words Al Woods
The word freelancer evolved from freedom. Freedom to do what you want to do. Freedom to do what you are good at. Freedom to work at your own pace and time. In a work scenario, this freedom forces you to wear many hats at the same time.
Freelancers are required to manage their own finances, search for their own clients, take important decisions, hiring, etc. The demand for freelancers has increased substantially after the pandemic scenario, so is the work for freelancers. One cannot manage everything on their own. By using some of the available tools, you can manage work more effectively thus increasing your overall productivity.
Listed below are some of the tools based on their functionality:
Calendar Tools: The main challenge freelancers face is managing their time. Keeping a track of deadlines and appointments is the most important discipline one needs to follow. A calendar and scheduling is a must-have tool for freelancers.
- Google Calendar: It has features like sending alerts in advance, creating hyperlinks for notes and documents, allowing location and other details required for meetings, sharing the schedule, etc. You can also integrate Google Calendars in your timesheets to increase increase timesheet accuracy and efficiency.
- Calendly: Can be integrated with other applications to schedule meetings. It also helps you to send the link to the other party which shows the free slots available for the meeting.
Cloud Storage Tools: This tool facilitates you to access and share documents with your clients from all over the world. Commonly used tools are:
- Dropbox: Free to use software with a set storage limit. This can be installed on multiple devices for easy access. Access can be shared by sending a simple link.
- Google Drive: Free to use and most popular cloud storage app being used today. This facilitates you to provide access to the other party by sending a link. The owner can set the restrictions of providing limited access. It also facilitates real-time updations and comes along with access to other GSuite software tools.
Communication Tools: Communication is the key to success. Staying connected with your clients and contractor help you in building long term relations and getting the repeated business.
- Google Meet: As most of us have Gmail, integrating with a wide range of google tools becomes easier and more accessible. Free to use, multi-user online meeting tool is a must-have for freelancers.
- Zoom: It is the most popular and free tool being used for video conferencing. You can include up to hundred participants in one meeting.
Product Management: Having control of the projects with strong data, reports, and analytics provides you the confidence that you are on the right track. Having project management software will show the real picture in terms of progress and area of improvement.
- Trello: A simple tool to manage teams and workload without the complexity of project management resources. It has the ability to later add more advanced functionalities as plug-ins.
- Toggl: Keeps a track of how much time is spent on which client. The helps in reducing the time wasted. It also helps you to align with the requirements and keeps you focused.
Writing Tools: One of the most in-demand skills today is content writing. Effective and optimized writing from the content perspective is the need for a content writer. Using the following tools will help you improve your content:
- Grammarly: One of the best grammar checking tools available in the market. It fixes grammatical errors like punctuations, subject-verb agreement, correct sentence reframing, context-based spell-check, etc. It also has a plagiarism checking tool.
- Hemingway: This tool helps in spell-checking, correcting basic grammatical mistakes, identifies the usage of unnecessary adverbs, intimates you of complex sentence formation, etc.
Conclusion: To make your freelancer career successful, the above-mentioned tools will be helpful. Though the list mentioned above includes few tools, one can look for tools as per their needs and requirements.
