These are some of the tools I use every day as a working freelancer to help with pitching, writing, editing, and accounting. I’ve also included organizations I find helpful and some miscellaneous contacts and handy things to know. If you want to suggest other resources to add to this page, or have other specific questions about freelancing and are looking for advice, email me. I also recommend checking out my friend Priya Krishna’s resource page for more insights.
Assignment and payment tracking
There’s all kinds of accounting software on the market, but for the last three years I’ve tracked assignments and payments with a basic spreadsheet. Each month has its own tab for line items that are all linked to a summary sheet. That sheet aggregates your monthly totals and provides an at-a-glance look at how much money you have in the pipeline and how much you’re owed. The summary sheet also collects the names of all your clients, which I find handy for organizing 1099s come tax time. More sophisticated software will give you prompts on invoices that are overdue and generate invoices for you, but this has been enough to help me track payments. Make a copy of the spreadsheet to your own Google Drive to edit. Just don’t copy and paste rows in the monthly tabs or you risk messing up the formatting. Special thanks to Andrew Alexander for designing this.
Study Hall
Study Hall is a freelancer collective with thousands of members and a range of services. As of this writing, $2/month gives you access to a weekly media world digest and a weekly listing of jobs and freelancer opportunities. $4/month gives you that plus access to their listserv to ask and answer questions and talk with fellow creatives. An $11/month membership tier includes editor contacts, pitch guidelines, and private channels. They also publish their own journalism and offer discounts for media workers of color. Can’t recommend them enough.
Who Pays Writers
A database of editorial rates submitted by journalists with details on the assignment and payment process. Since all the submissions are volunteered, I can’t speak for its total accuracy, but it’s a helpful baseline for rate transparency.
Writers of Color
A great Twitter feed that shares freelance opportunities for writers. If you’re white and you use this to steal ideas I’ll beat you up.
Publisher email formats
Most of the big publishers have standardized email address formats that you can use to figure out how to contact someone at any of their brands. I can’t say these work perfectly in all instances but they do in most. Here are the ones I know. Email me if you know others.
Conde Nast: firstname_lastname@condenast.com
Meredith: firstname.lastname@meredith.com
Hearst: [firstinitial][lastname]@hearst.com
Vox Media: firstname.lastname@voxmedia.com
Random House: [firstinitial][lastname]@penguinrandomhouse.com
Email tracking
If you’re the kind of person who freaks out about whether someone’s read your email, maybe skip this one. It may drive you crazy and make you feel worse all the time about everything. But if you’re willing to risk that, Mailtrack is a Gmail plugin that lets you track when and how often your emails are opened. I find this especially useful for checking on editors when I pitch, to see if they’re even paying attention and when it makes sense to follow up. A year’s subscription is $60.
Automated transcription
The most popular online transcription service is Rev, a company that justly came under fire last year for worker abuses, so don’t use it. Some Study Hall members offer transcription services at competitive rates if you email the listserv. Human transcription is by far your best option, but if you need a recording turned into somewhat decent text quickly and cheaply, which you can edit with on-the-fly recording references, Descript does a solid job.
Quick photo editing
Pixlr is an online Photoshop clone that can help with image editing. I find it handy when I’m working on a stranger’s computer and need to do something simple like resize an image.
Help a Reporter
A free service for journalists to find sources in a wide range of industries and disciplines. I don’t personally use it but have some writer friends who swear by it, as long as you recognize that everyone has an agenda.
News alerts
You can create a Google News email alert for any topic or phrase you want to follow. Gmail search operators work here too. While we’re on the subject, Google Scholar is a good search engine for academic papers and journals.
A good accountant
I file my taxes annually with an accountant from Broadway Tax in Manhattan. Can’t speak to anyone else’s accounting situation, but they know how to work with freelancers and have given me indispensable advice that saves me thousands of dollars a year. I believe a first consult is free and income tax services are ~$450.
Discount prescription meds
Like many freelancers, I get my healthcare through the ACA. It’s not great. GoodRx is a coupon website for medication that gets me lower prices on some prescriptions than my copay. I have no idea who runs it or how it makes money. But hey, pills.
