Why does anyone pay for a conference call?
Posted in 
Like most marketers/entrepreneurs I am a pretty busy guy. I work a job, I am an owner of one company and a partner/owner in another one. With this type of life, you often find yourself needing to collaborate and meet with partners, clients and coworkers. Like most people in this world I rely on technology to stay in touch and get more done.
Recently I blogged about Google Documents and how it was helping my partners and I go though the tedious process of launching a new company. Today I want to tell you about another free service I have been using for a very long time. (about 3 years)
The service is called Free Conference and let me just say it rocks. The first question I get when I recommend it is always, "is it really free?". The answer is yes, you can set up calls, schedule them and invite members all for free. You can also set up groups that you commonly have calls with and invite groups vs. individuals to save time. Should you make a time change to your call the system automaticly notifies all your members also, for free.
So is there any catch? No not really, of course there are ways they make money. First the free calls require dialing a long distance number for each caller. They only pay their standard long distance rate so this is not some back door charge or anything. As we all use unlimited service or broadband phone this is really no issue for our team. But if you want an 800 toll free line that is available for a small fee per line.
The other way they make money is by selling recordings of your call in MP3 for 10 dollars a call or you can get a transcript of the call for another fee. I can't really comment on the paid options as I have never needed to use them. Yet for just making a call with 4-40 people I can not recommend them highly enough.
It is really amazing the amount of leverage available to small companies, I mean with Google Documents, Google Analytics and Free Conference any small company has access to free technology that many companies are paying really big bucks for.
What other technology services that are free can you recommend for small or even large companies to leverage their efforts.
~ Jack Spirko
Technorati Tags: conference calling, free technology, free conference calling, conference calls, business advice, business resources, broadband phone, voip, telecom, telecommunications
Popularity: 5% [?]
Carla Still / Virtual Harvest said,
January 27, 2007 @ 8:25 pm
Hi! I am a Virtual Assistant developing my own blog. Currently, I am preparing an article on free technology and services. This is a very nice and well written article. May I link to it??? Thanks! :)