Freelancer Essentials – The Tools To Take Your Business to The Next Level
Check out our tools list of freelancer essentials that will take your freelancing business to the next level.
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To uplevel your business, you need the right tools – the so-called freelancer essentials. Our list only contains the best tool for each part of freelancing you need – from time management to project management.
Chris Jones is the resident tech expert and managing director of #TurnOnVPN. #TurnOnVPN is an activist group whose mission is to promote free and unimpeded internet for all. We take part in numerous online events to advocate for a safe, secure, and censor-free Internet. Learn more at www.turnonvpn.org/blog/.
Freelancing is increasingly becoming a popular career option among creatives and professionals across various industries.
The ubiquity of the internet and the rise of the gig economy are the main factors behind the popularity of this novel working concept.
Freelancing has its perks, but the lack of resources and support available in a conventional office environment often poses an insurmountable challenge for freelancers.
But, as an aspiring freelancer, these challenges should not diminish your hopes and dreams.
There is a myriad of digital tools that can help freelancers with a wide range of tasks and functions required to keep the business running.
In this article, we give you nine freelancing tools to jumpstart your career in freelance and turn it into a successful business. These freelancing tools will help you stay organized, keep on top of deadlines, and learn how to manage yourself. Read on.
Freelancer Essentials – Productivity Tools
As a freelancer, optimizing the time you spend on projects is vital.
You will feel much stronger in your work when you use simple resources to organize your to-do lists, take notes during virtual meetings with clients, and keep track of time spent on various projects and clients.
Here are the freelancer essentials you need to skyrocket your productivity.
Organization: Trello
Trello is a freelancing app that will help you organize your tasks for the day, month, or year easily.
This useful tool helps you create task cards and lists that you can use to track the progress of your projects. You can check the task on the list when it’s complete.
In addition to helping you manage individual tasks; Trello can also be used to manage teams in collaborative efforts. Trello is available for free.
Time Management: Toggl
Time is a valuable resource in business. Keeping track of time helps improve productivity.
Toggl is quite possible the best time tracking tool in freelancing. It allows freelancers to monitor their hourly work.
This web-based time tracking tool eliminates time-wasting and helps you get things done within the set deadlines. With Toggl, freelancers can track time with any device and create charts detailing what time was spent on a particular project.
Prioritizing: Todoist
Todoist keeps you productive by helping you keep track of the tasks at hand, prioritize which ones are important and urgent and manage your week ahead.
This resourceful tool will never let you miss a task. When you are done with a task, you can easily check to see what’s next and when within the application.
Todoist makes tasks such as coordinating deadlines, managing projects and tallying tasks a breeze.
Freelancer Essentials – Project Management Tools
Another freelancer essential is the ability to manage your projects, which can be a challenge when you’re a freelancer. Using haphazard notes and a chain of emails to manage your projects is a sure way to fail your clients. You can easily lose track of when deliveries are due and what you owe the clients.
Use these freelancing tools to manage your projects effectively.
Asana
Asana is the ideal project management tool for freelancers working in a collaborative effort. It’s an excellent tool for managing entire teams.
Asana will help you organize the team’s conversations and tasks in one area that’s easy to access.
This project management tool keeps everything in one area, thus bringing organization to your projects. A high level of organization keeps your team on track and helps you serve your clients better.
Bonsai
Bonsai is a full freelancing suite that started as an invoicing tool but which has evolved to the point where it can now also help you create contracts and e-sign them.
This freelancing tool has everything you need to complete your freelance project. Bonsai helps you keep track of your projects and when you’re done, it sends invoices when you’re done.
The app promises to help you manage your project on autopilot. Having Bonsai in your arsenal of freelancing tools is almost like having an assistant.
FunctionFox
FunctionFox is an all-encompassing project management tool with a customizable dashboard, one of its most interesting features.
The app’s main objective is to help freelancers stick to deadlines, stay on budget, and organize their projects.
FunctionFox features a beautifully designed, easy to use interface to help you manage your freelance projects with ease. There’s no free version but you can use the trial version for two weeks to see if you like it.
Freelancer Essentials – Communication Tools
As a freelancer, you need to stay in touch with your clients. Using strong, consistent communication channels will help you communicate in your own time with minimal distractions.
Here are the freelancer essentials that will ensure the kind of smooth communication that will optimize your workload and build trust with your clients.
Email Alternative: Slack
Slack is a popular communication tool that has revolutionized the way we convey information.
Slack is ideal for freelancers working collaboratively with a group of clients or colleagues.
The app allows you to create group chats, make conversations private, make chats private, and talk directly to any individual in a group chat.
Email: Gmail
Your arsenal of communication tools is incomplete without email.
Google’s Gmail pulls in emails from various domains, and it’s free.
Have separate Gmail accounts for work and personal use. You can create a customized, more professional email address for your business. You can even have separate email addresses for different types of projects or clients.
Data Security: VPN
Last but not least, you need a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to protect your clients’ data. Part of being a freelancer is having a borderless lifestyle. As a freelancer, you’ll be using free public Wi-Fi quite often, which will expose you to cyberthreats such as MITM attacks. You can use a VPN for improved security.
A VPN can encrypt your data and protect against these risks. When travelling, you can use a VPN to unblock sites that may be restricted in your destination to ensure that you keep working on the move.
Freelancer Essentials – The Tools To Take Your Business to The Next Level
Freelancing is the latest trend in the labour market.
As a freelancer, you are not spared from the challenges of running a business. Being sole proprietors, freelancers assume all the functions of the business.
Running a business by yourself can be exhausting.
Luckily, there is a wide range of digital tools that are freelancers essentials and are designed to help you with various tasks required to keep the business running. Use these powerful tools to manage yourself, improve productivity, and take your freelancing business to the next level.
