I’ve been following the Location Independent blog by Lea Woodwards www.locationindependent.com/blog and Tim Ferriss’ Four-Hour Workweek blog www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ and I’d like to share my own three resources for getting your work accomplished without you physically being there.

1) RingCentral.com. We signed up for this service more than a year ago because we wanted some freedom with phone answering. Ring Central’s monthly service offers you a toll-free number of your choice. There’s added benefits of being able to do the following:

a) An online “dashboard” to manage all your extensions, rules, and messages
b) Additional extension lines for separate phone lines, e.g. extension 1010 or extension 9
c) Saves phone calls to your “dashboard” and also e-mails the audio message to your mailbox
d) Specify the hours you want to receive calls (if you’re forwarding to your physical phone) or set to voicemail only
e) Specify the outgoing message (helpful if you want to record a message and have it playable to your customers
f) Fax by phone: send and receive faxes through your e-mail
g) Automatic additional minutes billed if you reach your monthly limit
h) Convenience and reliability: I haven’t missed any calls since we installed the service *and* I get a recording of all messages

2) EarthClassMail.com. We signed up for this service because of our continuing efforts to go “green.” The service offers a centralized PO Box for your mail. Once you receive mail at that box, they scan it and show you the mail in your “dashboard” where you may then specify if you want that specific piece opened and scanned, mailed to your physical location, shredded, or recycled. They will start adding services this year like check deposits and additional addresses.

The service is excellent if you move constantly (or want to travel a lot) but still need access to your snail mail. It also helps with identifying and reducing mail you don’t want to receive (unwanted catalogs may be reported to CatalogChoice.org or reported to the sender).

If you combine this service with online bill pay (and automatic deductions from your bank account) you’re looking at a major reduction in snail mail, stamps, standing in line, postage, and paper usage.

3) Paypal. I’ve been using this service for years now, and have set up multiple friends and clients with Paypal accounts. It’s easy to use, easy to withdraw, and easy to make payments. Use a business account to accept all major credit cards, and there are even shipping and invoicing tools. You may set up different “profile pages” if you’re selling from multiple venues, and there’s a button generator if you need to create a dues, subscriptions, donate now, or make a payment button.

When you attach your PayPal account to your bank account (a relatively straightforward process), you may easily electronically withdraw funds from PayPal directly to your account, or you may have them send you a check.

The fees are 2.6% of each transaction, which starts to add up as you accept more and more revenue online, but the ease of using this system is a great benefit.

If you have additional resources that have worked for your online business, please put them in the comments section. I particularly would love to hear from you if you’ve managed to become totally geographically free and are no longer tied to a physical office.