7 Tools that every Freelance Content Creator needs
Sometimes it is hard to organize your daily work as a freelance content creator. But there are some tools and apps that can help. We have summarized our seven recommendations for you.
Freelance writing comes with great freedom in how you work. But that also means that you have to organize your work yourself. Fortunately, there are a number of tools and applications that can help you with many of the tasks you have as a freelance content creator, such as time management, communication, or even producing content. Here we want to introduce seven of them to you.
1. Clockify (time management)
Clockify is a simple, browser-based time tracking tool. Clockify simply allows you to track your time for every single task. You start and stop the timer with a simple click. Additionally, you can divide your time by projects, but also by customers and have it displayed in a convenient dashboard. It is also possible to enter your individual hourly rates for a project to show you your payment.
2. Trello (work organization)
Trello is the perfect tool to organize your work according to your wishes. With Trello you can create different boards that can be customized. Each board is like a digital cord-board on your wall, which you can fill with virtual post-it’s called “cards”. Each card can be filled with a due date, a description, a checklist, and even attached files. How you design your Trelloboard is up to you. However, setups by theme have proven to be useful. Or you can organize your work by status (doing, doing next, done) or deadlines. If you want to use all the basic functions of Trello as an individual, it is free.
3. Remember The Milk (work organization)
An alternative to Trello for those who like to-do lists. Remember The Milk (or RTM for short) is available on most platforms and offers the ability to create custom to-do lists. Tasks can be given due dates or sub-tasks, as well as a priority level. At the same time, you can create recurring tasks, which will appear again and again after a specified period or at a specified time. To make sure that important tasks are not forgotten, there is an alert feature that reminds you via email or text message. The basic version of RTM is free, for advanced features $39.90 per year is due.
4. Google Drive (data storage)
Our number four actually needs almost no explanation. Google Drive is the free go-to solution when it comes to cloud-based data storage. And not only that! Google Drive synchronizes important Google tools like Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides together. So you not only get a storage solution, but also important tools for creating text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Google Drive supports the sharing of all documents you uploaded. So you can easily share your work with your clients or edit your documents simultaneously with others.
5. Grammarly (spelling and grammar)
Grammarly is a freemium tool that helps you to create texts with spelling and grammar. The most popular version of Grammarly is the free Chrome extension. With this, it is possible to check the spelling on many different media sites like WordPress, E-Mail, Social Media and even Google Docs. With the help of your Grammarly account, the app can also learn from your writing style and react more cleverly to the context. In the paid version it is also possible to get specific spelling and word recommendations for different categories like academic writing, business writing or technical writing.
6. zoom (communication)
Especially as a freelance content creator you are often far away from customers, but also from interview partners or other people who help you with your work. To hold meetings and other conversations, video telephony is indispensable. One of the best tools for that is zoom. zoom is minimalist in design, easy to use and offers great audio and video quality. Zoom is perfect for private face-to-face video calls, but also for multi-party video conferencing. Unlike Skype, you can also share your screen with the free version. At the same time, calls can be saved as local MP4 or M4A recordings.
zoom is browser-based for your conversation partners, all you have to do is send them an invitation link.
7. Forest App (focus)
One of the things that many freelance writers find hard to do is stay focused. This is especially true when you work from home. It’s easy to get tempted to check out social media with your mobile phone or surf the Internet aimlessly. Forest App helps you to stay focused in a playful way using a similar approach as the well-known Pomodoro technique. The concept is very simple: You decide how long you want to work focused and how long you want your breaks to be. At the beginning of your work, you plant a virtual tree. Every minute you work in focus, your tree gets bigger and bigger. However, if you let your mobile distract you, your tree dies. Of course, this app is more like a gimmick, but a little motivation hasn’t hurt anyone yet.
BONUS: crumbl (content distribution)
Pitching and selling your content takes a lot of time, effort and patience. Because of that, we developed crumbl to make it easier for content creators to distribute their content. Crumbl is an online marketplace where content creators can distribute their content to clients of their choice. The conditions are determined by the content creators. In contrast to the classic form of content distribution, the price of the content depends on the advertising revenue that this content generates. This means that Content Creators earn directly from the success of their articles.
Learn more on crumbl.org or convince yourself of crumbl in our closed beta.
Sign up by sending a short email to felix@crumbl.org describing your current profession and why you want to join our beta.
