Ask HN: What are the most useful tools for freelancers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4419545

by ericdykstra • 14 years ago

11 4 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Anything that makes you, as a freelancer, more money by using it than you would make without it.

bartonfink• 14 years ago

I don't know if this counts as a "tool" per se, but I would absolutely pay a substantial portion of my billing rate (I'd start the discussion at 33%) to get an agent who found me suitable jobs and kept my pipeline full. I'd much rather get 80 hours of work a month at 2 * $RATE / 3 than get 20 hours at $RATE because I didn't have the time to go after business the way I could if I were a strict freelancer. At the going billing rates for skilled software devs, I'd be shocked if someone couldn't make it worth their while to provide such a service.

I have a day job, a wife and a daughter. I want to put in about 20 hours of time a week (mostly nights after the kid's asleep) padding the emigration fund. I do not want to spend that time writing proposals for ill-specified projects. I do not want to spend my evenings talking on the phone about how I'm really not looking to leave my day job to write dairy-farm management software full time for $40k a year. I don't want to argue the terms under which I work (I work from home after hours and send daily status e-mails). I want to pad my emigration fund by doing what I do best: writing code. I would gladly pay someone to take care of all the ancillary concerns, and I don't really care if I'm not maximizing my take-home because I'm certainly not maximizing it now.

IsaacL• 14 years ago

For UK freelancers, I've heard nothing but good things about FreeAgent (accounting & invoicing). TopTal (vetted programmer network) seems like a cool source of high-paying clients, though I haven't yet had any jobs out of it (2 weeks in), so I can't say for sure.

jongold• 14 years ago

FreeAgent is fantastic for invoicing - slick, simple UI, and baked into accounting & tax calculation tools (I've only used it in the UK but I believe they rolled it out to the US recently too)

logn• 14 years ago

I'm trying to improve things with my site: https://www.shicray.org/

A lot of freelancing sites are just a race to the bottom, people outbidding each other. My app has a standardized menu listing of services and you pay the same price regardless of provider. Then we compensate each provider differently (more or less than list price) based on feedback ratings.

Sorry for the spam but it's pretty relevant. I'd like to hear your thoughts on helping freelancers.

Ask HN: What are the most useful tools for freelancers?

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