8 Most Useful Tools Every Freelance Worker Should Know

For the last couple of years, the phenomenon of freelancing as a convenient way of making money and realizing one’s talents has skyrocketed. Yes, freelancing has become one of the most popular and widely applied working practices of the IT era, giving people an unprecedented range of opportunities for broadening their professional and personal horizons.

Being a freelancer today means having unrestrained independence in your professional commitments as well as the freedom of choosing work. You may find work on any field among hundreds represented on freelance platforms. It is very convenient for students who want to increase their additional income. They may work in a narrow field of familiar discipline, or write college works as essay writers and provide experienced assistance to other students. Irrevocably, this groundbreaking practice has reshaped the traditional model of employment and ruined the global misconception about it.

And, as a flexible medium for realizing your professional aspirations, freelancing can’t but encompass a plethora of intricacies, along with requirements you should follow in order to establish yourself as a successful independent contractor. In this freelance-inspired article, we will introduce you to the essential tools you need to make your work process flow with ease!

1. Note Taking

The freelancing practice is complex by nature, requiring your mind to store a great deal of important information. For this reason, developing a habit of noting this information will help you handle tons of data. As one of the most freelancer-oriented and effective note-taking tools, the Evernote app is based on cloud storage, which allows you to keep at hand your files and documents. And if you want to make your data in this app more organized and well-structured, you can use checklists and tags that this application offers you. Another notable feature that this app has is enabling the user to make screenshots of docs.

2. Editable Document Storage

By using this innovative tool, you can store and share you documents within the cloud and thus communicate with your team members. The most popular document storage service by far is Google Drive, where you can store photos, documents, spreadsheets, and other files to edit and share. The straightforward file storage and synchronization mechanisms of this service allow users to easily upload their files, exchange them with each other, and make necessary corrections. For a freelancer who is too preoccupied to always remember to save their documents using an ordinary non-online tool, Google Drive is the best option that will optimize their work, making their freelance routine less hectic and thorny.

3. Invoicing

Perhaps, the biggest pain of each freelancer is having trouble receiving invoices on time. Freshbooks is a user-oriented invoicing software that will allow you to create professional invoices based on templates as well as use other features to simplify accounting.

4. Shareable Calendars

Employing an online calendar in your work will make it easier for you to schedule appointments, deadlines, conferences, and other tasks, which is extremely useful for freelancers working in the field of consulting. Most independent contractors prefer Google Calendar.

5. Website and App Blockers

There’s hardly an internet user who isn’t bothered by ubiquitous ads. And one can imagine how infuriating this must be to a person who surfs the web mostly for business purposes. According to many freelancers, their biggest distraction when working are annoying ads and the widgets of the websites they visit most often. But the remedy for intrusive ads is offered by cutting-edge apps! These ad blockers are designed to cut a user’s access to advertisements. As one of these heroic apps, Self-Control will prevent any loathsome ad from popping up on your work-fueled display and let you immerse yourself in your freelance abode.

6. PayPal

Devised in 1998 by the tech mastermind who later made the world question the use of fossil fuel, this worldwide payments system is the top choice for every freelancer. PayPal is an incredible tool for handling online money transfers and subscriptions. All you need to do to get your virtual payment operations going is create an account, which can be accessed by up to 200 people. This legendary payment system also provides you with the options to accept a debit card and credit card for a low transaction fee.

7. SlideShare

This Linkedin product is a powerful presentation tool enabling users to create a brilliant presentation in a smooth way. This app allows you to engage the viewer by integrating video or voiceover in your project.

8. Hootsuite

The superiority of social media requires users boasting more than one account to be hyper-attentive and super-focused. And here’s the perfect solution to dealing with an avalanche of your social media “selves” – the Hootsuite app provides users with the options to manage these accounts, being omnipresent in each of their social networking accounts.

To Wrap Up

Being a freelancer is a fascinating yet quite overwhelming venture that brings a great number of complexities and challenges. But, no matter how poorly studied and biasedly approached this phenomenon may be, freelancing is now having its heyday, and it is widely adopted by forward-thinking individuals who don’t like the idea of tying themselves down to the classic office routine. Instead, they choose to explore the brand-new avenues of acquiring and enhancing their expertise in IT. And these essentials of every creative and self-driven freelancer we have covered in our article will help them effortlessly make their way to the top of their professional objectives!