A freelancer’s job can prove as hectic as any other profession, even more so when you consider all the documents, images, passwords, conversations, instructions etc that the freelancer must store and keep track of.
Over the years keeping track of all that goes on within this profession has become somewhat easier with the introduction of a plethora of online tools. Services like Dropbox and Box have made it easier to access documents on the move, and other services such as Plaxo have given us the opportunity to merge all of our contacts from various services and access them on the go through a variety of devices.
In this post you'll find a useful list of online tools that you can use to help organise and track your daily freelancing life. Also included are some websites that offer you free downloads such as PSD files, brushes and icons to help speed up the creative process of your work.
Communication Tools
Plaxo
Plaxo allows you to store your contacts details from across a wide range of services including your phone and social networks.
Vyew
Vyew allows you to share your files between a selected group of individuals who may also contribute to the group with their own files.
YourAM
YourAM is an appointment manager that notifies you when your next meeting is scheduled.
Highrise
Store all conversations, documents and emails that have been made between yourself and your client and never forget again!
Ofuz
Store contact details, collaborate on projects and follow up on your leads with Ofuz.
Finance Tools
Blinksale
Send invoices and process payments easily with Blinksale.
FreeAgent
Manage your books and accounts the easy way with FreeAgent.
Invoicing Machine
The Invoicing Machine’s easy to use interface helps freelancers manage, create and send their invoices.
LessAccounting
Add your bank account and import your expenses and keep track of your money with LessAccounting.
Ronin
Ronin is a simple online invoicing and time tracking tool for small business and freelancers.
Portfolio Tools
Behance
Create your portfolio on Behance and make contact with other creatives on the Behance network.
Carbonmade
Carbonmade is a simple to use and feature full portfolio service for creatives.
Dribbble
Dribbble is show and tell for creatives to present their work with small bitesize screenshots.
Shadowness
Shadowness is a simple tool to help designers and artists connect and share their work together.
Viewbook
ViewBook allows you to create your own portfolio and control the presentation of your work on the web and mobile.
Storage Tools
BackBlaze
BackBlaze offers unlimited storage to help keep a backup of your documents.
Box
Store and share your files securely with Box. The Box iPhone and iPad app make it even easier to share files!
Dropbox
A favourite amoungst freelancers. Dropbox allows you to share and store files through a folder on your computer.
Mozy
Backing up your files is safe and secure with Mozy. Choose from a home or business package.
Zoho
Save and access your files online with Zoho Docs. It also allows real-time chat and collaboration with other users.
Graphical Tools
Icon Finder
Search through thousands of free icons available for download on IconFinder.
Free Photoshop Download
Search through high quality Photoshop resources available to download for free including templates, buttons and more.
DeviantArt
DeviantArt is one of the internet’s largest design communities. Especially useful for designers, is their resources and stock images category.
Vecteezy
Vecteezy is a community for vector artists to create and share free vector graphics.
Brush King
Select from hundreds of free brushes for Photoshop to use for your designs.
Conclusion
With thanks to the many developers and contributors from around the web, we can use the tools and resources that they have provided for us to help streamline our daily activities. We can improve the efficiency and quality of our work by utilizing these tools and making the most of them. Another important feature of any freelancer’s life, is the ability to access the information that is important to us from anywhere in the world, many of these tools will allow you to do this and help us further increase our mobility.
Feel free to share any tools or resources that you think may help other freelancers out there.
Very useful stuff. Particularly like icon finder and freephotoshopdownloads. Definitely going to be using them in the future!
Tom
Some of them maybe.
What about your accounting? You like having it on an server of somebody?
You would never give it to a friend but, yes to someone anonymus somewhere...sounds not very clever to me...
Thanks Tom!
Impressive collection of tools you have posted. Thanks for share.
Our agency recently moved from Subversion to Box for our binary/design file storage (and GIT for site files) and it's worked pretty well so far. The beta Mac app lets you sync from the desktop and has a lot of potential. It gives quite a bit more control than Dropbox (though many of us still use Dropbox for fast, off-the-cuff transfers, myself included).
The biggest feature Box offers is allowing users to elect to sync only specific folders from the cloud to the desktop, which makes the possibility of using it as an agency file storage tool possible (who wants to sync and entire company's worth of files every time you open your computer). The initial import is obviously a huge pain but after that syncing is relatively quick. Crashes every now and then, but that's to be expected with a beta I guess.
Anyway, it's going good thus far, I'd definitely recommend a try if your looking for a storage/sharing solution.
Awesome list. One of the best lists i have ever seen. Thanks a lot for sharing. I would also suggest couple things related to css : cool css3 generator : http://www.css3.me and css merger and minifier : http://www.zbugs.com
How about this for Finance Tools:
it's not online (runs on your desktop) but worth a look for creating and sending invoices and quotes.
Receive all future software updates free. No monthly fees.
Runs on, Mac, P.C. & Linux
http://bee-software.net/invoice-software/
Thanks for this,
obiously the others here do not care about the safeness of their account-date.
Sorry, but I really think that you simply choose everything that looks good.
Regards, Dave
Thanks for the tool list! I will try some of the Graphical Tools.
This is a great collection of tools. Thanks for taking out time and composing such a great post that helped me a lot and I am sure will help others too. Free Photoshop Download, its an amazing tool.. Thanks again!!!
Wow, what a list. All of these tools are helpful, and I love all the websites you mentioned for the portfolio section. I recently found out about Shadowness, and boy am I in love!
Impressive list is in here. As to me, it's quite full as well.
Also I'm wondering to know whether someone was dealing with Blinksale. Really curious, is it reliable enough?
Thank You! If Someone Wants To Use DropBox, Here Is A Direct Link: http://b21.in/al
Thanks for this great post...quite useful for all designers. Hope they would love using these tools.. I would also recommend you to include http://www.invoicera.com in your list, it is an online invoicing application that supports almost all the advanced features like multiple currency & language support, multiple payment gateways support (20 Global Payment Gateway), invoice/estimate template customization feature, late fee and invoice scheduling option and many more. Hope designers would find this tool useful for their freelance business.
Very nice collection! Wasn't aware of some of the resources listed, so I'll definitely give them a try. Thanks!
Great post, been looking for a good collection of links like these
Thanks
You need to try http://webarti.com/best-CSS3-button-maker/ too. This is a new CSS3 tool that allows you to create stylish buttons, boxes etc. I think, it deserves to be listed in this collection.
I was looking for simple invoicing and tried Ronin and i loved it.Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for this list! Especially the communication tools are interesting for me.