Whether you’re a freelancer or a solopreneur, a graphic designer, writer, consultant or some sort of creative professional, there are specific tools and resources available that, if employed well, could aid you mightily in realising your intended outcomes. Very often, solid thinking and a reasonable analysis of your needs would lead you to make the right choices. Here are just a few resources that all creativepreneurs should maintain in their kit.
Project Management Tools
When you’re dealing with multiple projects, keeping track of everything can quickly become a nightmare. That’s why effective project management tools such as Trello, Asana and ClickUp are so useful. Not only are their dashboards intuitive, they also offer numerous features that allow you to efficiently track the status of your tasks, when they’re due, and who’s involved with the project. You can create comprehensive boards for different projects and lists and cards for the various tasks within them. You can also set due dates, create email reminders, and easily share what you’re working on with clients and members of your team.
Financial Management Software
Dealing with cash-flow is one of the biggest challenges for any freelancer. There are tools available to help you keep tabs, including invoicing and expense tracking apps like QuickBooks, FreshBooks and Wave. These help you stay on top of your cash-flow and guarantee that your clients pay you on time.
Creative Software
No creative professional can do without high-end design or editing software, and for many their weapon of choice is Adobe Creative Cloud, with its iterative tools, such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro. Affinity Designer and Serif’s offerings are excellent alternatives, ideal for graphic designers and photo editors alike, while GIMP and Canva are decent free options for web and graphic artists.
Communication Platforms
It is important to maintain good and consistent communication with your clients and collaborators. To do this, we use platforms like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams that help you in real-time communication, video conferencing and sharing of files with flexibility to work remotely or from anywhere in the world.
Cloud Storage Solutions
It is very important for a creativepreneur to store files in a secure way, so that we can share files with our partners, colleagues and friends and ensure the confidentiality of our files. There are many cloud storage options, like Google Drive, Dropbox and Onedrive that are popular and secure, enabling the user to access it from any device and the ability to share files, such as documents, images and videos.
Marketing Tools
You can’t grow your business without marketing, so you’ll need a variety of services such as Mailchimp and ConvertKit to manage your email marketing campaigns and to schedule and get reports for your social media posts using Hootsuite and Buffer. You might also want to design your own graphics using Canva.
Online Learning Platforms
Continuous learning is what helps you keep up to date, as well as grow your career, as there is an endless number of platforms where you could potentially find information. Skillshare, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning cover business management, creative techniques and all sort of useful tips to keep up to date with the trends of your industry.
Being a freelancer or solopreneur today doesn’t mean having to do it all yourself. Whether you’re finding your groove, building your business or scaling your side hustle, the right tools will help you automate, get organised and keep you on track. It’s an ever-changing environment for creative workers – keeping abreast of new tools can make all the difference in helping you stay ahead of the competition.
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