It’s easier than ever before to be productive and in control of your schedule as a freelancer. Here are several (free) online tools that I use to help me with my business:
- Toggl: Toggl is a free, fantastic time tracking tool. Anyone who’s in the billable hour business (or who wants an easy way to keep track of how they’re spending their work time) should use this. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s seamless. And if you pay $5 a month, you can access advanced features like hourly billable rates, total billable amounts, and others.
- Remember the Milk: The ultimate “to do” list. Track everything that you need to accomplish, and when, in an easy-to-update format.
- Google Voice: I finally got a Google Voice number to use for my business. I should have done this ages ago. Now people can call me on my computer instead of my less-reliable cell phone, and I can also place calls from my computer, just like a land line. The call quality has been superb. There are many other nifty features – it converts voice mail to text, it can be used to ring multiple phones, and much more.
- Skype: Talk for free with anyone, anywhere in the world. One drawback is that the quality of the calls is not always ideal – occasional dropped calls, sometimes the voice quality is patchy. But you get what you pay for, right?
- Gmail video chat: As much as I appreciate Skype, the quality and reliability of Gmail video chat is even better. Fewer dropped calls, better picture – if you need to talk to anyone you know who has Gmail, use Gmail video chat instead of Skype. (The only drawback is that it’s limited only to other Gmail users.)
