The World Wide Web offers a wide range of websites; blogs, tools and resources that can help a freelancer improve his productivity and business online. We have compiled a huge list of useful resources and tools, hoping you can make use of all or some of them.
Essential Tools for Freelance Writers
1. Keynote - This freeware note-taking and outlining text editor for Windows operating system helps you organize your research notes by including many separate notes within a single file.
2. WhiteSmoke- It is an innovative English grammar and proofreading software that automatically works with MS Word, Outlook, and all other text-based applications.
3. Google Docs - It is a free online word processor that enables users to create and edit online documents quickly while still in touch with other users.
4. Ziney Pro - It improves the quality of your write-ups by 30—50% and saves your time in formatting your newsletters, articles etc.
5. Picnik- This free software crops, resizes, rotates, fixes and adds amazing special effects to the images.
Useful Blogs for Freelance Bloggers
6. MenWithPens –The world’s no. 2 best blog site for writers, this website can lend you some really useful tips for effective blogging and becoming a successful freelancer thereon.
7. SmashingMagazine –It has a huge database of creative designs that can really magnify your horizon of thoughts.
8. FreelanceFolder –With more than 13, 000 subscribers, is a multi-authored blog, especially to help freelancers and all those, who wish to work independently and establish themselves online.
9. Noupe –It is a design weblog that gives a deep insight into the technical know-how and caters to all the requirements of web designers and web developers.
10. 43Folders —This website provides innovative ideas about finding time and tricks to come up with excellent work results.
Web Publishing Tools for Bloggers
11. WordPress- It is the most popular self-hosted blogging tool, which is easy to install and maintain. It provides a large number of plug-ins and features such as templates, themes, visual content editor, spam protection, user registration, pingbacks, password security etc.
12. TypePad – It has a huge list of features inclusive of customizing your blog design; adding content, pictures, links, and media files; blog from your iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm etc; creating podcasts, adding web pages & widgets etc.
13. Blogger - This is an easy-to-use blogging platform that allows you to keep a track on visitors, page views, and other important metrics. It provides features like spell checker, customizing fonts and colors, customization of templates, simple-to-use interface, HTML editor etc.
14. Expression Engine- It is an ideal platform for running multiple sites, irrespective of number of domains you wish to run on. It has a good range of features such as spam deterrents, trackbacks, member management, multi-user system, search engine query tools, comment moderation, expiration and pagination , data caching, security etc.
Useful Firefox Plugins for Designers
15. Firebug - It allows you to examine and analyze that your HTML, CSS, Script, DOM and Net are working properly or not. It also helps in editing, debugging, and monitoring CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
16. Colorzilla - Using Colorzilla, you can use any color you want, adjust it and paste it into any other program. It saves time and is useful for checking hex values, investigating DOM elements etc.
17. Fireshot -This helps you take screen shots of entire web pages or a specific part to capture. It can be modified by adding text or graphics and can be uploaded to the server or saved to the disk.
18. Greasemonkey-It allows you to add scripts that alter the web pages you browse through. It lets you apply custom Javascripts to pages within your browser.
19.MeasureIt- It allows you to verify width, height and alignment of different elements on the page.
20. JS View- Using JS view, you can easily open a file with just a click of a mouse. You can get this from the context menu, from the toolbar, from the view menu, or from the status bar.
21. ImageBot- You can upload your images to a free image hosting service (ImageShack or Photobucket). It allows you to classify, filter and make image galleries etc.
22. Font Finder- It can show details regarding the selected text color, font, spacing and other creative additions.
23. Window Resizer- It helps you see how your page looks like in standard resolution sizes, supports the 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1600×1200 resolutions.
24. Fire FTP - Upload your files and also try its advanced features such as: directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SFTP, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing etc.
Useful websites to Search & Get Stock Photos
25. Istockphoto -With more than 4.5 million of photos, illustrations, videos and audios contributed by 70, 000 artists from across the globe. Istock photo is one of the commonly used images downloading websites.
26. Gettyimages- They provide extensive range of images and stock illustration offering rights managed and royalty free creative images with latest editorial coverage including news, sport and celebrity photos.
27. Freerangestock – The site provides high-quality, high- resolution free stock photos and free textures submitted by talented photographers, shot by Freerange Stock, and collected from Freerange archives.
28. Stock.XCHNG- Browse through a huge photo gallery containing over 350, 000 quality stock photos submitted by more than 30,000 photographers. The images are contributed by big and small photographers and it privileges many new contributors to add their own photographs to the site.
