Use these 6 websites and you’ll be a freelance ninja

Posted on October 9, 2009

Batchblue is a small business customer relationship management website or CRM so it is great for managing contacts, conversations with current and prospective clients and even keeping track of searches of relevant topics on Twitter.
Outright is a free bookkeeping service that helps keep track of those pesky expenses that one must track or the IRS will get you. I don’t want to get audited so I use this service to help me do a rather mundane task that I HATE! Outright works with two other great services Shoeboxed and Freshbooks.The tax calendar is awesome. I never remember that stuff…the site has it available for iCal, Outlook and Google so you will always be on time with the tax man.
Shoeboxed is where receipts and business cards go to die. Well not really. You send them there to get scanned so you can actually make use of all the cards we all collect at networking events but never do anything with.
Freshbooks is awesome for invoicing. I have been using them since they were called Secondsite.biz (I did say I was an early adopter in my bio)
Tickspot is good for tracking the time you spend on projects and syncing with Freshbooks for invoicing. It has a free iPhone application that uploads data to the website. You can create budgets for projects and see how much time is left. A great tool to see how efficient you are at your job.
Try Gist if you are an information junkie like me and want to know everything about everything. You will never be out of the loop again. I’ve been using it for a few months. It just went into public beta.