Here’s another great way to use Evernote. Every time you buy software online, you’ll get the keys delivered to you via email or through the customer panel.

In the past, I’ve been rather paranoid about these keys and always archived them safely in my email. Which of course is a good thing. But over time, I’ve found even my emails can be unreliable. How?

• If you use Gmail and lose access to it. BIG problem, Google does not make it easy to get your account back, I’ve known people who lost it all, never to regain access again.
• If you store your emails on your computer well… you know for sure things happen to your hard drive. So here, I’ll insert the obligatory reminder to backup your computer always. Even with backup, on more than one occasion, I’ve almost deleted the backup to my entire archive of emails. What can I say, I forget what’s in there sometimes because I don’t use desk top based email anymore.

Within the time span of 6 months, I’ve had to re-install Windows once and upgrade Windows once. Which meant I had to scramble to get all my software back in my computer – twice. If you’ve done it before you know this is a huge pain in the behind. But wait! It gets more fun. I needed license keys to many of them grr…

The upshot to that – I’ve started saving all my license keys in Evernote as an extra backup. It’s a lot easier for me than trying to sieve through all those emails and, I don’t have to download Thunderbird just so I can view those emails to grab the keys.

Of course, because Evernote accepts so many formats, it works for boxed software too. When I purchased my Livescribe pen, they were running a promotion where we got the handwriting to text converter software $30 value for free. Yippee! Not so good – the license key was printer on a sticker which they stuck on the box! I kept the box around for a while and last year finally tossed it out. After I took a snapshot of the key with my phone and had it uploaded to Evernote of course.

In fact – do it for all your software. A friend just told me the other day she had to buy Microsoft Office all over again because she couldn’t find the box. These software cost a lot of money. If you had to repurchase them that means less money to pay outsourcers, pay yourself or reinvest in your business. So save your investment. Evernote the keys.