This page is a work in progress and will be updated regularly.
Books
BookMooch.com – Trade your used books for books that you want. You can also donate books to charity through this website. Free to join and use. Your only expense is mailing your books.
eBookFling.com – Swap kindle and nook ebooks free. Uses a point system on a 1 for 1 ratio of lend and borrow. If you have no points, it is $2.99 to borrow a book. Borrowed books expire after 14 days.
Gutenberg.org – 36,000 free ebooks to download. The website takes donations. If you like the service then donate.
Internet Sacred Text Archive Home – “This site is a freely available archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics.”
Joggoon.com – Free e-book reader web application featuring public domain literature.
LibriVox.org – Provide free public domain audio books.
PaperbackSwap.com – Another book-swapping website. You get two free credits for signing up and posting ten books for trade. There is currently a free website.
PodioBooks.com – Free audio books made available by the author. You have the option to donate directly to the author if you enjoyed their book.
PoemHunter.com – If you enjoy reading poems this is the place for you. Their database has 797,579 free poems at the time of this writing.
PublicLibraries.com – A directory of public libraries.
The Cheap – This is the Nook version of Kindle on the Cheap.
Credit Reports
www.annualcreditreport.com - The ONLY site where you can get your credit reports FREE.
Credit Score
CreditKarma.com – I use this website. I like the credit simulator on this site. If your interested in knowing what opening a new credit card will do to your credit score the credit simulator will show you. This site uses your TansUnion credit report to generate your free credit: score updated daily. This score approximates you actual FICO score.
Quizzle.com – Quizzle will give you your Experian credit score and report free when you sign up. Quizzle has a free budget planner. Quizzle bases its free score on your Experian credit report, with your score updated every 6 months.
Credit.com – Credit.com gives you a score range that is close to your FICO score. It also gives you a credit grade that is broken down into categories. Credit.com uses Transuion when calculating your score.
Cloud Storage
DropBox offers 2GB of storage free. You can get 2.5 GB if you click through my link. DropBox currently offers seamless integration between the most platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry) of all the cloud services. First pay tier is 50GB for $9.9
Google Drive offers 5 gigabytes of storage space for documents, videos and photos free. If you need more space, you’ll pay $2.49 each month for up to 25 GB. This 25 GB can be split between your Google Drive and Picasa account.
Apple’s iCloud service also offers 5GB of storage free, and your files seamlessly integrate between all of you devices. 20GB will cost you $20 a year.
Microsoft’s SkyDrive offers 7 GB of storage free, and you can purchase 20GB for only $10 a year, by far the cheapest price.
Box offer 5GB, but they have the highest prices after the free service. 25 GB will cost you $9.99 / month.
Household Goods
Freecycle.org – I have used this service before. It is generally run in yahoo groups, and each group has its own rules.
ReUseItNetwork.org – This group is similar to Freecycle.org.
TrashNothing.com – This works with Freecycle and I recommend using it as it makes it easier for you to sort through all the post.
Ecofreek.com – Description from their website: “ecofreek.com is a search engine that searches the web for free and ‘for swap/trade’ items people no longer need from over 45+ sources, 10,000 libraries, real estate, agricultural/seed swap sources and more-providing the most diverse and accurate results anywhere in the world.”
Music
Pandora Radio – Creators of the Music Genome Project. How it works. You enter your favorite song, or any other song, and the website recommends songs to you. It is free to sign up and you get 40 hours a month. Unlimited music cost $36 per year. They have also added comedy and it works based on the same method.
Slacker.com – This website offers radio stations for you to listen to free. They have two monthly subscription plans that get rid of the ads and offer some other interesting options if you are really into music. Plans are $3.99 or $9.99 a month. Details.
GrooveShark.com – Offer free music and music stations. It is a good place to find new artist. The website is also very community based if that is what you are looking for.
Jango (Internet radio) – This one picks songs that you may like based on the likes of other users on the network. You add as many artists manually to you play list as you like.
Live365.com – Taken from their website: “Featuring 260+ genres of music produced by 5,000+ broadcasters and music tastemakers from over 150 countries, the network boasts a roster of artists and radio producers”
QTrax.com – This site offers advertiser-supported free music downloads
NoiseTrade.com – Artist upload their music to this website to share free. Listeners can tip the artist if they choose. The music can only be downloaded as a widget that can be placed on a website, blog or social networking site.
TheRadio.com –Listen online or with the downloadable desktop player. You can listen to channels, genres, or select single artists. Free or pay $2.95 per month for more options and no ads.
DI.fm – This site specializes in Electronic Dance Music genres. Free or pay $4.95 for more channels and no ads.
Spotify.com – You need to download their application and then you can search and play songs.
RadioParadise.com – Their site says what they do best. “Each hour of music is carefully blended together to flow smoothly between different musical styles & genres – just like real DJs used to do on FM.”
Software Alternatives
Adobe Photoshop CS5 $650.53 – Gimp has almost as many functions as Photoshop and is completely free.
Microsoft Office $159.99 – The well-known OpenOffice, it is not pretty to look at, but does nearly everything you would need it to do.
AntiVirus $20-$30 – AVG is a good free virus scanner, but they will try to get you to buy their product from time to time. Can’t really blame them for that. Warning: This program can make older computers run very slowly.
Quicken $39.95 – GnuCash can also handle Small Business Accounting. Another one to try is Wesabe.
Quicken-Online Alternatives – Mint.com, my favorite and it is owned by the creators of Quicken, Yodlee which also has a tax center that is powered by H&R block. Moneytrakin’ loaded slowly for me, but that could just be me. I have not used it, but it is hard to disagree with a site that southernizes its name.
