So it is the end of the year. Many small business owners are looking to make a few last minute business investments before the stroke of midnight on December 31st so that the purchase makes it into their 2009 accounting. Maybe that’s you and you’re looking for some suggestions. I’ve made several tech related purchases through the year, some good some not too bad and I’ll share my experience with you.

Instant Graphics Creator. I purchased access to this because I wasn’t creative enough to come up with all those nice Web 2.0 graphics for order buttons, headlines and stuff. It has really served me well, allowing me to add a nice polished touch to sales pages in a heartbeat. It’s not all that expensive either. I just wish they’d hurry up and get the other pro graphics ready which has been promised for months.

Wishlist member plugin. This works very smoothly for creating membership sites with WordPress especially if you already have a shopping cart or order processing system like 1ShoppingCart or Clickbank. Not so great if you are only using PayPal because there is (at time of writing) no affiliate module. BUT for keeping the members content straight with multiple level and drip access it works pretty smoothly on the servers I’ve installed.

LiveScribe Pen. Yeah, I know what you’re saying, I’m not paying $150 or $200 for a pen. No pen can be worth that. Oh yeah. I didn’t think it was too but that has completely changed. 

Pretty Link Pro. Really like this WP plugin and the possibilities it provides.

Delavo. This is a huge really powerful shopping cart. Actually, with all the plugins, I’m not even sure it can be called *just* a shopping cart anymore. Delavo is the successor of Fantasos and JV Manager which I have been using for many years. I’ve added more plugins to make the system even more robust – this will give me the tools I need to put into action some of the new services I am planning for 2010. You’ll have to either subscribe to my newsletter or watch this blog closely for news about those but they are coming and a lot of it is made possible with Delavo. There’s just a ton about the system it is not quite possible to cover here. But you can check out their free ebook to find out more about it. I’ll give you fair warning. John does tend to get lengthy in his writing plus, you can expect those emails to come. However, there is a method to his madness. His messages are an acquired taste. I’ve been on his lists for years now, many of them I ignore and don’t agree with but there are gems in between.

Still Under Review is eCoverCreator. It came out just after Thanksgiving and so is fairly new. I have already some experience with it and even created BlogEnergizer’s 2010 Blogging Calendar with it. I will post a followup about the finer points on this script soon. For now, to keep it short and sweet, I like it 🙂

Well there you go! That’s my short list 🙂 If you check them out, please keep in mind that there are affiliate links used. While it may skew my favor a little bit, it doesn’t take away from my personal experiences about them which I freely share with you.

Did you find some tech gems too? Let me know what are your best tech investment of the year. I really look forward to seeing what cool stuff I’ve missed.