A Worthy Freelance Kit For 2019

It’s hard to travel far without a passport; it’s also hard to freelance without the proper tools. Have you ever spent hours fixing or building something only to have someone show you how to fix it immediately with the right tool? If so, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Here are the tools that make freelancing easier. Details and alternative tools are shown below list.
(Recommendations are based on our personal use and community feedback)

Our Worthy Freelance Tool Kit

Time Tracking: Toggl
Extensions: Grammarly, Linked Helper, Leads Extractor
Communities: Join your industry-specific Slack group, Facebook group, Discord group, and Reddit group.
Marketing: Leadpages.net, BAMF Facebook Marketing Group
Automation: Zapier
Book: Creative, Inc. The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business
Course: Learning How To Learn
Survey Software: Typeform
Scheduling: Calendly
Invoicing, Estimates, & Accounting: Wave
Proposals, Project Management, & CRM: Plutio
Phone VOIP Provider: Nextiva
Web Hosting: MDD Hosting

We realize that many of you aren’t willing to spend the extra cash to use these tools; we’ve been there and we get it. Most of these services have a free trial, so check them out to see if they’re actually worth it for you.

TIME TRACKING

Toggl won us over by being ridiculously easy to use; starting, stopping, plugging in projects, running reports, and so on. Toggl is free for what most freelancers need. If you would like to generate an invoice at the click of a button then you’ll have to upgrade to the paid version. We find it useful to use different invoice/accounting software side by side with Toggl to keep costs low. Alternatives: TopTracker, Timely, Harvest, Due Time Tracker, RescueTime

EXTENSIONS

Covering your grammar basics is a must. Aside from spell check, Grammarly ensures you’re adding your commas, using the right words, and formatting your communication properly. It’s free so it’s pretty much a no-brainer for anyone who deals with clients…. Grammarly just reminded me to add a “-” to “no-brainer”.

LinkedHelper allows you to automate your LinkedIn browsing, following, & engagement. It’s an easy way to put yourself in front of narrowly targeted clients and engage them while you’re working on other projects.

Leads Extractor is another growth-hack extension used to easily grab the FB group member information so you can easily find and engage potential clients that identify with groups. Without this extension, you would have to manually scroll through the member list and copy/paste each bit of info. No thanks.

COMMUNITIES

Slack, Facebook, Discord, & Reddit make up the majority of the freelance community. Getting involved with these communities will allow you to contribute and in turn, earn referrals to new jobs. If you need questions answered, help on a project, or feedback on a product, you can be sure to find a home somewhere on these platforms. These communities can be the best tool in your arsenal. Lastly, freelancing can get lonely; make sure you have a support network so you don’t lose your mind.

MARKETING

Leadpages allows you to test your offering via landing pages. It’s incredibly simple; each landing page template has been tested to drive high conversion rates. If you’ve been going at this long enough then you know that each persona deserves a different landing page with different ad copy. Unfortunately, Leadpages is a bit pricey so give the free trial a run to see if it’s worth it for you. Alternatives: Unbounce, Instapage, GetResponse

BAMF Facebook Marketing Group is one of the few marketing groups that give you cutting edge marketing tactics on a daily basis. It would be shocking if you didn’t improve your marketing game after one day of reading through their posts. Check them out!

AUTOMATION

Zapier allows you to connect applications together so they work together; they ease the pain of running sooo many different pieces of software. Zapier has over 1,300 app integrations which means that you can probably find a way to save time by using it. We receive Typeform submissions that get “ZAPPED” into our Googe spreadsheets for easy organization. It helps us get things done.

BOOK

Creative, Inc. by Meg Mateo Ilasco & Joy Deangdeelert Cho is a super useful guide to almost every aspect of becoming a successful freelancer. They cover portfolio creation, promoting your work, networking, setting your rate, goal setting, bookkeeping, licensing, growth, and even giving yourself a vacation. It’s a must read if you’re just getting started! Alternatives: The Well-Fed Writer, The Renegade Writer, Stop Thinking Like a Freelancer, The Freelancer’s Bible

COURSE

Learning How To Learn is a course everyone can benefit from; it teaches you how to retain knowledge. Who doesn’t want to be able to retain the knowledge you spend so much time trying to obtain? The course is relatively short and engaging, so don’t worry about it boring you to death. At the end of the course, you’ll have the increased capacity needed to take your skills to the next level.

SURVEY SOFTWARE

Typeform kills it in the survey realm; their surveys give you the feel of actually talking to someone when you’re filling it out. The UI is great, it’s easy to use, it’s free, and it integrates with Zapier to make everything all the easier. Use this to send clients feedback forms to ensure you’re always improving your skills. Alternatives: Fieldboom, Survey Monkey, GetFeedback, Survey Gizmo, Wufoo, AskNicely.

SCHEDULING

Calendly allows you to schedule appointments with clients without the back and forth. Send your clients a link and they can see your availability, schedule accordingly, and send you a notification automatically. In addition, Calendly allows you to connect a Stripe account which allows you to take deposits for appointments or meetings just in case you get stiffed :/ Alternatives: Timekit, Freebusy, TimeQube

INVOICING, ESTIMATES, & ACCOUNTING

The best thing about Wave is that it’s free and it does almost everything you need it to do on the accounting side of things. There are a few nits here and there, but overall we feel like Wave is perfect to set up invoices, take payments, and keep your books clean. Alternatives: Freshbooks, Xero, Quickbooks (Self-Employed)

PROPOSALS & PROJECT MANAGEMENT

We like Plutio because they are fast becoming the one stop shop for freelance needs. Their proposals are, clean, professional, and super easy to create. In the beginning, they didn’t have as many templates as we would have liked but they’re always improving. In addition to proposals, time-tracking, and invoicing, Plutio has put together a decent Project Management & CRM tool. The Project Management tool allows you to customize the way you work on projects, complete tasks, and work with people. Plutio has basic your CRM capabilities but handles your contracts beautifully. Check them out. Alternatives: HelloBonsai

PHONE VOIP PROVIDER

You may not need a phone carrier for your business, but if you decide to go that route then check out Nextiva. They were built to support virtual teams (aka freelancers). Their service is inexpensive, extremely reliable, and all cloud-based. Alternatives: RingCentral, Vonage

WEB HOSTING

MDD Hosting starts you out at $4 a month which is hard to beat when considering that they give you cloud hosting with unlimited domains and unlimited bandwidth. They claim 1,000% up-time and give you the ability to scale if that suits your path :) Alternatives: Nativespace, Hostinger, MochaHost

That’s it! I hope this upped your toolkit game!

Happy Freelancing

-Freelancers @ zaaas.io