10 Tools to Take Your Freelance Business to the Next Level

There is a staggering new trend hitting the worldwide workforce right now, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. At this time, it is predicted that roughly 50% of the overall workforce will earn a living as a freelancer by the year 2020.

As you can imagine, being your own boss while working from home certainly has a wide range of benefits. The advantages are numerous and can save you plenty of time and money. As an example, some of our favorite advantages of being a freelancer include:

you have the ability to set your own hours
you can take a day off whenever you need it without having to ask anyone’s permission
if you have a home office, you can use part of your rent or mortgage payments as a tax write off (talk to your accountant to learn more)
if you have a cell phone and use it for business purposes, you can write off a percentage of the expenses when filing taxes
if you purchase supplies for your freelance business, they also qualify as legitimate business expenses and a tax write off

As you can clearly see, there are many advantages of becoming a freelancer. Since jobs in America – at least the high-paying ones – seem to be drying up left and right, it makes sense to enter the virtual workforce.

Operating your freelance business online provides access to potential customers from all around the world. You’ll need to tap into the broader market if you intend to take your freelancing business to the next level.

After doing this for many years, we’ve discovered tools that provide incredible shortcuts to freelancing success. In an effort to help you get a jumpstart on your freelancing career, we’ve decided to share these tools and tell you how to best begin using them in your business.

To make this easier to understand, we’ve created five categories essential to successful freelancing. And we discuss the best tools that we’ve discovered related to each of these groups.

New Client Acquisition

When you first begin your journey to becoming a freelancer, new client acquisition will remain your top priority until you have regular customers requesting your services on an ongoing basis. Eventually, your regular customers will dry up as well and move on to different things that do not require your assistance. Mastering new client acquisition is necessary to maintain a healthy freelancing business.

So, it makes sense to begin by sharing tools that we’ve discovered for new client acquisition. This way you can immediately begin using these suggestions to gain new clients in your freelancing field of choice.

(1.) Upwork is the perfect place to begin your freelancing career. This well-established website has a successful system in place that allows you to bid on freelancing jobs. Instead of having to pound the pavement looking for potential customers, just log onto this website, use the search feature, and find thousands of potential clients looking for your specific service.

There are a number of other peer-to-peer freelancing platforms as well that you might want to consider. Upwork happens to be our favorite, and it’s definitely one of the most highly respected in the industry.

But if you feel like branching out, a few other peer-to-peer websites to consider include:

Remember, new client acquisition is the lifeblood of every successful freelancing business. Keep your focus and continue to add new clients into the pipeline whenever you find yourself running low on client work.

Professional Communication with Clients/Potential Clients

Having the ability to reliably communicate with clients and potential clients is the next step to creating a successful freelancing business.

After having spoken with many professional freelancers, it is our opinion that keeping communication channels simple is always the best way to go.

When it comes to client email management, we recommend (2.) Gmail. This platform is really easy to operate, and it’s very simple to set up an account. They even offer very useful add-on extensions that make email management and client communication a piece of cake.

(3.) Streak is another tool that we absolutely adore. It’s free to use, and it operates as a customer relationship management tool, otherwise known as a CRM.

Streak is great because it prevents the need to switch between external CRM systems and your inbox. The whole process becomes streamlined, and gives you the ability to keep client interactions right at your fingertips. This will allow you to close more deals and land better paying freelancing clients.

If for some reason you do not like Streak and want to test out other options, you could give (4.) PipeDrive or (5.) Pipeline Deals a try. Both tools are excellent for customer relationship management, but there is one catch. Neither of these tools is free, so you’ll have to pay in order to access their many wonderful features.

We recommend Streak because it’s free and very effective. As a freelancer just getting his or her business off the ground, it’s in your best interest to keep your expenses low while you find your footing in the industry.

Continuing with professional communication tool recommendations, we would like to discuss (6.) Boomerang and its many wonderful features and benefits.

This tool is excellent because it works in tandem with your Gmail account. We love it because it allows you to schedule emails, set up reminders; it provides email tracking, and much more. This powerful tool can be set up in minutes, and it is so intuitive that you can easily figure out how to use it in no time flat.

Workflow Sharing Efficiency

After performing work in a freelancing capacity, you’ll need to share the finished results with your paying customers. There are a number of great tools to seamlessly integrate workflow sharing into your freelancing business.

(7.) Insightly CRM is our all-time favorite set of tools for document sharing between freelancers and their clients. By storing files in the cloud, it makes it simple to access everything remotely. You can set up file sharing through (8.) Google Drive that will grant your clients easy access to their completed freelancing projects.

Acquiring Freelancing Startup Resources

Many potential freelancers are hungry to get their business off the ground, but they lack the money and resources needed to take their vision and turn it into an actual business. This can be disheartening for freelancers to say the least, because they know that they can create an amazing business if they only had the necessary resources and funding to make it happen.

One recent development that potential freelancers should find quite appealing is the resurgence in crowdfunding. People are using crowdfunding websites for many reasons. They are taking ideas that once seemed impossible to implement and turn them into reality.

As an example in the freelancing community, many young entrepreneurs are using fundraising sites to raise enough capital to get their freelancing businesses off the ground. This opportunity would not be possible without crowdfunding websites.

Our personal favorite crowdfunding website is called (9.) Plumfund. We recommend this website to budding freelancers because it’s free to use and people from all over the world are having amazing success funding their projects through this site.

Plus, the website is very easy to use. Create a Plumfund page, use the simple tools that they have in place to spread your message, and then quickly and easily receive payments offline and online.

Time Tracking Efficiency

When it comes to freelance-related time tracking, among other important tasks, we put our faith in one tool that has never failed us: (10.) Clockspot.

The timesheet feature is particularly impressive for freelancers. You and your staff can easily “clock in” and “clock out” during a project. This makes it simple to keep track of the hours devoted to specific assignments so you can bill accordingly.

Other excellent features include: clock in or out from anywhere, on any approved device; detailed reports (payroll, overtime, time off, etc.), real time employee tracking and more.

Conclusion

Starting a freelancing business is never easy. If you are motivated and have a burning desire to make this dream a reality; it is certainly possible if you are willing to go the extra mile to make it happen.

Please use the suggestions that we have shared with you today. If you begin implementing these tools into your freelancing business, you’ll save time, money, and gain freedom and peace of mind as you take your freelance business to the next level.

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