Freebies can help YOUR small online business!
By Joe Reinbold

There are thousands of locations on the Net to get free information, help and services. You just need to spend some time online and at one of the major search engines. If you are trying to build a business online, you might need some help with html to build your page or site, a way to check the html out once you have your page set up and ready to go, some graphics, logos, fonts, buttons, bullets, cgi scripts and more. There are sites that offer these items or services for free. So if you are not a programmer don't let that stop you. Get that mouse going and start clicking and studying!

Here are some sites that will get you started.

These can help you with basic HTML:

- http://www.bfree.on.ca/HTML/index.htm
- http://www.htmlhelp.com

Check if your HTML code is working properly and if it is working in different browsers:

- http://www.anybrowser.com
- http://www.websitegarage.com
- http://www.cast.org/bobby/

Here are some sites where you can get free resources to enhance your site:

Build free banners:

- http://www.animationonline.com
- http://www.quickbanner.com
- http://www.zyris.com

Free scripts:

- http://cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts
- http://www.infohiway.com/javascript/indexf.htm
- http://www.BigNoseBird.com
- http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts
- http://javascript.internet.com

Free Graphics:

- http://www.webgfx.com
- http://www.cooltext.com
- http://www.3dtextmaker.com

Free page templates:

- http://the-toolkit.com
- http://home.netscape.com/browsers/templates/index.html
- http://desktopPublishing.com/template/web/sitekits.html

Those should keep you busy for awhile. One of the amazing things about conducting business online is the tremendous amount of help you can get not only from sites like those above, but you can go to discussion boards, join chat rooms, and email discussion lists. At these you can ask questions and get answers to any problems you might have. Many of us who are well established on the Net today started with little or no knowledge of how to get our business started online. But we did it and you can to!

Having access to the Internet is like having your local library at home. There is no reason to try to re-invent the wheel, there are many good writers online who share their experiences everyday with millions of readers. That is why it is also a great idea to subscribe to the many online newsletters (ezines) like this one, so you can take advantage of those experiences. See you online! Go for it!