As a freelancer, you are looking to save money and time, while trying to get as much business as you can. Delivering quality work to clients, that is also on time, becomes a challenge for most freelancers who are always in search for newer more effective tools for business. Cloud based tools have really helped the freelancing profession in a big way.
According to some studies 34 percent of the working people in the United States are freelancers. This number is expected to grow to 50% by the year 2020. Even employers are embracing this trend and using a variety of tools to manage freelancers. The trend even shows larger companies not shying away from hiring freelancers and ensuring there are proper systems to manage them. Online tools don’t just help freelancers become more efficient, but also companies to manage them better.
Here is list of some of most popular tools that are helping the freelance profession grow.
Invoicera is an awesome tool for all kinds of freelancers – photographers, consultants, graphic designers and lawyers etc. The tool provides a host of interesting features. These include online invoicing, invoice scheduling, time tracking and task management.
Pixabay is a cool free image site. The site offers images in various sizes, to be downloaded for free and can be used for commercial purposes. The tool is very useful for freelance designers and social media professionals looking for free images for their designs.
WeTransfer This is one of the best online tools to send large files to your clients. It is a free tool and helps you send files of upto 20GB with great simplicity. The tool offers ‘no expiration’ and social shareability features. The tool is a great help for freelancers, specially designers who have to send large files to clients regularly.
Google Drive This is one of the most popular tools for freelancers and businesses. The tool allows free sharing and storage of files on the cloud. You can easily create documents, spreadsheets and presentations using this free to use app from Google. The tool has some amazing features like auto save which really help improve productivity.
Canva is one of coolest tools for designers and marketing professionals. The tool helps in creation of images for all kinds of collaterals that you wish to design. These range from e-mailers to posters and designs for social media and blogs posts. It is a free tool and lets you download your images as JPG or PDF files.
Hoostsuite is one of the must have apps for marketing consultants. The web app lets you easily share and schedule posts on multiple social media platforms in one go. It really helps in hastening and simplifying social media marketing for business.
Skype is a must have tool for all freelancers. The tool is a free chat and video platform that allows you to communicate with existing and potential customers.
WordPress is a CMS that makes website building a cakewalk. As a freelancer, it’s a must to have your own website, to showcase your work and skills. WordPress is a free CMS which helps creating an SEO friendly website with great simplicity.
Hostt As a freelancer you are looking to manage your business in the most cost effective way. Hostt is one platform that helps you do that with great ease. The platform provides free hosting services for your freelance business website.
Editorial Calendar If you are a blogger and wish to improve the efficiency of the work you do, you must try this free WordPress plugin. You can manage/edit your content calendar using this simple tool and perform your blogging activities in a planned way.
Mailchimp is an easy to use bulk email software. The basic plan in this tool is absolutely free and allows you to send 12000 e-mailers in a month and add up to 2000 subscribers. The tool also provides a template builders to easily create your own email designs.
Google Fonts Having only a few fonts to work with, on your designs can be really painful. This is a free platform that provides a variety of fonts to choose from. You can easily add these fonts to your website.
Wridea is a free tool for bloggers and writers. It helps in sharing and listing of content ideas. The platform also helps in commenting on ideas and brainstorming on them.
Coroflot is the ultimate platform for designers. It helps them create portfolios find work and get inspired. It’s a must visit resource for freelance designers.
Flaticon This is another free resource for graphic designers. The website provides a large database of free vectors that can be downloaded in various file formats. It also provides an Adobe extension to directly download vectors and icons into your design software.
Buzzsumo is a free content research tool for freelance marketing consultants. The tool helps in analyzing the content shared by competitors and creating a content marketing plan accordingly. The tool helps in doing research on trending content, creating a robust content strategy for your business.
Hemingwayapp The tool is meant for freelancers who wish to improve the quality of their writing assignments. The editing tool helps in highlighting common errors including long and complex sentences. It is a paid desktop app available for Mac and Windows.
Upwork is a place to find freelance work for designers, writers and programmers. The platform helps freelancers to bid for projects globally and find freelance work of their choice.
Similar Web A really helpful tool for freelance marketing consultants, Similar Web helps in traffic comparison with competing websites. The tool provides website ranking and a host of other features that help in planning internet marketing efforts.
SEO Site Checkup This is another free tool for freelance SEO professionals. The app helps in giving you a complete SEO audit for your website and do the necessary fixes.
Freepik is another great resource for designers and developers. The website offers a range of stuff like vectors, illustration and images. It is a free platform and the collection is truly amazing.
Snipplr is a very useful code library for developers to store their code snippets in one place. These can be shared with others working on the project.
isfiddle is a platform for writing code and sharing it with co-developers. The code can be easily saved or used in the app for which it is being written.
Mailstorm is a very useful tool for all kinds of freelancers. As a freelancer, you are usually struggling with deleting and managing your email messages. This tool helps in cleaning up your inbox in minutes.
Evanto is freelancing platform for creative professionals. The site is marketplace for digital products which connects professionals and companies. As a freelancer, you can create your own business on Evanto and put up items on sale, over here.
Freelancing success requires smart use of tools and resources to deliver quick results to clients and build better relationships with them. In this series we shall keep updating you more about how you can get more out of your freelancing business. Do share you feedback and comments with us.
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Veronika Tondon is a business enthusiast with extensive experience in Invoicing & Payment Process. She has 6+ years of experience in Invoicera, the leading cloud-based invoicing solution as Invoicing Consultant. Sound knowledge in business process execution, offers end to end solutions for complete automation of business processes and AR/AP processes. Contact Veronica for your invoicing requirement.