing Income Streams to support your non-profits endeavors.
If efficient non-commercial alternatives do not exist, then we will review
OPTIMAL COMMERCIAL OFFERINGS. What comes to mind here is Web Hosting. Yes, of course, there are tons of "Free Webhosts", and even a few that are not plagued by invasive advertising. But, unless your webhosting needs are so minimal as to be almost non-existent (say, an extended family website designed to be accessed once in a while by a few dozens people, or at the very most a couple hundred), fact is that when it comes to 'free' websites, you'd be going to get what you are paying for. They are totally useless for any serious Internet Promotion or Marketing effort, except as a source for backlinks and perhaps modest additional traffic. Used to promote
real website...
Consequently, in case such as Webhosting, we will look at the best possible commercial alternatives. Our rule in such cases is as far as possible to come up with at least three comparable competing products or services with attractive offers. So to give you real choice. Moreover, for certain necessities of marketing or promotion, such as, say, business cards or flyers, there are simply no possible free alternatives.
REALISTIC AND TRUTHFUL EVALUATIONS:
Let's precisely take business cards as an example of what we mean by this.
You may think: "What? No free business cards???" But anyone can print their own free cards using free templates! And everyone knows that you can also get free business cards printed for you for free too, just paying for shipping!"
Free? Yes, really? Think it over...
Yes, you can print your own, and that
could be a good idea for very short runs of 10 or 20 pieces, assuming you know how to use the templates, and that the result doesn't look like you asked a helping hand from your 7 years old. And further assuming that your printer works fine for this type of work, and that your time is worthless to you (or that you love playing with software, and that it just happens that creating and printing the cards is simply needed recreation and fun for you). Otherwise, please consider the following points:
1/ Your ink is not for free. Far from it. To the contrary, computer printing is a monopolistic, HUGELY profitable industry, and ink is EXTREMELY expensive to you. A professional printer will pay 10, 20 or 50 times
less than you do for ink. Or even less! Let's say it's just 20 times less, and he charges twice his cost to you -- when it comes to ink, he is now 10 TIMES CHEAPER THAN YOU CAN BE!
2/ The pre-cut card sheets are also going to cost you about 20 cents a sheet of 10, or more. That's already 2 cents a card, even without accounting for the ink. That,
when the most gorgeous full-color, glossy double-sided photo-like business cards will cost you less than 2 cents, in quantity. And less than 2 cents NET of delivery and any hidden costs (such as in wasted time), and that, delivered straight to your door.
3/ If it takes you just
one hour to make your cards (meaning, you already had lots of experience, or are quite gifted naturally), and you happen to make minimum wages, you just paid your cards $7 or so, divided by the quantity produced. Not so 'free' anymore... And if you happen to be a lawyer, congratulations, you just produced the Rolls-Roice of all business cards. Too bad they look like the guy who made them is making minimum wages, and perhaps was laid-off last month anyway.
4/ Most probably, your printer uses water-based inks -- a little bit of moisture, one drop of liquid, and that precious work of art will look really, really awful. Assuming one can still read it. It could be said that you just got what you paid for... but not so, in truth. Because in fact, you paid far more for what you got than what you'd have paid getting a much nicer-looking card from a professional, as long as you buy them under optimal conditions (but that's exactly what this site is about).
Now, let's talk about these 250 "free" business cards, where all you have to pay is shipping and handling. Well, if you want to know the truth:
1/ "Shipping and handling" pays for
printing AND shipping and handling, PLUS a reasonable profit. And even if there was no profit at all (not the case), it would still be a great deal (for the seller, not for you!), because:
2a/ You just added your name to a vast database of customers mostly not bright enough to realize that there is no such thing as a "free" business card. Thus, highly-qualified prospects to sell all sorts of junk to.
2b/ Even better, you just paid for free advertising for your seller, whom you are going to promote to everyone you are going to give 'your' 'free'
card to
(free indeed they are, just not for you!)
Because, yes, the front of the card is about you... but just look at the back -- lo and behold, a business card of sorts for your seller... Don't want that? No problem! But, of course, the cards are no more 'free', then. Well, they never were, except in the mind of the 'average consumer'.
