Comments on: 25 Online Resources For Freelancers and Small Businesses

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:35:00 +0000

Very thoughtful of you Erik to give us those helpful recommendations. Hope your business has gone from strength to strength and I’m sure it has. We are no longer a start up but we do use collaborative software and I wish we had used it when we were starting because it would have saved us a lot of overtime and not-quite-there communication. It’s quite hard to choose because there are so many of them and all very good. We took a chance on Dooster which would be suitable for a start up and small to medium sized company as well.

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By: Joshua

Joshua — Tue, 04 May 2010 09:45:53 +0000

Hi Erik,

Nice list, but you left off Fanurio: http://www.fanuriotimetracking.com

Fanurio helps with the less appealing aspects of freelancing like keeping track of time and invoicing. It’s a useful application, with a user-friendly interface.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:11:00 +0000

Zoho has some great stuff. I highly suggest all entrepreneurs on a budget to check that website out.

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By: Newb

Newb — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:00:32 +0000

Nice list. Open office is great in particular, but there are a lot there I’ve never heard of so I’ll make sure I check them out. I’d also suggest having a look at 1DayLater which is good software for tracking my time, money and mileage. http://1daylater.com

By: The Rat

The Rat — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:25:30 +0000

Nice post! You’ve given a wealth of ideas for business owners or new start-up to save a boat load of cash! Keep up the good work.

By: Merchant Accounts - Liz

Merchant Accounts - Liz — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:11:02 +0000

Great list, you might want to list a merchant account as well if you wish to take online payments.

Thanks for sharing.

By: Lisa Jeffries

Lisa Jeffries — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:46:08 +0000

Nice comprehensive list, but your strategy is what gets me:

“You should focus on seeking out clients first, and then set up business processes.”

I think that need to include a few caveats.

1 – You better be really, REALLY organized or you’re going to be doing a lot more work to make sure you’re not forgetting things (or not getting paid for projects/time).

2 – You also need to be really, REALLY organized so that you are managing these early clients’ expectations appropriately and providing what you’ve been hired for. If you don’t have your business operations set up, you may do more harm to the impression that they get in regards to your “side business” than anything.

All the best!
-Lisa

By: Suruchi

Suruchi — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:52:59 +0000

Nice post Eric. Quite a few helpful tools mentioned.
You can also add DeskAway – http://www.deskaway.com, an awesome online project management & collaboration tool which has some very good features like Calendar, Integration with FreshBooks, Data Export/Backup, contact management, docs/file sharing, blog, Reports, SSL enabled etc.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:02:51 +0000

Hi Erik,

You should also check Fanurio: http://www.fanuriotimetracking.com

Fanurio is a desktop application designed to help freelancers manage their work and be paid for it. With Fanurio you can customize invoice templates using your own layouts and export them to HTML or PDF. It also has idle time detection and it can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux.

By: Manish Chauhan

Manish Chauhan — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:10:29 +0000

Thanks for this great list. I hope this is going to help me. However, I am bit amazed not to find skype for communication and http://www.invoicera.com for latest invoicing needs.

By: Jennifer @ Outright

Jennifer @ Outright — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:47:56 +0000

Hi Erik,

We love feedback and we’re always listening. I’m sending your request to our team right now!

Feel free to also check out our hopping “What would you say are the most important improvements we can make to Outright?” thread (link below) and vote yours and other ideas up in the ratings. Thanks again for the shout out!

http://community.outright.com/answers/what-would-you-say-are-the-most-important-improvements-we-can-make-to-outright-com-6

By: Erik Folgate

Erik Folgate — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:40:19 +0000

Jennifer,

My only request with Outright is that you make the capability to prepare 1065 tax documents for partnerships. We have an LLC, but we want to treat it like a partnership for tax purposes.

By: Jennifer @ Outright

Jennifer @ Outright — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:31:02 +0000

Thanks for mentioning Outright in your list of resources, Erik! We just started a new 1099 filing service, too, so if you hire contractors for your new business this year, we’ll collect their W9s and file their info with the IRS, saving you and your team the hassle. (More info: http://outright.com/contractors/1099)

Good luck with your new internet marketing endeavor!

By: Pixily

Pixily — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:54:47 +0000

Erik,
Great list; thanks for including Pixily. A couple of other cool services we use that are really affordable are Zoho CRM. It’s cheaper than Salesforce and has a lot of good functionality. You might also want to check out Microsoft’s Biz Spark: http://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/. You get free Microsoft Office software if you are a software startup. I’d think your business would qualify.
Healy Jones
Head of Marketing,
Pixily

By: Arturas Kvederis

Arturas Kvederis — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:27:29 +0000

A great post Erik, thanks for adding Comindwork to your list. I would also add http://www.skype.com for communication needs, It’s really cool and they have integrated screen sharing now.

By: Jason Olson

Jason Olson — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:26:15 +0000

You should also try SSuite Office for a free office suite. They have a whole range of office suites that are free for download.

Their software also don’t need to run on Java or .NET, like so many open source office suites, so it makes their software very small and efficient.

You may try these links for more info:

http://www.ssuitesoft.com/index.htm
or
http://www.ssuitesoft.com/ssuiteexcalibur.htm
or
http://ssuite5element.webs.com/thefifthelement.htm

By: Jamespati

Jamespati — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:01:45 +0000

Nice post! very interesting topic. keep on posting.

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