5 lesser-known tools to jump-start your freelance graphic design career

August 16, 2019

If you’re a budding freelance graphic designer, you probably know about tools such as Zoho, Upwork, Adobe Creative Suite and Freshbooks. These are all great tools for marketing and managing your business, but there are lesser-known alternatives that are just as good (and often much cheaper). A penny saved is a penny earned, so the following lists five lesser-known tools you can use to jump-start your freelance graphic designer career.

1. Plutio

If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution, Plutio might be just what you need. The extensive platform makes it easy to create professional-looking proposals, and help you land new clients, track billable hours, send invoices and process payments.

It even comes packaged with a CRM and branded client portal so you can manage projects. Pricing starts at $15 per month for a single user (and $20 per month if you want the client portal).

Plutio

2. Giggrabbers

Though Upwork is one of the most popular places to find freelance graphic design jobs, lesser-known job boards such as Giggrabbers can make it easier to land clients. You’ll face less competition and potentially earn better pay: A quick browse through open projects revealed a packaging design job for $1,000 to $2,000 and a photo retouching job for $250 to $1,000.

Like all freelance job boards, there are still some low-budget projects. But for freelancers who are just starting out, the reduced competition can make Giggrabbers a good place to land your first clients.

Giggrabbers

3. Invoice Ninja

Invoice Ninja makes it easy to send professional-looking, branded invoices to clients and integrates with more than 40 payment gateways, but it’s more than an invoicing tool. You also get time tracking, project management and proposals, plus auto-billing and recurring invoices.

The best part? It’s free forever for up to 100 clients. After that, pricing starts at $8 per month.

Invoice Ninja

4. Less Accounting

QuickBooks has long been the gold standard for small business accounting, but many users find it cumbersome and confusing. Enter Less Accounting. The platform was created to simplify accounting, so you can spend more time earning money and less time managing it.

Less Accounting was created specifically for businesses with less than 20 employees or less than $10 million in revenue. It eschews the advanced features found in QuickBooks for a simple platform that’s designed to “get you in and out of our app as fast as possible.” Pricing starts at $20 per month for the accounting platform, which includes invoicing. For $70 per month, you can add bookkeeping services — they’ll do everything for you, which can free up even more time to work on paying projects.

Less Accounting

5. Gravit Designer

If you design vector illustrations but don’t want to pony up the money for Adobe Illustrator, Gravit Designer is an attractive alternative. The cloud-based software offers advanced vector creation and editing on any platform: Mac OS, Windows, Linux and even Chrome OS. That means you can design anywhere you have an internet connection.

The interface was designed to be simple enough for beginners, complete with tooltips, yet advanced enough for experienced professionals to craft beautiful vectors fast. Gravit Designer is 100% free to use, though you can pay $49 for an offline version that has even more features.

Gravit Designer

Ready to put your freelance graphic design career on the fast track to success? Don’t forget PsPrint offers premium printing at discounted prices, plus offers a reseller program that will help you earn money from your print projects!

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

What is the PsPrint Blog??

The PsPrint Blog is a resource for graphic designers, freelancers, small business owners and fans of print marketing. You'll find helpful techniques on printing everything there is to print, including business cards, postcards, brochures, stickers, invitations, greeting cards, door hangers, magnets and more. The PsPrint Blog shares creative ways to improve your design and layout skills, and useful tips for marketing your business in any medium. We also like to have a little fun, sharing design inspiration and spotlighting some our favorite customers' printed pieces in our "Hot Off the Press" series.