29. Everystockphoto -You can search for millions of licensed photos for free. You can view a photo’s license by clicking on the license icon, below and left side of the photos.
30. Freedigitalphotos.net-Thousands of royalty free photos for websites, newspapers, magazines,video, TV productions, iPhone applications, forums and blogs. Every image is free, with an option to buy high resolution versions for print or graphic design requirement.
31. Stockvault.net-It is a free image bank with “ready to use” web layouts and logos to help those who can’t afford to download images from royalty-free agencies.
32. Shutterstock- It offers 7, 009, 532 royalty-free stock photographs, illustrations, and vectors, out of which 67, 256 new stock photos added this week contributed by 169, 061 photographers.
33. FreeFoto-The site offers 1, 25, 724 images with 166 sections organized into 3,444 categories. It also features exclusive images, which are added on a weekly basis.
34. Public domain Photos- This site offers 5,000 free images, 80, 000 free cliparts, which are placed under public domain category. You can use them for any purpose including commercial.
Useful Free Resources for Designers
35. Web Design Library-This one-stop resource updates you with the latest technological innovations in design industry and sets web design standards by rewarding the best web design solutions.
36. CSS Beauty-It serves as an effective platform for designer community wherein global designers show their creative abilities by submitting their CSS based websites giving budding designers lots of inspiration and creative design ideas.
37. UrbanFonts - One of the top 50,000 sites in the world, Urbanfonts is a well-designed and easy-to-use free font website with over 8,000 freeware fonts and dingbats (characters or spacers used in typesetting), which can be downloaded.
38. Brusheezy -Brusheezy is a great creative destination for you that offers you a huge collection of the best custom Photoshop Brushes and Photoshop patterns on the Web. These can be easily downloaded and you can even upload your own patters on the website.
39. Pixel2Life- It is the biggest tutorial index on the Web, has 40,000+ registered members and addresses all creative requirements of graphic designers, webmasters etc. From Photoshop to C++, this website lists over 50,000 tutorials in varied 88 categories and gives you additional resources such as code gallery, programming script, articles, hardware reviews, free images etc.
40. Hot Scripts- Hot Scripts, a comprehensive Web directory, entails a long list of over 44,000 web development and programming-related online resources in 1000+ categories that address the creative needs of coders, marketers, programmers, webmasters etc. across the globe.
41. IconFinder- It is a simple software program that enables you to look for and extract icon resources in separate files. You to browse through 159 icon sets and even refine your search by pixel size thereby providing you with high-quality icons for your blogs, websites etc. in a quick and effective fashion.
42. BgPaterrns- It is a free web-based application for web designers & developers, enables you to screen a vast range of eye-catching background patterns, backgrounds & textures and then craft a fast design tiled pattern, backgrounds etc.
43. WebAppers – Here you can get some of the best free icons, stock photos, brushes, fonts and design inspirations. If you are developing a website you can find some of the best Javascript and Ajax components like modal windows, menus, galleries, tool tips, charts,calendars plugins etc.
Useful Design Applications
44. Adobe Photoshop – Counted as an industry standard for design professionals, this pixel drawing program is used to edit and manipulates images such as adding graphic elements, removing scratches, blemishes, color correction etc.
45. Quark Express- Quark Express facilitates creation and editing of complex page layouts in 37 international languages including English, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish etc.
46. Microsoft Expression Studio- Microsoft Expression Studio, a creative suit of design and media applications, enables creation of convincing and eye-catching designs for the Internet and desktop. The application is inclusive of run-on-the-mill technologies such as Silverlight and .NET.
47. Adobe Illustrator-A vector graphics editor, Adobe Illustrator allows crafting neat and clean artwork and creation of logos, brochures, catalogs, cartoons, stationery, posters and print work.
48. Adobe Flash- Also called as Macromedia Flash, this multimedia platform is used by the designers to come up with visually appealing animation, web page elements, adding videos into web pages, animations, varied online applications etc.
Social Networking Tools for Freelancers
49. LinkedIn- It is a business-oriented social networking website that allows you to connect with professionals across varied domains, create business contacts, search projects and promote your skill set effectively.
50. Ping.fm- This “multicast” site is a time saver for social media aspirants like you as it facilitates to update your blogs, micro-blogs all at once.
51. Shozu Desktop - You can use this great application to share photos, videos on your system across 30+ networks in a single click.
52. TweetDeck- A favorite among Twitter friends, TweetDeck is a personal browser that helps you keep in touch with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook etc.
53. SlideShare - It is a great tool in the networking kit and the world’s largest community for sharing your slides (Powerpoint, OpenOffice or PDF files) on the web so that you can share your ideas with a wider audience.
