02. My Freelance Tools
Working as a fulltime freelancer I use a couple of smart aplications that make my work easier and faster.
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Hello, my name is Gyorfi Szilard, owner of Bluefx.net. In this tutorial, I will show you some of the tools I use in my daily work as a freelance motion-graphics designer. First, I will show you how I track my work time on hourly jobs, and then what I use to easily schedule meetings with clients all around the world.
I use a Yahoo! widget called Time Vault. This is a free application you can download from Pogopixels.com. I like it because it’s easy to use, and you can automatically create a work report for a particular project that you can show to that client. Let’s see how this works. You will need to install Yahoo! Widgets. Go to www.yahoowidgets.com. Here, click the Get Started button; install it. You will need to click Continue to install. After it’s installed, it will appear on the right side of your screen. Now we need to install Time Vault, which will help us track our work time. Go to Pogopixels.com, click on the Downloads button, and select the Time Vault application. Download and double-click it to open. Click on the Use Widget button. Now it’s installed. You can select the widget from the Yahoo! Widgets dock on the right side of your screen.
Now let’s set up a project. Click on the little arrow, if it’s not already open. Click New Project. And here, fill in the empty fields. Let’s name it Test Project, total five hours, with an hourly rate of $1. Save it. OK, the new project is set up. When I start working, I push this Play button, and leave it while I work, and pause it while taking a break. After I have finished the project, I create a report that shows the client my work, and my billable hours. How do you create this report? It’s easy! Right-click on the widget, and click Publish Custom Project Report. Here’s the project that we created. Now the client can see when I was working on this particular project.
My other useful, free tool is Tungle. This is a great website that makes scheduling easy. Let’s say you have a client who lives on the other side of the globe, and you need to talk to him about some details about the project via phone or Skype. You need to find those times when both of you are online and have time to talk. This can be difficult when you live in different time zones. Using Tungle, you will be able to send the client an invitation showing him your availability, and the client can select a specific hour that works for him, as well. He won’t need to sign up or register at Tungle. The time displayed will be your local time, so you won’t need to calculate time-zone differences. This will happen automatically. I’ve used Tungle many times, and it’s made my work much easier. I recommend it, so try it out! The guys at Tungle.com have a great video tutorial that shows even more features.
This concludes my short video tutorial about freelance tools. I hope it was useful! Thank you for your time.
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Thanks for sharing your tools. It’s really helpful for freelancers. Bye!
Thanks Telli, glad to hear that it was useful.
thx man you are the best
Gyorfi, thanks for your tutorials,they very helpful, I like your website, I will visit it more often!:)
Another great tool for tracking time spent on projects is ManicTime.com, this program is set it and forget it. It records the window title of any program that you are working on at the time. After, just do a search for project “A” and it will add up the time spent on that project.
Love the site by the way, will be keeping an eye on it for future updates, thanks.