6+ Must-have Tools To Support Freelance Writers

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Updated 04/08/2023

According to Websiteplanet, content writing jobs have been increasingly becoming popular among freelancers across the globe. In particular, the influx number of freelance writers over the past years indicates the shift toward working remotely after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Freelance writing and typing job is one of the online jobs for students to earn money at home due to the fact that it not only improves your creative writing by delivering content for clients but also can help to build your future career after graduation.

For this reason, Freelance writing jobs are considered one of the most challenging careers due to the fact that freelancers must possess several important knowledge and skills, which help them to deliver better service for companies. 

In this article, I will walk you through exploring the 6+ best tools to help freelancers increase their chances of earning extra money online. In particular, those tools will help freelancer writers to avoid some common mistakes that you should pay attention to.

Key Points

• Freelancers must employ one of the 6+ critical tools to deliver better content quality and increase the chance of landing online writing jobs.
• Grammaly is a must software if you plan to become a freelance copywriter.
• Build your freelance writing work portfolio by starting your own website, which helps to improve your creative writing and prove your worth to potential clients.

Here are additional links that are relevant to learning more about freelancing and side hustle ideas: You should continue to read to further improve your general knowledge.

> How to Become a Freelance Writer: 5 Action Steps

> Fiverr vs. Freelancer: What is the best option for Freelancers?

> Best Ways to Find Remote Work From Home Jobs in 2023

The best 6+ Tools to help freelance writers to land their first job as a freelance writer.

The following 6+ must-have tools help freelance writers differentiate from other content writers by delivering high-quality work and continuing to create a sufficient source of income to establish their reputation in the industry in the long run.

Keep in mind that this is not one of the typical work-from-home jobs without investment due to the high level of competitiveness.

For this reason, you need to keep evolving in terms of improving your creative writing and getting familiar with new technologies to be able to adapt to the changing work environment.

1. Grammarly

Grammarly is the first and most important to mention because it helps a lot in terms of writing better content, where you could avoid some common grammatical mistakes such as wording issues and sentence structure.

In addition, with the help of Grammarly, your content will look more professional in the view of the general public, and Google will rank your article higher in the search engine result.

Another great benefit of having Grammarly is that you will save a lot of your time to avoid some costly mistakes by the suggestion from the platform to figure out and fix the mistake as quickly as possible.

There is two main option to choose from in Grammarly for freelance writers

1. A Free Version.
2. And a premium version.

With a free version, freelance writers do not need to pay a single cent to install it. While the version still does it great job to detect and suggest fixing common mistakes such as wording issues, and sentence structure issues. Thus, This is a must-have version for every freelance writer as it makes your life becoming so much easier by saving you time to fix grammatical mistakes.

If you are satisfied with Grammarly, then consider trying a premium version. This is because the pay version has advanced features such as sentence suggestions, and directly gives you the recommendation of using the right words.

Hence, Grammarly acts as a second layer to proofread your content and ensure that your content is free from wording issues.

2. Payment methods for freelance writers

When it comes to building an online business, either making money blogging or freelance business, freelancers must have at least two solid payment options to send and receive money from partners and clients.

For this reason, there are several big players in the online payment sector, which include Wise, PayPal, and Payoneer to help freelancers receive money for their services across borders.

This is because your merchant partners or service providers have a limited payment option, which you require to work with different online payment partners to assist your freelance business.

Based on my experience, I use three of the above 3 online payment services as they give me more options to find out if one of them helps me save more money on transfer fees.

For example, if your customer comes from North America, you as a freelancer can still receive the money in Singapore without any delay or pay a hefty fee. Just with one click and freelance writers will be able to receive money in one of the following chosen options

• Debit, and credit card payments.
• Bank account transfer.
• Use the available fund from your E-Wallet payments to make an international transfer.

3. GoogleDrive

The next must-have tool for freelancers is GoogleDrive. This software is developed by Google, Alphabet corporation, which allows individuals or businesses to save and store all the files, documents, and other important pictures in Google Cloud.

You can use Google Drive to share files or documents across devices with friends, and colleagues. The free storage capacity of GoogleDrive is super huge, to store almost all the important files in one cloud, around 15 GB of storage is free.

From my personal experience, I mainly use the three main products from Google Drive.

1. Google Docs is for preparing and writing up content. Sometimes, I tend to use Google Docs to work on the same project with my colleagues, which lets us communicate and see each other work on the same page from Google Docs.
2. Google Sheets is mainly used to calculate and prepare an excel spreadsheet.
3. Google Slides– is designed to prepare for a presentation program or other PowerPoint.

