My Top 5 Tools for Freelance Digital Marketing
Since starting work on my side hustle, I've been using some new tools to improve my workflow. These tools help me manage my time, finances, multiple social media accounts, and just about everything else. If you’re looking to get started with your own freelance side hustle, or if you’re interested in switching up your workflow, try out some of my top 5 tools for freelance work. I’ll break down why I like these tools and what they’ll cost you.
Top Tools for Freelance Digital Marketing
5. Harvest Time Tracking
Harvest—One of the things I’ve discovered from doing freelance work is that I was highly underestimating the time it actually took me to do things. Whether it’s something you’ve done before, or a brand new project, managing your time can be tricky—especially when working from home. Harvest allows you to track your time per project and per task. This can be incredibly helpful when you’re doing a few different tasks within the same project or for the same client. Not only will this tool help you better track your time, it will also keep you more organized. It even allows you to create invoices directly in the app.
Pricing
1 person, up to 2 projects: Free (Yes, that’s right, $0.)
1 person, unlimited projects: $12/month or $10.80/month billed annually
4. Quickbooks Self Employed
Quickbooks—So now that you’ve got your time tracking is set up, you need a way to account for the money you bring in, and a way to make sure you invoice your clients for the correct number of hours. For me, I chose to use Quickbooks Self Employed. I use it to track both my personal and business expenses. I’m able to set up specific categories for spending, monitor how much I will be paying in taxes at the end of the year and send invoices directly to clients.
Pricing
1 person: $5/month for the first 6 months
1 person: $10/month after a free 30-day trial
3. CoSchedule
CoSchedule—I have tried a few different social scheduling tools, but I can easily say I haven’t liked any of them as much as I’ve liked CoSchedule. CoSchedule integrates with all of the social channels you need, and it has an incredibly handy app for social scheduling on the go. One of my favorite features is the “best-time” function, which essentially picks the best time to schedule out your messages. Not only is a great tool for scheduling and monitoring social media, CoSchedule provides some basic analytics, as well. Overall, I highly recommend this tool for my clients and for others looking to manage multiple accounts.
Pricing
1 person, up to 10 social profiles: free 14-day trial
1 person, up to 10 social profiles: $39/month or $30/month billed annually
2. Asana
Asana—For all those list lovers out there, this is the tool for you. For professional lists or otherwise, I love using Asana to keep my myself on track. I’m able to assign myself tasks or receive assignments from clients. The best part? You can organize all those lists and tasks, by category, by color, and by project. And yes, there’s a mobile app for this too.
Pricing
Up to 15 team members, unlimited projects: Free
*Bonus: If you sign up for Harvest, you can integrate it with Asana to track each task’s time.
1. Slack
Slack—Last, but certainly not least, is my absolute favorite tool for freelance work. From the moment I first started using Slack, it was love at first click. Custom emojis, app integrations, and a killer mobile app. Yes, yes and yes! Slack allows you to communicate with different teams from just about anywhere. You can have private messages and group messages within those teams, which means each client can have their very own channel to keep your inbox free and clear of excess emails. You can easily share any type of file for faster collaboration, and it’s a great place to share endless gifs.
Pricing
Up to 10k of searchable messages, 5GB storage & 10 service integrations: Free
