Free Tools for Freelancers

Are you an online freelancer? These free tools for freelancers will help you determine how much you are really getting paid per hour.

Often freelance opportunities are offered at a flat rate. I’m amused by promises that each task in a job will take two or three minutes to complete; knowing full well it takes closer to 10 minutes to complete the task. Find out for sure if you are earning per hour what you are worth or if you are wasting time with PageAddict. You may discover you are underbidding on jobs and you will definitely discover which projects are not worth your time.

Or are you a web surfer? Do you surf from one page to the next online only to discover as much as 2 hours of your day have been consumed? Add the free PageAddict tool to your FireFox browser to let you see just how much time you are spending and where you are spending it. Download PageAddict

Once you get an idea of the time you spend on necessary projects, you can create a schedule for yourself that will keep you focused and productive. Install a free Google Calendar.

If you need a hard copy for yourself or online employer to show the actual time you spent on a project, you can create a spreadsheet for free at Google Docs. Maybe its best feature is that it allows you to collaborate with other people on a specific document, often a component of freelance work.

And Google Docs has the added benefit of storing your important work-related time sheets on Google's servers so that they are always available for you even if a tornado or hard drive failure wipes out your computer!

Good time management lies at the heart of a profitable freelance career. The free tools mentioned here will help keep you on track.

Finally, have you ever wondered about those research jobs online? Sign up to Google Reader using your free Gmail account. Google’s aggregator will deliver all the latest published content based on your keywords directly to your email account or home page.