1. Trim Travel Costs
Whether you're two guys in a garage or a mid-level manager in a multi-national company, you both have certain types of overhead in common, one of which is travel. Use the fierce competition of Travelocity, TravelWeb, and Expedia to bring those costs down.

Another tactic is to check in with the airline carriers you use frequently. Many U.S. carriers offer last-minute deals. They figure, "Hey, it's better to get 30 cents on the dollar, than letting the seat fly empty." Try putting in a bid at priceline.com a few weeks before your trip. If you put in a low-ball offer and an airline takes it, you've saved yourself lots of search time and money. Three weeks before a colleague's trip across the country, he put a bid in for $400 and got it. The lesson here is: ask, and it may well be given.

BTW, make sure you are aware and take advantage of Frequent Flyer promotions that may offer double or triple the mileage if a ticket is bought within a certain time frame. Track these promotions and other travel incentive programs at WebFlyer.

2. Cut Calling Costs
Just as in travel, you can use the Net to compare prices of different long distance carriers. You can also use the Net as the actual carrier of the phone calls themselves. There are three ways to do this: computer to computer; computer to the recipient's phone; and phone to phone, whereby you call into a service that uses the Net as the pipeline between the two phones.

Unless you have tremendously fast computers with beaucoup bandwidth between caller and recipient, I wouldn't spend much time investigating whether computer to computer telephony is for you. The delay is long, and the quality won't typically be good enough for business calls. Kids, on the other hand, love it because they can talk long distance without running up Mom's phone bills. This method is often free, but caller and recipient must be using the same software. That software typically costs from $0 to $65.

Computer to phone is a good deal better. But I'm old fashioned; I like my phone to be a phone, and my computer to remain a computer. Phone to phone costs about 5-6 cents a minute at the time of writing, so you can see the savings are substantial, especially on international calls. The quality reminds me of a cellular phone approaching the periphery of its primary coverage area. You may want to have two long distance phone companies, one for optimal quality calls to clients, and the other for internal calls. Try IDT as a long distance Internet carrier. I found them to be pretty good and were very cooperative when I tested them.

3. Faxing over the Net
With voice calls on the Net, one must always keep in mind the quality factor; however, these questions are not an issue when faxing. You see, when using the Internet as a long distance carrier, all the bits have to reassemble at the receiving end. This can be distracting in a voice call, but with a fax machine, this isn't relevant. As long as the fax has all the bits re-assembled by the end of the transmission, the fax machine -- and you -- should be happy.

Online faxing is often sold through local ISP's (the people who provide you with your internet connection). As an extra added value, your ISP is apt to offer you online faxing services for a fraction of what you'd pay using the traditional phone network. Your ISP is apt to have a package like NetCentric's FaxSorm.

One of the most impressive services I've used is JFAX. For $12.50 a month, you get a phone number that receives both voicemail and faxes. When your client calls this number, they're prompted to leave either a voice mail or fax. Then, whilst you're signing deals in Italy, you go online and pick up your messages, simply using your email program. If there are faxes waiting, it will display them. If there are voice messages, it will play them back to you. This is a much better scenario than having your client's faxes sitting in the fax tray in your office or having them pay international long distance rates to fax you directly in Italy.

4. Hold Meetings Online, Instead of On Location
Will the airlines go out of business because more meetings will happen online? Of course not. Yes, some f2f (face-to-face) meetings will indeed migrate to online. But the overall effect will simply be more meetings. This can be both good and bad because meetings eat up valuable time. Still, a greater number of online meetings typically take up less time than it would to have one offline meeting, which would entail getting everyone together in a mutually convenient place.

One of the slicker solutions to online meetings I'm currently working with is M.Show. The voice section of my presentation is done using a phone bridge where up to 400 people can listen in. They are even able to participate, if they choose, by "stepping up" to the microphone. Participants view visuals online and participate in polling that allows me to ask a question of the audience and instantly show the results in a pie chart on the screen. Through M.Show, the Internet is relieved from having to show both the audio and visuals to everyone at the exact same instance. Instead, the Net concentrates solely on the visual aspect of the presentation, while the phone bridge takes care of the rest.

5. Farming Work Out Across the Net
From a company's point of view, the Net is a boon for tapping into distant labor pools. I have people who do work for me that I've never met and clients I've never met, as well. Companies may merely want to hire people on an ad-hoc basis, or, if things eventually work out, on a permanent basis. The point is, that a company is no longer restricted to the talent pool in their immediate geographical vicinity, nor is the worker limited to those heretofore restrictions.

A consultant or freelancer can tap into prospects by being on and participating in key discussion groups. For example, I belong to the Online Advertising Discussion Group. I've gotten work from, and given work to other people through that email discussion list of over 6,000 subscribers. If there is no list that covers your particular niche, you may want to start one. Warning: they can be very time intensive. For a look at what lists are out there, check out Liszt, The List of Lists or Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists.

6. Getting Free Information You Used to Pay For
As they say, knowledge is power. The Internet is causing the price of that power to drop precipitously. Four years ago, who would've thought the New York Times would be offered for free every day of the week? This will only get better, as more and more information will be made cheap or free, just in the hopes of grabbing your attention.

Most trade journals and newspapers now offer most or all of their content for free on the Internet. Many more online-only trade publications have sprouted up in each industry, as well. These online-only trade publications compete aggressively with their print counterparts. Many offer searchable classified and auction areas that sell the wares of their respective industries. Check out MarketPlace.

Also, scan wire services by using a free news filter such as MyYahoo or NewsTracker. These services comb publications as well as Reuters, Associated Press, PR Newswire, Business Wire and the like. I use these services to pick up information of interest to prospective clients and then pass it on, using it as an excuse to contact them.

I've only scratched the surface with ways on how to use the Net as a productivity tool. You will undoubtedly find or invent some of your own. Aside from using them yourself, I suggest you keep a list of them and pass it out to clients and prospective customers -- and of course, post it to your website:).