For those of you who dream to own and run a location-independent business like I do, there are certain tools that are must-have.
By location-independent, I refer to businesses that don’t require your presence to run the business – even, you can bring your business(es) with you wherever you go. One example of location-independent business is online business.
Of all tools that are essential, the most important is, in my opinion, Online Storage.
Today’s online file storage features
Online file storages today are not your typical websites a decade ago.
Today, An online storage website is offering services that ranges from, obviously, Online File Storage, Internet backup, file sharing, web folders and online document viewer – to name a few.
The idea of online storage is location-independent file storage that allow you to access your files and share them among your colleagues.
As long as you have access to the Internet, you can store your files online.
I don’t get it – an example, please
One of the most prominent examples of online storage business is FilesAnywhere.com, one of the oldest online storage companies founded back in 1999.
You can sign up for a free account, but with limited features. For an advanced plan starting from $8.95 for 5GB of storage, not only you can store your files, but you can share them with your partner securely, synchronise your local and remote folders, and automate data backup.
What’s more, you can have your files faxed directly to the recipient from your account. Moreover, you can access your account from your mobile phone, as well as fax a document directly from it.
How online storage can benefit your small business
Secure File Sharing capabilities offered by online storage companies can mean one thing: you can collaborate with your colleagues, clients and prospects virtually from any parts of the world – as long as you have access to the Internet.
A possible case study:
You are a web design business owner that employs 1 in-house admin and 5 outsourcing partners – 1 marketer, 1 web programmer, 1 web designer, 1 graphic designer, and 1 writer.
You envision your web design business to be a business that allows you to do what you love most – travel the world.
Traveling is made possible by moving almost all of your business operation online. One of the most critical productivity tools to use is online storage.
From the online storage account you set up for your business, you can securely share files among your outsourcing partners to work on projects: You can have your writer to write a sales copy, store it into your online storage account, and share it to your marketer to promote your business. Also, you can have a logo designed by your graphic designer, store it into the online storage, and share it to your web designer and programmer to do a three-way implementation.
When a project finished, you can notify your admin to contact your client with all the needed information to run the site.
All of the above is done while you are in Acapulco.
The possibility is endless – The above is just one of many business activities enabled by the right productivity tools, such as online storages.
Do you have a case study to share? Please do so by commenting on this post :)
Ivan Widjaya
Online storage
Image by Office Now.
You can find us on 
Do not copy our content - we are protected by 
I use http://www.MyOtherDrive.com for online storage. They support online backup with unattended operation and AES 128-bit encryption. They have the most advanced sharing of any online storage site – public sharing, private file sharing, and push sharing. With push sharing, I can upload a file, and back-end move / copy the file between accounts – given the right permissions. Very slick.
Hi Jack,
Thanks for the recommendation – the file-moving between accounts is a cool feature!
I started using FilesAnywhere.com internally to transfer files between locations because email did not handle sending large files, and our company IT staff did not want the hassles of getting remote VPN setup – VPN is slow, and you run into lots of networking problems with VPN while on the road. FilesAnywhere is fast and trouble-free. It always does the job – from any computer. We’ve used it for the last 3 years and are now fans for life. The people at FilesAnywhere have built an excellent web tool.
We recently started moving data for customers too – we’ve had customers download 1GB of data in under an hour – this beats overnighting several disks in a fedex.
So far customers have been impressed with FA too.
My 2 cents. -Craig
Craig,
Thanks for your insights – 1GB in under an hour is a great add on value to your customers!
Btw, your vineyard site is very interesting, with a great domain name, too!
This is a very helpful information if you’ve ever lost a disk or jump drive, or had your computer crash and important files vaporized, you know the benefit of having a backup of your files. Thanks for this online storage service that allow me to backup my files on the Internet where they are safe and can be easily accessible.
Cheers! Yes, wherever possible, back up your files, as is not a necessity, but is a must.