Free Tools for Freelancers
Let’s face it! Being a freelancer or a small business owner means you have a lot of responsibilities. You’re the marketing department, finance department, HR, and ultimately you’re responsible for providing whichever service or product you’re selling.
Luckily we live in a world where there are many programs and softwares available that do a great job of automating or simplifying these many tasks and responsibilities. While it's great to have access to these programs and softwares, they are not always cheap and they quickly add up when you’re using and paying for a lot of them.
As a freelance photographer myself, I already have so many subscriptions and services that I’m paying for that I don’t want to pay for any more than I truly need to. For example, I’m already responsible for my Adobe Creative Suite subscription, Quickbooks, equipment insurance, website hosting, continuing my education (online courses, books, etc.), plus the expenses of all of my camera equipment. All of these things add up quickly, which made me decide to search for better options to help me run my business so I could ultimately save, invest, and spend my money and time elsewhere.
The free tools I’m about to share don’t completely relieve you of all of the responsibilities that come with running a business, but they do help make things easier. Most importantly, they don’t cost anything to use.
Here are 4 free tools to help save you time and money while working as a freelancer.
1. Banana Tags - Email tracking system
If you use Gmail, then you have to try using Banana tags! It’s an email tracking system that allows you to schedule to send emails in the future as well as track emails and the links you send inside them. Banana Tags is a program that you download and install as a plugin for Gmail. They offer various levels of paid subscriptions to their email tracking services, but they also have a free subscription (which is what I use)!
This is perhaps one of my favorite secret free tools that I use every day. I love tracking my “cold” emails that I send to potential new clients because I can see when they open my emails and if they click my link to my website or not. In general, tracking your emails gives you the small advantage of having a little bit of insight to where and how your emails are being received.
The free Banana Tag subscription gives you 5 emails to track and schedule every day. Before you send an email, you can choose whether or not to track it or schedule to send it later. Once you reach your daily quota of 5 tracked sends, you have to wait until the next day to receive your next 5 free tracks. If I know I’m going to be sending more than 5 emails out in a single day, I plan ahead and choose which of those emails are of greatest importance to me. I track the most important ones and simply send the rest of my emails as usual. While it would be great to be able to track every email I send, I simply don't need to, which is another reason why the free subscription is so great.
If you happen to really like your email tracking and want it for more than 5 emails per day, you can sign up for one of their paid subscriptions which will give you 100 or 200+ tracked emails per day plus additional email detail and metrics.
2. Hello Sign - Electronic document signing service
Hello Sign is a great electronic document signing tool. This service makes it easy to get your contracts sent out and signed quickly by clients. Since everything is completely electronic, you save time instead of having to physically mail a contract back and forth. HelloSign makes it easy to upload your contract of choice and then all you have to do is drag and drop different text boxes which are designated for signatures, names, and dates.
Once you send out your contract to be signed by your new client, you’ll receive updates after they open the contract for the first time and after they officially sign and complete the contract. You can download and save your newly signed contract for your records and print them out if you’d like.
While you can choose to pay for the various plans Hello Sign offers, there is a free option where you get up to 3 free signature requests every month. Depending on how many clients you work with per month, you might be able to just use the free plan. They don’t exactly make it easy to find where to sign up for the free membership, but here’s the link to take you to the pricing page. Just choose the free plan and enter your information to create a new account.
Here's the link to find the free signup option: https://app.hellosign.com/info/pricing?_ga=2.114763399.1262116144.1611947588-1163109776.1611947588
Free tools for freelancers. Image of a desk with a phone, headphones, book, and a computer on top.
3. Google - The whole Google enchilada
I'm sure you've heard of Google already, but this is just a friendly reminder that Google offers so many programs which are user friendly and more importantly, free.
For example, I happen to use Google Docs, Mail, Drive, Sheets, Calendar, and even Google Meet on a daily basis. I write proposals, contracts, and blogs in Google Docs. I create shot lists and keep track of client exchanges with Google Sheets. I use Google Drive to share files and images to my clients. Thanks to Google’s programs, there’s no need to pay a subscription for software like Microsoft Word or Excel anymore because I can create all of the documents and files I need within the Google programs.
Google Drive is perhaps one of the best free programs to take advantage of. Instead of paying for a subscription to an image delivery service like Pikiset.com, I save money by using Google Drive to deliver images to clients. Google Drive provides you with up to 15 GB of storage before you have to buy more. I save space on my Drive by keeping my files as organized as possible. Anything that doesn’t need to be permanently shared or stored in my Google Drive gets downloaded and saved onto an external hard drive or two. Sometimes I'll move files into my Dropbox, which is also free but only up to the small space of 2 GB.
Anyways, the bottom line is that Google is free and it’s useful for so many different tasks when it comes to running a business. Google is also universal: so many people around the world use Google every day. It's great when your client automatically knows how to use a program (like Google) instead of having to train them how to use new software on top of the time you're putting into the project itself.
4. Canva- Graphic design website for personal marketing
Canva is a user friendly graphic design platform that makes creating marketing content for your small business much easier. You don’t need to be a graphic designer to use Canva. It's easy to learn how to use and you can create a lot of great content within the free version.
The free version of Canva gives you access to things like thousands of templates, stock images, graphics, and up to 5GB of cloud storage. Whether you need to design a logo or create content for social media, you can easily browse through various templates and even change the fonts and colors to fit your branding. It's also great for designing banners and thumbnails for pages like YouTube and Facebook. It automatically saves and stores all of your designs and keeps them in one place too. The only downside to the free version of Canva is that it limits your downloading and exporting options. If you absolutely have to resize your designs beyond the standard sizes of the template files, then maybe Canva Pro (the paid version) would be a better choice for you. Canva Pro is free if you happen to be a Nonprofit or a K-12 Teacher!
If you haven't checked out Canva yet, head over to their website now and create a free account to give it a try!
That's all, folx!
Banana Tags, HelloSign, Google Suite, and Canva are four great free tools to help you run your business without breaking the bank in paying for CRM programs and other subscription service fees.
It can be difficult to find a balance between how much money and time you are willing to spend to accomplish all of the tasks and responsibilities that come with working as a freelancer or a small business owner. Luckily there are great free tools like these at our disposal to help make our jobs a little bit easier.
In case you'd like to learn more about these tool, check out this video on YouTube!
Do you use or know of any other great free tools for small business owners? I’d love to hear them- leave them in the comments below! :)
