One of the ways they do this is by allowing, or requesting, several steps of verification from the service provider. Telephone, address, electronic background check, even social security number and physical identity checks. Pretty thorough, if you ask me. While there may be some concern about providing a social security number, Thumbtack.com has a detailed and exhaustive privacy policy that you can check out here.

So what’s so special about another web directory listings service? One thing that stands out is that they provide a very SEO friendly URL for your listing. You can see ours here, Domain Name Registration and Web Hosting. This is great because their link back to our site provides some needed authority for Google that ultimately helps our site here rank better.

If you’re a small business providing services, you should check out Thumbtack.com. But if you’re a potential client, looking for a service provider in which you can put your trust, you definitely need to check them out.

Sync

Have you ever been working on your notebook computer while you are out of the office or traveling and realized that the file you need is on your desktop computer. One of the great features of Dropbox is that any files you store in your account are synced to any other computer you set up. This means you’ll have access to your important files on every computer you use. You could even access your files on someone else’s computer if you needed to. There is an iPhone app that allows you to access your Dropbox files as well. We use our account to make sure that we always have access to the important files we need on every computer that we use.

Share

As with many small businesses, we have a need to share many different files both internally between Kevin and me and externally between ourselves and contractors. We make every attempt to utilize our Project Center for file sharing and collaboration, however, because we are limited to a 100MB file upload on the Project Center, Dropbox comes in very handy. We can drop in files of any size as long as long as they don’t exceed the remaining space in our Dropbox. To share a file with someone, it’s really as simple as creating a new shared Dropbox folder, invite people to join the folder so they can access it, and then all you have to do is place files inside the folder.

What does this have to do with Web Presence?

All in all, not a whole lot. However, our clients and prospects are small businesses. We absolutely love building websites for small businesses and helping them develop their Web Presence. But, we also want to make sure that we share resources that might help out our small business clients and prospects. Hopefully, Dropbox is something that can help make life a little easier for you and your small business.

If you check out Dropbox and find it useful please be sure to use the sharing buttons below and let others know about how great it is.

Game Changer

There is a potential game changer that has entered this space. Photoxpress provides “Images you want. Free.” So, if you are at all like me, your first question is, “is it really FREE?” In a lot of cases, FREE, means ad-supported. With Photoxpress it means, FREE, for up to 10 images per day. Equivalent to 3,650 images per year. Not bad. As with all stock photography and images, there are terms of use that the user must comply with. Suffice it to say this; if you need a stock photography and image resource to use on your Website or in your Email Marketing, Photoxpress should be your first stop.

Maximizing what you get out of Photoxpress

Even though there are more than 600,000 photos and images available for download, you still might not find what you need at Photoxpress. My experience has been hit or miss. Even so, here are a few tips to make sure you get the most out of your Photoxpress account(s).

~ If you find an image you like, go ahead and download similar images at the same time. Chances are you might use them in the future.

~ If you have multiple authors for your Website, encourage each author to set up their own account and utilize both accounts to maximize the number of images at your disposal.

~ If you have future blog posts or new pages that are in Draft status, go ahead and download images that you might use for those. Especially if you haven’t reached your limit of 10 for the day.

What are you waiting for?

Head on over to Photoxpress, register for your account, and start downloading. And by the way, don’t forget to use the Social Sharing links below to share this post with someone else who can benefit from it.