FREELANCER TOOLS - EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

For many of us, coronavirus or COVID-19 has been the most important or traumatic experience of life. It has affected our personal as well as professional lives. Every day it becomes harder to imagine the end of the crises and go back to normal life. When this ends few things will be back to normal as they were but for few, there will be new normal. According to an article published on CNN, there are many companies decided to make working from home as new normal. During the COVID-19 crises, the freelancer or remote workforce has become the new standard for the first time in history.  

This has been noticed by many software companies as great opportunities to develop freelancer tools. The best thing about these tools is that they help you manage time, financial resources, and boost your productivity. Mappoid brings you a list of most trusted and used online tools in the world of freelancing or virtual assistance services.

Visit Mappoid for web development, App development, online marketing, Digital Marketing, and Virtual Assistant services.

Freelancer has been following the social distancing format for a very long time. Many freelancers don’t meet their clients in person even if they live in the same city. The hiring process, training, project management, delivery of work after completion, and payment all can be done online in today’s digital world. Apart from Mappoid, there are many websites where you can find online work.  

When it comes to finding online work many people browse through social networking websites like Facebook to find a job. Some professionals also use freelancer marketplaces like Fiverr, Freelancer, and Upwork. Many high-earning freelancers who like to control their content have their own portfolio websites. Such website allows you to bid for the project as a freelancer and charge you 20% of you earning as their commission. For example, if you are bidding for a project and you per hour rate is $10 then you will get only $8/hour and the rest $2/hour will be their commission. Here are a few popular marketplaces where you can bid for projects as a freelancer.

PeoplePerHour

This the marketplace has become popular day by day. Many Upwork freelancers, guru freelance and Fiverr freelance are also using the PeoplePerHour website now. It is a great place to find freelancers work in the field of design, website development, app development, editing, writing, translation, SEO, social media, photography, video, audio, research, and much more. Don’t forget about the 20% commission which you need to pay.

Envato

Envato is famous for selling digital products like website themes, templates, images, videos, music, etc. The marketplace website offers their services as 2 different options 

Envato Marketplace: The creators can sell their work (exclusive or non-exclusive) by registering their account on the website. Once the creation been uploaded to sell on the Envato marketplace you are not allowed to sell, distribute, or give away for free outside Envato. Envato one the rights of all the digital products uploaded to their website. A commission of up to 40% is charged once a digital product is sold. Freelancer creator is paid once a month and a minimum balance of $50 is required in order to get paid through PayPal or pioneer. In order to get paid through wire transfer, the minimum balance requirement is $500. 

Envato Elements: This is the second marketplace model where customers can subscribe by paying a monthly fee. Creators need to submit their work for approval. Once approved a creator gets a commission on every download. Envato has named this commission model as “subscriber share”. There is no such structure available that how much a creator gets paid on each download.  

Creative Market

As the name suggests, it is also a marketplace for creative designs like 3D models, fonts, graphics, and website themes. Unlike Envato, you can sell your products through other media as well after uploading to the creative market. Customers need to buy an individual license for every single digital product. A creator with a store needs to pay up to 40% as a commission to the creative market on every sale. All payments can be made through PayPal and e-check.

Other famous freelance sites are Upwork, Fiverr, guru, Writerbay, and Hubstaff talent.

Freelancers online tools

As a freelancer, we are expected to manage our own accounting, legal issues, project management, marketing, and other related tasks. And it is important to judge between the projects you want to outsource and doing yourself. The following are the tools which will help you stay on the top

Jimdo

You can bid for projects as a freelancer on the different marketplace, but it always great to have an online website. With Jimdo you can have your own portfolio website at affordable price.   

Goodbits

Newsletters are proven to be one of the great ways to grow your business network. They keep you in touch with your existing clients by sharing updates from time to time.  Goodbits work a browser extension and make it easier to create and share newsletters.

Buffer

Everyone wants to keep themself up in the social media game. Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that helps you schedule a batch of posts. You can manage up to 3 social media account by registering a free plan.

Freshbooks

Most of the freelancers work on hourly rates. Freshbook helps you keep track of your working hours, manage expenses, and send an invoice. Freshbooks can be also integrated with your PayPal account which is used by most freelancers for invoicing and payments.

Toggl

As a freelancer, we know it’s very important to keep the track of time we spent on a project. Now you can keep track of your time for free with toggl time tracking software. Just sign up for the account and download the browser extension. Now you just need to turn it on when you start working on the project.

Goodbudget

No matter how well established you are as a freelancer, you must have come across up and down like every other freelancer. We don’t have a guaranteed paycheck every month, which makes it more important to manage our earnings. Goodbudget is the right application when it comes to managing your money, pay off bills, reduce costs, and save money.

Calendly

Do you get annoyed when you get phone calls or a short meeting requests interrupting your work time? Calendly will be the right app for you. You can set up your preferences for the meeting and phone calls and share the link with anyone.  

Figure It Out (FIO)

Do you also get confused with time working with different clients following different time zones? With FIO you can forget about keeping track of time zones. Enter the location you like to keep the track of and FOI will give you the current time in each of them. This can be used as a Google Chrome browser extension. 

Screencastify

This application can be also installed as a browser add-on and renowned software as a screen recording app. This software is very helpful in order to provide an overview of the project, briefing contractors, creating training videos, etc.  

If you are still struggling as a freelancer, don’t lose hope. It may not be as constant as a regular 9-to-5 job but it is worth the chance.