Technology defies the impossible. As an entrepreneur, manager, or simply a thrifty consumer, you can leverage these amazing tools into spending a lot less for a lot more of an impact.
- Discord — New ways to organize teams
- Zoom — Free video conferencing
- Swagbucks — Like Google with cashback for searching
- Hooked — Food and drink in college towns
- Backmarket — Resellers on a moral mission. Planned obsolescence
- Amazon Warehouse — Literally anything you could think of at discounted prices.
1. Discord
Discord, Slack, and Microsoft Teams are the most used team organizing groupchat platforms in the USA. As of October 2019, Microsoft teams has exploded into an apex predator position on the top of the virtual team SaaS food chain.
What all three of these SaaS platforms share is that they provide the means to chop your company’s wage costs by employing remote teams.
What makes Discord stand out from the crowd is the amount of features it offers for free, the way it subtly encourages casual company culture, and the amount of HTML perks it allows you to play with. Discord is mostly used in the gaming community and among users of the popular social platform Reddit, but companies with international teams such as real estate development marketer, Transforma Media, have adjusted this popular medium into a free forum for its employees to organize projects.
2. Zoom
Zoom is one company that has more that tripled in stock price in 2020. Prices have risen from $69 to $166. The coronavirus and subsequent market shock has not only left it unscathed, it has actually tripled its user base. By April of 2020, Zoom had become a household name worldwide. Currently there are more than 300 million daily active meeting participants worldwide.
3. Swagbucks
Google is not the only search engine around. According to Statista, Bing’s 850 million users tend to be between the ages of 45 to 54, and live in households that earn an annual income above $100,000. If you don’t mind trading access to some personal info for a petite passive income, Swagbucks is an attractive option. This loyalty-program operator gives away Visa gift cards in exchange for taking surveys and using the search browser. The point of this company is market research, and they will pay you for it!
4. Amazon Warehouse
Some of these recommendations are better funded than others. The world’s first trillion dollar company is a leader in warranties. Amazon, along with many other e-retail giants offers free returns. Returns factor into an emerging industry called reverse logistics.
On Amazon Warehouse, shoppers can find the sale ample range of products as they can on the main Amazon page, with the difference that Warehouse sells returned items. If you can believe it, of these returned items, only 25% are reported to actually be damaged.
5. Hooked
This app is not available everywhere, but if you live near a major university, you are in luck! This app is like Groupon, but friendlier and exclusive to food. You can find discounts up to 50% off. Depending how much you use it and how much you eat out, this app can save you hundreds of dollars a year.
6. Backmarket
This website is on a mission to fight planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence, for those who don’t know, is the corporate philosophy of creating products that fail in preordained ways in order to maximize how much one customer will spend on your product. It is very common for phones and cars to have planned obsolescence built in.
The way this company works is by recycling and refurbishing products and selling them at a huge discount. You can find IPhone 7s for $200.
Conclusion
Starting a new business is easier than ever. Once your business has boots on the ground, the next step is hunting down ways you can make it profitable. This can be done using free and inexpensive tools such as those we have included above.
There are all kinds of examples on the internet. Saving money and protecting your car through Olive’s extended car warranty solutions to Acorns, an app that will automatically invest your spare change and let you choose the risk you want to take with your virtual spare pennies.
These tools and technologies will serve you well no matter who you are. If you are simply looking for ways to save money, Honey, Hooked, and Swagbucks can put money in your pocket and make sure it stays there.