Apps, Tools, and Plugins Freelancers & Digital Nomads Should Be Using

Hey freelance gang.

Today's topics speaks to the nerd deep inside me.

I'm talking about my favorite apps, websites, tools, and plugins that I use to manage my freelance life.

Let's go 👇

Let's start with tools that help with work. These are things I use to manage clients, manage my time, or make my processes more efficient. 💪

🔐 LastPass | The best password manager I've ever tried. Very important if you are dealing with lots of logins, especially for clients. I know cybersecurity is boring, but if you're still using the same passwords for multiple sites you're putting your business at risk.

⏳ Toggle.com | I've mentioned this one before. It's a time-tracking app, which has been vital in helping me figure out how much to charge clients and when I need to take breaks.

📽 Loom.com | Record short videos with screen capture. Free account lets you record up to 5 minutes. My favorite way to provide quick feedback to clients or explain something that's too complicated for an email but too easy for a call.

🎥 Descript.com | If you want to go a bit further with video, Descript is amazing. It makes it easy to edit videos together, by automatically transcribing video. Then you can edit it like a word document, but the edits show up in the video as well. Makes it super easy to make a longer, high-quality video, even if you aren't a video pro.

✉️ WeTransfer.com | Send big, high-quality files to clients without using up all your computer space or having to jump through hoops to get it over to them because of its size.

🗓 Calendly.com | Makes it easy to get people to book appointments. Embed suggested times in an email or just send people a link. Great for Contact CTAs on your website if you like getting clients on the phone.

🤑 Notion's Pipeline Template | If you are generating leads, you need a good way to track them. I modified this template to track leads from first contact onward.

Here's what mine looks like. I really like this method, because when I want new leads, I go into my "Potential" folder, which included people who didn't buy from me the first time around but might be interested in the future.

🧑‍💻 Session Buddy | Save groups of tabs to reopen later. Great if you have way too many tabs but can't close them because you need them. I group tabs together whenever I'm on a call and someone asks me to look at a site, or when I'm researching a topic and want to keep all my research in one place for later.

🎨 Colorpick Eye Dropper | Get the color code for any pixel on your browser. Great for mimicking client branding if you don't have access to their brand guidelines. You can really impress new leads by branding things in their colors without being asked.

🕵️ SEO Meta in One Click | Get the SEO deets of any page on the internet. Page title, meta descriptions, headers, URL, etc.

🔎 Wappalyzer | Enter a URL and find out what tech stack they are using on their site. Get their CMS, along with company names and contact details. Has a great Chrome plugin too.

📃 Tiny Scanner | Turn your iphone into a document scanner. Great for when you have to sign something in person and don't have a scanner to get it back onto your computer.

I could go on, but I'll hold there. Let's look at some tools for my fellow digital nomads out there ✈️

🌏 Kayak Explore | See a map of flight prices around the globe. Great for picking your next destination on a better budget.

📋 TripIt | My favorite app I discovered last year. It automatically pulls all of your travel details from your email into an itinerary. Reservation codes, flight details, hotel deets, even things like Covid safety regulations for places you're travelling to. Makes airports so much faster.

🏢 Liquid Space | Need a desk or private office for an hour or a day or a week? This app allows you to search for available spaces for rent in any US city. Great for when you need to be on a Zoom call but don't have a good spot availabel to you right away.

🦜 Pimsleur | A great app for learning languages in a hurry. Won't teach you to be fluent, but will teach you the building blocks so you can get by a bit better without being one of those tourists.

🙃 Atlas Obscura | Great website for finding the weird and wonderful places that tourists will often miss.

🐮 Happy Cow | Find vegan and vegetarian restaurants in any city in the world, with reviews and advice for when you don't want to eat meat.

🏋️ Freeletics | A subscription-based AI personal trainer. I love this for travelling because you can change settings to let the app know what equipment you do or don't have (even if you don't have any at all), or even say things like "I need to workout quietly" or "I don't have much space" or "I only have 30 minutes."

Ok, I'll wrap it there! But I'd love to hear about the apps and tools you use to make freelance life better!

And remember, you can get lots more freelance and SEO advice by subscribing to my email list or following me on LinkedIn / Twitter:

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