Fax Featured Article

Freelancers work in cafes, home offices and even at their kitchen tables. Keeping a fax machine on-hand is impractical in terms of both cost and space limitations. Shelling out cash to expensive retailers for sending faxes chips away at precious freelancing income. The solution? Switch to Internet fax.

With Internet fax, freelancers can send and receive sensitive documents to clients without worrying about security or bulky machinery. A fax number is assigned to your business, but instead of watching papers emerge from a machine, you can watch faxes appear in your inbox.

You can also send faxes directly from your inbox, which means no more impromptu trips to the library or to the UPS store when you need to send a fax. You appear more polished and professional, and your bank account appears more prosperous at the same time. Most Internet fax companies charge a monthly fee, although some charge a flat rate per fax sent.

Free fax companies like Faxzero will send faxes for free, but most are limited to 20 pages, and the area code that appears on the fax will not match the sender’s area code. Free companies also don’t provide the security of a paid company because you can’t restrict access to your faxes. You also can’t track their uses and ensure that your data is protected. Of course, you can’t do these things with a manual fax machine, either.

Another advantage of Internet fax is that it saves paper. You can decide which faxes need to be printed instead of throwing all of those cover pages into the recycling bin. Also, instead of creating a complex paper filing system, you can store important documents on your hard drive or on a flash drive.

For a freelancer, competing with big companies means competing with all of their amenities. With Internet fax, you can look more professional so that clients won’t think of you as small-time. They’ll have no idea that you’re sitting at your kitchen table or sipping coffee at a café while you work. Instead, they’ll picture you in a nice corner office with a desk and, of course, a shiny fax machine.