The web is such a big and wonderful place, packed with tools and resources which you all too often don’t know about. So to help all you freelancers out there we have compiled a gigantic list of resources, categorized up for your benefit. If you know a resource that we’ve missed, let us know as we’re always looking to grow this list!
Timing
These are tools to help you time and track your work. Some of them plug into invoicing programs and some even come with them built in:
SlimTimer - A Start/Stop little timer that tracks jobs on a main web interface
Tick - Timetracking application focused on keeping track of your budgets
Time Assistant - Professional timesheet software
Harvest - Simple and efficient time tracking
FourteenDayz - Online time tracking for teams
PunchyTime - A simple time tracking tool for creatives
Invoicing
When you don’t invoice, you don’t get paid, so it literally pays to stay on top of your billing. Here are some tools to help:
Billing Orchard - Electronic billing and invoicing software, starting at $14.95 per month
Billable - Service and invoice tracking
SimplyBill - Easy to use invoicing software
Blinksale - More easy to use invoicing software
Quickbooks - Small business financial software
Side Job Track - Free web-based job tracking, invoicing, reporting and project management for the part-time independent contractor
Freshbooks - Tracks time, sends invoices by email or U.S. mail, and generally makes invoicing easier
InvoicePlace - Easy Invoicing and Quotes From Anywhere
LessAccounting - Is your job title Accounting? Probably not. Do less accounting!
Project Management and Organization
These resources will help you stay organised and manage those projects and clients
Proposal Kit - Proposal and contract management tools
Ta-Da Lists - a simple (free!) to-do list application that can be shared with the world
Backpack - Service that integrates to-do lists, notes, files, images, and a calendar with reminders that can be sent to your email or cell
Writeboard - Sharable, web-based text documents that save edits, so you can collaborate, roll back and compare
ConceptShare - Share designs and get feedback with visual annotation tools
Wridea - Free tool for writers focusing on idea generation
GoPlan - Note-taking, calendaring, task management, issue tracking, file management and online real-time chat
Toodledo - Another web based to-do list
ActiveCollab - Open source collaboration and project management tool
MonkeyOn - Your to-do list for things that you want other people to do
Remember The Milk - Another To-Do List manager
Stock Libraries
Templates, Photos, Flash files all to help make you look good
FlashDen - A resource selling stock Flash, audio, video and fonts for as little as 50 cents
Dreamstime - Royalty free stock photography for $1 - $2
Getty Images - When price is no object and quality is essential
Istockphoto - Royalty free stock photography, videos, and illustrations for $1 - $50
Veer - Rights managed and royalty free photography, illutration, type, and motion Stock.
xchng - Completely Free stock photography
Ice Templates - Website templates in Flash and HTML
Template Monster - The biggest website template company on the web!
MyFonts - All the fonts you could ever want and a very handy font identification tool as well. IconBuffet - Icons, more icons and even more icons
Business Tools
Resources to help with the business of freelancing…
HighRise - Track communication and conversations with leads, employees, clients, colleagues, vendors
Campfire - Real-time group chat and file sharing
Central Desktop - Shared workspaces and web conferencing
Relenta - Manage your email, contacts, documents and activities
Google Apps - Communication and collaboration tools from Google
Zoho - Free office tools
Campaign Monitor - Email newsletter software
Breeze - Email campaign and newsletter software
Business-Paper - Easy business cards
GoToMeeting - Easy online meetings
Wufoo - Make forms to survey your clients
AIGA Spec Letter - Sample letter to communicate with clients who want spec work or free pitching
CPA Directory - Find an accountant (in the US)
SBA - Small Business Administration, help and advice
Paypal - Online payment system
Moneybookers - Online payment system
Escrow - Online payment system that protects the buyer and seller, useful for those bigger jobs with anonymous clients.
Resources for the Design Entrepeneur - Free sample forms and agreements
Work - How-to guides to running a small business
XE - Quick and easy currency converter for all your international transactions…
Trendwatching - Consumer trends and insights resource
Legal
Because you have to protect yourself and your work…
My New Company - Legal and general start-up information
Designers Toolbox - Free legal forms for graphic designers
Copyright - Everything you need to know about US copyright
AIGA Form of Agreement - Standard form of agreement for design services trmplate
Job Boards
A whole bunch of places to find jobs, and don’t forget FreelanceSwitch will be adding its very own job board real soon!
37signals Job Board - Mostly full-time design and programming jobs
Authentic Jobs - Full time and freelance job board for standards aware designers and developers
Coroflot Job Board - Designer job board
WebProJobs - Freelance and full-time jobs for designers, developers, copywriters and marketers
Jobpile - Aggregates the best job boards on the web
Krop - Creative and tech jobs
FWjobs - Web jobs board
SlashDot - Jobs for IT professionals
CSS Beauty Job Board - Job board for web designers
MinistryCamp Job Board - Job board for Christian designers and programmers
Guru - Freelancer listing service with job board
Elance - List yourself for freelance jobs
Web Tools
Tools to get your Web Presence Up and running…
Squarespace - Very nice publishing system for websites and blogs
Rackspace - dedicated hosting and customer service that is second to none
Mosso - Advanced hosting at a reasonable price
MyDomain - Domains for $8.50 per year
Media Temple - Easy to set up and use hosting
Light - Content management for designers and ad agencies
SiteKreator - Instant websites - just add your content
StrongSpace - Back-up and store important files
psd2html - Builds websites in html from Photoshop files
xhtml iT - Website builds from design in 24 hours
ExpressionEngine - A neat little CMS app
Inblogit - A great free blogging tool for web designers
Advertising and Marketing
A few ways to market and advertise yourself online…
Text Link Ads - Text ads to sell your wares and improve your traffic ranking
Review Me - Get your service or Web site reviewed by bloggers
Adbrite - Text and banner ads on over 20,000 sites
AdEngage - Text and Photext ads (image and text ad combined)
Adwords - Text ads on Google searches
Professional On The Web - Get yourself Listed
Miscellaneous
All the many things we couldn’t fit anywhere else!
Creative Public - Useful site for anyone starting a freelance graphic or web design career. A $49.95 fee buys unlimited access to forms, manuals, pricing guides, contracts etc
You Send It - Send files up to 2GB online
Jewelboxing - superior packaging for short run CDs and DVDs
eFax - Send and receive faxes by email
PowerXChange - Extensions for a variety of creative software, including Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver
Coroflot - A great resources for designers to showcase their portfolios, share work and network Cloudmark - Block spam on your PC
SpamSieve - Block spam on your Mac
Dropsend - Email up to 1GB of files
Media Fire - Send 100MB files online
Box - Store, share and access files online
Icebrrg - Simple web forms
Formsite - Web forms and surveys in minutes
Lorem Ipsum - Lorem Ipsum generator for dummy copy
Textmate - The essential programmers text editor for Macs
ETextEditor - Like Textmate but for Windows
Kuler - Colour scheme picker
Jungle Disk - Online storage for 15 cents a gigabyte
Do you have a resource we missed? Leave a comment and let us know!
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