Business-to-business culture and practices of the last decade show a sharp increase in business owners who value honest-to-goodness transparency, multi-network idea sharing, resource pooling, and even (gasp) giving back to the community over the notorious materialism and “evil-empire-building” mentalities of past decades. The new model for business is to do something the right way and trust that eventually, the money will be there. Facebook for example, which has billions of users isn’t even profitable yet, but I doubt you ever hear Facebook’s founders murmuring about how they should’ve done something differently, or asking ‘why did they ever even bother?’! So here today, in keeping with The City Mouse’s jet-setting, venture-capitalist-friendly, zeitgeist ideals, we give you a list of the Top 5 websites that every aspiring designer should pillage for content or manipulate to gain viral exposure quickly in an exclusive TCM “Tell All”!.
1.Archive.org– It’s a public domain site with millions of searchable entries. Use it to find royalty free audio and video clips. Great for retro projects but there is plenty of contemporary content that was simply never copyrighted made available at this website too.
2. Fiverr.com– Search thousands of listings by category or keyword a la YouTube or Kickstarter only at Fiverr, every page showcases a $5 gig offered by a business professional. For $5 you can buy tons of cool, time-saving enhancements for your project like pro voice-overs, video and animation intros, illustrations, get a ukelele-song written about your project/client, etc.
3. TechSmith.com– Go here and download Snag It 12 which allows you to capture anything that’s on your computer screen as a JPEG or movie file. Perfect for converting a finnicky desktop site’s design to mobile or snagging a Tom and Jerry clip for all your trippy video-sync ideas.
4. iBuildApp.com– Easy to use app-building website. Signup for free, choose a template, and drag and drop all those Facebook and Shopping-Cart icons onto your custom app. Then click “YES!” and instantly publish it to the App Store and Google Play once you’re ready to unleash the next totally-needed, world-changing, ‘nothing else like it’ downloadable on the world.
5. Facebook.com– I know, I know, you’ve already heard of these guys. Give me a chance, let me explain! Facebook offers a slew of free and easy to use tools that I see a ton of aspiring social-media professionals overlooking. In many cases, if you are willing to dig through Facebook’s developer options with its tiny links, and fine print, you will uncover solutions that you thought required going back to school to learn how to do. A perfect example of the “everyone’s seen it and loves it” but nobody actually takes the time to figure out how to do it is the MP3 download or Coupon opt in on Facebook that requires users to “Like” your page before they can receive the freebie. See what’s right under your nose that you haven’t smelled lately, and stick to the old music-recording adage of “use the gear you’ve got” in your quest to strike online gold.
So that concludes this The City Mouse exclusive. Our only request is that you keep your inquiries about “If we had that done by someone on Fiverr” to a minimum. Thank you for your unwavering transparency!!