Of course, if you are reading this website, such tricks probably never fooled you, but they fool many, over and over... At any rate, nice trick, and great business model. One you could think about enulating for your own offerings. But not necessarily one you want to fall for yourself.
This was an example of what we mean with
REALISTIC EVALUATIONS: WE TELL YOU THE TRUTH!
NO FINANCIALLY-MOTIVATED ADVICE: Because of the rule just stated, we feel we shouldn't be be financially-motivated when evaluating information, products or services. Of course, there is nothing inherently bad in making money while helping people, to the contrary. In fact, the very essence of this website, in a way, is to encourage you to precisely
start to do that yourself!
But in our case there would be a little potential conflict of interest.... So, if any page might result in an action that could produce a commission, of course we will take the commission (not doing so would be plain stupid), but only to forwards it to nonprofits. So, for example, if a page contains affiliate links, or in any way generates some income,
100% OF ANY AND ALL PROCEEDS (AFTER COVERING EXPENSES) WILL GO TO
SUPPORT NON-PROFITS AND CHARITIES.
In other words, we are not providing this service here in order to make money. Our goal here is to give less technically-oriented people in the community access to unbiased facts and data, allowing site administrators and promoters or home-based businesses to make the best possible informed choices.
In that spirit, we will always strive to present at least 2-3 competitive choices, allowing you to optimally address a certain issue or task. And to make clear you can be sure the advice is unbiased and not profit-motivated, once the minimal expenses we run into are covered, absolutely 100% all profits will go to support not-for-profit associations or charities. We will funnel any such monies to fields we deem worthy of support, such as the promotion of organic farming and gardening, and related knowledge; medical research, in particular poorly-funded innovative approaches; new and "greener" energy research and the dissemination of related information; etc, etc...
REVIEWS AND EVALUATION -- CATEGORIES IN THE MAKING
- OPERATING SYSTEMS AND PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS
- COMPUTER AND PRODUCTIVITY HARDWARE
- FREE AND COST-EFFECTIVE WEBHOSTING
- TOOLS FOR EASY WEBSITE CREATION AND MAINTENANCE
- TOOLS FOR ONLINE AND OFFLINE PROMOTION, P.R. AND MARKETING
- TOOLS TO ESTABLISH RELIABLE MULTIPLE INCOME STREAMS
(for both NON-PROFIT and FOR PROFIT)
- TOOLS FOR FUNDRAISING (for both NON-PROFIT and FOR PROFIT)
- OFFLINE TOOLS FOR PROMOTION AND MARKETING (Business cards, flyers, etc)
- FOCUSED RESOURCES - HOME-BASED BUSINESS and NETWORK MARKETING
- NEW PRODUCT EVALUATION - A LOOK AT THE LATEST AVAILABLE GADGETRY
- SOURCES FOR ARTICLES, BOOKS and eBOOKS RELEVANT TO YOUR CONCERNS
(Why pay for it when there are enormous amounts of Public Domain or otherwise free info out there?)
- EDUCATIONAL SOURCES and OFFERINGS
- FORGET THE OLD WAYS - RESOURCE ON NEW IDEAS IN EDUCATION
- PURSUING GRANT MONEY - HOW REALISTIC? HOW ATTAINABLE?
- HOW TO - NON PROFITS and NGOs - GENERAL PRINCIPLES
- HOW TO FOCUSED RESOURCES - CHURCHES, TEMPLES, etc.
- HOW TO FOCUSED RESOURCES - SCHOOLS, COLLEGES and UNIVERSITIES
- HOW TO FOCUSED RESOURCES - OTHER NON-PROFITS
More is certainly to come, but this should cover quite some ground for helping those who wish to stop to dream, and decided to take action.
ALWAYS REMEMBER - A WORD TO THE WISE: Advertising, promotional or marketing expenses are usually meant to bring in more than they cost to implement! Unless you are doing missionary work on the Congregation's penny; or are spending government grant money; or have a large trust fund, and money is truly no object; never, NEVER spend your money on anything (and particularly NOT on methods that promise you instant wealth!), UNLESS you feel reasonably certain that the product or service will PAY FOR ITSELF IN A REASONABLY SHORT TIMESPAN!
