1. Outright

This powerful book-keeping tool allows you to easily track expenses, income, and taxes. I’ve used Outright for my business records for over a year and have found it to be a very intuitive, efficient, and helpful tool.

Highlights:

Outright’s slick interface allows you to input income, noting which client the payment is from, a description of the services or products provided, and the date.

Click on the “Reports” tab to view charts showing income, expenses, and profit/loss.

Outright also allows you to file 1099s for $5, which is helpful for freelancers who hire subcontractors.

www.Outright.com

2. Pixlr

Pixlr is basically a slimmed-down version of Photoshop. While not a replacement for Photoshop, it could be very handy if you ever need an image editor and forgot to bring your laptop.

The main screen will look familiar to Photoshop users.

The toolbar includes Photoshop tools like Marquee, Crop, Magic Wand, Gradient, Paint Bucket, Dodge, Burn, Shapes, Eye Dropper, and Text.

Pixlr includes Layers, Filters, and photo retouching tools.

www.Pixlr.com

3. FaxZero

Most people will accept an email attachment with a scanned document, but for the rare occasion that you need to send a fax, FaxZero is the free solution. The free option includes a cover page with an advertisement, or you can pay $1.99 to send a fax without the ad.

www.FaxZero.com

4. Invoice Machine

Invoice Machine includes a time-tracking tool and invoice management. You can create projects, track time spent on each project, and send invoices by email. Includes PayPal integration.

The free plan allows you to send 3 invoices per month and have 1 user. The next step up is $12 per month for 30 invoices and 2 users.

www.InvoiceMachine.com

5. Are My Sites Up?

When your website (or one of your clients’ websites) goes down, wouldn’t you like to be the first one to know? AMSU monitors your sites and notifies you when one goes down.

Free plan features:

• Checks up to 5 websites 25 times per day
• Notifies you via email or SMS when one goes down
• Tries to tell you WHY your site went down by including the HTML status error code

Their premium plans include more features and more websites monitored, and they are reasonably priced (between $35 and $95 per year).

www.AreMySitesUp.com

6. Skype

Free internet phone service. Call other Skype users for free, or pay a few cents per minute to call phones from your Skype account.

Make conference calls, have a video conference, and share screens (great for training clients to use a Content Management System).

You can also pay a few dollars a month for a local phone number. This allows your clients to use their phones to call your internet phone service. If you are offline, they can leave a voicemail, and then you are notified by email that you have a voicemail.

www.Skype.com

7. Remember The Milk

A to-do list is great, but what good is a list if you forget to look at it? RTM will automatically remind you of tasks via text message, email, Skype, or instant message. Tasks can be organized by location or tags.

www.RememberTheMilk.com

8. Toggl

Use Toggl to track time spent on your clients’ projects. Create a new task, then punch a button to start the clock. Toggl includes a graph of your total available hours and how many you’ve spent.

Download the free Toggl desktop app to track time, or get the iPhone app for on-the-go tracking.

www.Toggl.com

9. Typechart

Typechart lets you browse through samples of web typography, also providing the CSS for each sample. It’s a very helpful tool when deciding how you want your type to appear, and the CSS copy/paste makes it simple to use.

www.Typechart.com

10. Bubbl.us

Bubbl.us is a simple mind-mapping tool. I’ve found that brainstorming can be very effective when I mind-map, and Bubbl.us makes it easy to do online.

Not familiar with the idea of mind-mapping? It’s basically a type of brainstorming where you write down a starting concept and draw a circle around it. Then draw lines away from the center circle and start writing down related words or concepts that come to mind and branching out from your center concept. This process is useful, for example, when doing research for a new logo. Incorporate the ideas that your client wants to communicate about his company, and then branch out on paper to brainstorm related ideas that might be useful in communicating these concepts.

When mind-mapping, don’t spend long thinking about each word before writing it down. The idea is to write quickly, jotting down thoughts as soon as they appear and moving on. Once you’ve finished, go back and review your mind-map and pick out the valuable pieces.

Doing mind-mapping on paper is great, but Bubbl.us is a handy tool for brainstorming online. When you’re finished, Bubbl.us will export your mind-map as an image (JPEG or PNG), HTML, or XML.

www.Bubbl.us

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