54. Xing –This website offers you a professional contact manager, who organizes your business contacts and colleagues. In addition, using Business Accelerator application you can find global professionals on the single click of mouse, promote your profile and skill set effectively.
55. Ecademy – A great social networking website that enables professionals worldwide to connect with each other through its message chat boards, blogs, online network and membership programs lending exclusive benefits to its users.
Popular Forums For Freelancers
56. TalkFreelance –A decent forum to discuss the art and technique of effective web designing, web programming, search engine optimization (SEO), HTML, PHP, CSS, database and all intricacies related to great web designing.
57. FreelanceWriting Forum —The forum focuses on topics related to the field of writing and freelancing, where people share, guide and provide help to freelance writers.
58. FreelanceSwitch Forum –This forum is quite popular among web designers and web developers wherein you can ask questions, chat and interact with the community.
59. WhyDoWork – This is a very popular forum to share your ambitions, insights and any problem that you come across in your day-today project execution.
60. Designers Talk –It’s a great website to share and get innovative ideas on web & graphic design that would enhance creativity and help you in showcasing your talent to the world.
Payments & Security tools For Freelancers
61. Moneybookers - You can easily link your bank account online with Moneybookers’ account and can even withdraw your money directly onto your Credit Card OR Ask for a paper cheque.
62. Escrow – Escrow is a good way you can protect yourself against any fraud. It is equally beneficial for buyers as well as service providers since the interest of both the parties is efficiently taken care of.
63. PayPal –A freelancer can easily get access to fund transfer, send and withdraw information online via email. In addition, a normal bank account is required to receive the funds and also a credit card is needed to secure the PayPal account. Both these are traceable.
64. Cloudmark Desktop – A simple, fast and economical toolbar with best spam-blocking accuracy rate in the industry automatically safeguards your Outlook Inbox from viruses, phishing and spams.
65. Spamato – It is an extendable spam filter system that keeps your business email safe and secure and on detecting a spam messages, it moves the message to a special ‘junk mail’ folder.
Time Tracking Tools for Freelancers
66. Toggl.com – This is important for providers who work on hourly basis. It helps you track time spent on a different projects. You can give access to your customers or invite new members to your workspace.
67. GetHarvest -Designed for SMBs, harvest helps you track time, log expenses on different projects of different clients from anywhere. It also allows you to get graphical reports to see the distribution of your company’s resources.
68. Google Calendar -Schedule and keep a track of important issues at one place. You can share your schedule with your clients; customizable reminders to get notified via email, SMS or desktop alert.
69. Tickspot- It helps you to keep track of your time spent on a project and even get an idea about the consumed project budget.
70. Todoist – It has an inbuilt calendar wherein you can set due dates on your tasks and get overview of what needs to get done today or tomorrow.
Online Billing and Invoicing Tools for Freelancers
71. Billing Manager- It is a free-of-cost invoicing tool using which you can create multiple customized, professional invoices and send them via email. You can also keep a track of your payment history and status.
72. SimplyBill- This tool helps in sending attractive invoices in minutes. You can create quotations and conveniently convert them to invoices and send them through email.
73. Blinksale- Winner of webware best 100 apps 2007, Blinksale is one of the coolest looking invoicing resources. You can make your invoices attractive by designing them using CSS and send automated repeated invoices through recurring templates.
74. Cashboard- You can track billable and non-billable hours for yourself, your employees, and contractors. Send PDF invoices and also accept payments online.
75. Freshbooks- Their online invoicing application helps small businesses to better manage their finances. Its special features include snail mail invoices, time tracking feature, secure tool to save data etc.
Social Media & Online Reputation Monitoring Tools
76. Trackur- It is a comprehensive and credible social media monitoring tool that keeps a track of conversion trends and fine tunes results with custom filters besides working upon keywords and organizing the results in the form of a Dashboard.
77. Buzzlogic- With its advanced application ‘Buzzlogic Insights’, you can track conversations being done on varied social media sites in the form of blogs, articles and comments.
78. Radian6- The scalable analysis solutions offered help you to set up specific keywords for monitoring purpose on a dashboard, automatically monitor the keywords on varied microblogging & image sharing sites.
79. Sentiment Metrics- It helps you to identify & differentiate between positive and negative mentions about your brand on various social media platforms.
80. Cision -The media intelligence reports and insights offered by this tool helps you to work upon your communication performance and build your brand image in the market.
Hope these tools and resources would help in making your freelancing career a great success. Please provide us with your views, suggestions and feedbackon the same.
Very interesting post. Thank you