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The Business of Successful Freelance Writing

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Cool Tools for Writers and Marketers  

By Victoria Rosendahl

www.3chix.com

www.rosendahlwrites.com

The Net is stuffed to the gills with so many choices for tools and software packages designed to streamline your business that it’s hard to decide which ones will be right for you. Here are a few we found that work really well - and some of them are free!

Web Hosts 

Whether you’re new to online marketing or a seasoned vet, sometimes you come to a point in your career where you need a different web host. If you’re like me, you have more than one website working for you and will need something called a bulk or reseller account and I really like HostGator (http://www.hostgator.com) for that.

When you go there, you’ll have the chance to buy either a reseller account or go with a shared plan. While the shared plan is cheaper - and more attractive in some respects - do yourself a favor and go with the reseller account. It’s $10 a month more but you get a lot more flexibility in adding websites. Don’t worry about the word “reseller”. You don’t have to be in the business of selling web hosting programs to have a reseller account. Believe me, I went with the shared plan at first - I thought I was so clever! - and ended up having to upgrade to do everything I wanted to do which took time and a bit of money to do.

HostGator comes with Site Studio which is a web site builder. It’s $2 extra per month per site to use it but it’s worth it. It’s WYSIWYG so you don’t need to know html and there’s a publish button so you don’t have to worry about transferring files via an FTP server. You can easily upload files to your site at HostGator via file manager if you do them in another web building program.

Project Organization 

Are you someone who does better with a visual map or chart in front of you? Me too. I found this cool software that let’s you create visual charts with notes, attachments and even website attachments. It’s called Mindjet, http://www.mindjet.com.

You can download a free 21-day trial to see if you like it and the tutorials walk you through how to use most of the features. I recently used it to map out a new copywriting project and it worked like a charm.

Link Cloaking and Tracking 

If you’ve done any affiliate marketing - or are thinking about it - there are 2 tools you don’t want to be without: Click Audit and Tiny URL. These two help clean up those long and gross-looking affiliate links and assist in the details of testing.

Click Audit: You can set up a free account and start tracking which ad campaigns are working and will know instantly which aren’t. If you know you’re going to be sending out one ad campaign to several different places, set up a group for that ad campaign and create separate links for each publication.

For instance, if you’re doing an article that you’ll submit to Ezinearticles.com and Netpreneurnow.com, set up two different links so you can see how many times your link was clicked in each publication. Make sure to set up different links for each place you’re running an ad to test it as well.

Tiny URL: This is an indispensable item for any marketer. It turns long links into short ones and also masks an affiliate link. Some people won’t click a link that is an obvious affiliate link. It’s free to use. Head to http://www.tinyurl.com to check it out. I love it and use it all the time.

Microsoft Word Toys 

If you do any writing in your business and would love to be able to have a split screen to go back and forth between drafts, here’s the best thing since, well, Windows. It’s freeware from Microsoft for XP that allows you to have two, three or four virtual desktops.

It’s called Virtual Desktop and lets you split your screen into as many as 4 separate screens at a time. I usually only use 2 at a time but you can keep opening screens and they’ll lie atop each other.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx and look on the right side of the page for the Virtual Desktop download.

After you’ve downloaded the freeware, find a blank space on your XP toolbar [the one at the bottom of your screen where all your startup icons are], right click to find tools, click that and look for Desktop Manager. Click that and you should be set. There’s also a read file for these toys that will guide you through the quick setup.

This should avoid the expense of two monitors or another video card.

Well, we hope these suggestions help you. Please feel free to get in touch with us if you find some cool tools.

See you again next month!

Victoria