As mentioned, Google Docs is the most popular of those three because you can use it to share your work with your clients, and colleagues, where they will check your work progress by giving you direct comments and messages there.

Read next: 

> Passive Income Ideas 2023: Different Ways to Make Extra Money

> Best Ways to Find Remote Work From Home Jobs in 2023

4.WordPress

WordPress is the most powerful website building provider– it has more active users than any other website builder due to the fact that WordPress offers advanced and complex features to allow clients to scale up their business to the next level.

This is a must-have tool for freelance writers because it allows you to automatically connect with the most popular blog hosting company such as Bluehost to scale up your business across the border. The only thing you need to get familiar with WordPress is to understand the foundational ground of how the system works and know how to post your article. This is because website owners will require you to post the article on WordPress once you have finished the task that they delegated to you.

Based on my view, it will help you a lot once you become an expert or at least have a deeper knowledge of using WordPress because most freelance writing jobs are required you to have good skills in using WordPress as a freelance writer.

5. Web Hosting Platform for Website-Bluehost

When talking about web hosting companies, the first thing in my mind is Bluehost because it is an official partner with WordPress and is recommended by WordPress due to the following reason.

1.  This is due to the reliable network as well as great customer service, which reflects Bluehost is one of the best cheap web hostings for Wordpress
2. Website speed and performance are acceptable as choosing the shared web hosting plan will guarantee 99% uptime for your WordPress website.
3.  Affordable shared web hosting plans, make it even more attractive to most freelancers and blog owners. Compared with other web hosting companies, it makes more sense to choose Bluehost to save money at the beginning of your blogging career.

Basically, Bluehost provides essential tools to start your website and blog at an affordable price. While continuing to scale up your business.

Importantly,  you will improve your writing skills and SEO skills by constantly releasing a number of articles over time. Therefore, you will become an expert in the field of content writing, how to use WordPress systems properly, as well to get familiar with SEO tactics.

I still need to touch down a bit on the Shared Hosting service plans for your understanding.

1. Basic Plan.
2. Bluehost Plus Plan.
3. Choice Plus Plan.
4. And Bluehost Pro Plan

For more information about Bluehost, you can refer to the article to get understand more about its services and products: Bluehost Reviews, Accurate Overviews of WordPress Web Hosting

Each shared hosting plan has its own features and core functionalities, which depend on the need and expectations of your site’s preferences. Personally, the Basic plan and Bluehost Pro Plan are either perfectly fine for me as I would recommend you select a basic plan if you are a newcomer to the industry and have just started out the blog.

However, a Pro plan will be an ideal solution for those who seriously think they would have a strong commitment and discipline to build a great blog or scale up your business to the next stage.

Based on my experience, I have been with Bluehost for nearly a year, and I am very happy with the firm’s customer service, and network performance, and especially offers an affordable price. If you think to start your website or blog then, consider doing some research about Bluehost and other web hosting companies, which allow you to make a better decision.

Notes: if you plan to become a full-time blogger, then do not go with the free plan as it makes your website or blog look unprofessional in front of the audience’s viewpoints. This is because you have a very limited to add features and control the blog.

Further to enhance your knowledge and information about the blogging journey, I have included step-by-step guidance on How to Start a Blog and make money in 2023

6. Semrush

As mentioned before, a content writing job is a learnable skill, which requires freelancers to consistently dive deeper into improving their writing skills in order to build a great work portfolio within the industry.

You can start one of the writing jobs without any work experience (work from home jobs no experience). The most important thing is to put your hard work and long-term commitment into developing your professional writing career.

In addition, you need a popular all-in-one SEO tool like Semrush to not only drive organic to your blog but also helps to build backlinks, keyword rankings, and find profitable keywords.

In particular, the “Semrush” -SEO is a tool that helps to find long tails and short tails keywords, which you will include those keywords in one of your posts for clients.

Remember, you only use keywords with high search volumes and low difficulty scores in order to bring the attention of web browsers. They may find your posts if they search for the relevant keywords term.

7. Skype or Zoom

Skype and Zoom are the two phenomenon companies, which offer a solution for web conferencing solutions for freelancers. This is especially true during the Covid-19 pandemic when the whole world is disconnected among different nations and continents as it making international travel becoming almost impossible at the time of writing.

For this reason, those powerhouse platforms allow you to communicate and update your clients about the work progression by making a video call.

There are other web conferencing companies in the market, but Skype and Zoom appear to have a competitive advantage due to the fact it has a global reputation, and a strong network to ensure there are free of technical issues. 

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By Jiro Nguyen.

The content is only based on the author’s personal opinion and experience. It is for informational purposes only and does not rely on as a comprehensive or substitute for professional advice.

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