Free Web Tools: Add Printable Coupons to Your Site

FiltrBox

FiltrBox.com (Click for larger image).

If you currently use Google alerts as a research tool or to be notified whenever your business is mentioned online, then you’ll love FiltrBox.com. It’s kind of like Google Alerts on steroids. Now the downside to Google Alerts is that it only gives you results from the Web. FiltrBox on the other hand, searches offline publications including major newspapers and magazines, as well as blogs and even Twitter.

So if the keywords that you specify appear in any of those sources, you’ll know about it. Now what’s interesting is that this kind of clipping service used to cost many thousands of dollars a month, but it’s now completely free. FiltrBox is very easy to set up, they’ll send you a daily briefing e-mail, which is very nicely laid out and easy to read. There’s also a premium paid version of the system available that gives you unlimited search terms and other benefits, but frankly I have everything I need in the free version

Domain Typo Generator

You may or may not know this but it’s very common for people to miss-type domain names when they’re trying to get to a certain Web site. There are lots of different reasons why this happens such as your fingers slipping on the keyboard, dyslexic-style mixing of letters, adding or removing hyphens, look-alikes like the letter l and the number one, and so on.

DomainTools.com (Click for larger image).

Now when someone does that, when they miss-type, they usually don’t know it — obviously — and so they get frustrated at you, the Web site owner and not themselves. As frustrating as that might be there is a way to overcome this issue. Now you can use the domain-typo generator found at DomainTools.com. It’s a free tool that allows you to enter any domain name — existing or one that you plan to register — and the system will show you the most likely miss-spellings based on the factors that I mentioned just now.

Now once you know those potential errors, you might choose to register those error domain names and then forward them to your main Web site. That way, when someone enters your URL incorrectly, they’ll still get taken to your site, and they’ll never know. Now that’s customer service. Domain names are really cheap now and you can easily register a dot.com, for example, for less that ten bucks for a year.

TrendWatching.com (Click for larger image).

 TrendWatching

Regardless of what business you’re in, it’s vital to keep up-to-date with industry trends. One of the sites I use to do that is called TrendWatching.com. They release monthly reports about consumer trends and they’re all very well researched. They’re well-presented, and they’re easy to read.

One recent issue for example had the theme innovation jubilation and featured 50 new business ideas that defy the recession doom and gloom. So check out this resource from time to time. There’s all kinds of useful ideas there for any business.

OneMinuteCoupon.com (Click for larger image).

OneMinuteCoupon

At last, it’s now easy to offer printable coupons on your Web site, thanks to OneMinuteCoupon.com. It’s a simple service, and here’s how it works. First of all create a free account on the site, then create your coupon using the online editor — you can even include your own images in there — and then copy-and-paste the provided html code into your own Web site; simple as that.

I love sites like this that solve a common challenge easily, and I hope you can now go ahead and put some coupons on your Web site.

Andrew Lock is a self-described maverick marketer and the creator and host of Help! My Business Sucks, a free, weekly Web TV show full of practical marketing tips, advice and resources to help small businesses “get more done and have more fun.”