My favourite online tools for design bloggers, interior designers, and freelance millennials
Working as a freelance interior designer and blogger at the same time can be quite stressful. I know. Working as a freelance, more generally talking, is quite stressing too: indeed, we have daily to deal with different clients, tasks, often dreaming about having a 48hrs day. This is actually how I feel most of the time, but fortunately after working for a while as a freelance I’m starting to get more organized and I’m sharing something more with you today.
Indeed, luckily at present there are lots of useful apps and online tools on the web to help us in our daily work. They can help us in saving time and optimizing our workflow, that’s to say in making more work done in less time and more money at the end of the month. Or, why not, by making our work more pleasant by working from different places, for example.
I’m sharing today in this post some of my favourite online tools I use for my work as interior design blogger. They include both some super useful tools I’m using daily for this blog, and some tools for creative projects.
What about you, are you more a geek one always looking for the new app or still a pen-and-paper one?
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8 tools for freelance interior design bloggers
| You will also love: How to make money as an interior design blogger |
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The online tool to resize images
RIOT
Radical Image Optimization Tool (RIOT for short) is a free image optimizer that will let you compress your images for the web. Radically.
If you have a blog, you must know this super fast and easy tool. I started using it just a few months ago and I wish I had started earlier. Indeed, my WordPress would have been much happier.
Below you can see the image above and how it was resized. Actually, I just dragged the original pic in the left area, then everything was done by RIOT. I love it.
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The tool to help with SEO
KEYWORD PLANNER
Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool that allows you to find the right keywords. Since it is a tool by Google AdWords, it is meant to be used for paid advertising inside Google AdWords platform.
BUT you can use it also for free, to have an idea of the keywords and of their popularity on the web.
I tell you this, I have never done any Ads on Google for this blog. But this tool is a good one to give you some ideas when you are starting to write that new post you would like to rank well on Google.
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The tools to write your post everywhere
GOOGLE DOCS
Probably most of you already know and use Google Docs, but I’m adding this tool for online version of Word because it is one of those tools I really use a lot.
Indeed, if there is one really good thing about working as a freelance content creator is that you can basically work from everywhere. This means you can write while travelling (you can write offline on Google Docs, so on a plane for example! ), but also while staying in a nice place outdoor in spring/summer (ahh, I’m dreaming of this right now). The great thing is that you can share your docs live with other people, so it’s a great tool also for working on a team.
| Read more here about my daily routine as a freelancer
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To create easily a 3D view
LIVE HOME 3D
Live Home 3D is a 3D home design software for Mac and Windows, to create beautiful and fast 3d interiors.
It is really much cheaper and easier comparing to any other 3d softwares. Indeed, it can be a good option if you are not an architect/designer, not so expert in 3d sofware, but you want to give a client a fast idea of a project. Or maybe just testing things and new arrangments for your home!
This is for example The Big Bang Theory apartment, that was totally built with Live Home 3D!
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The tool for your To Do list
CLEAR TO DO LIST
Clear to Do List is my favourite Iphone app EVER. I’m using it to remember the weirdest things. I use it to note ideas for new posts when I’m anywhere. Also, for example, to note down things I find when I visit design fairs. I use it to do my shopping list. To remember calling somebody. To remember my name.
Don’t imagine this as an complicated app, because it is really supersimple. You create you own lists, then add inside your things to do, when done things just swipe right and that’s deleted. You can also reorder your items with the finger. Yeah
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The tool to declutter your email box
UNROLL
Unroll.me is the tool to clean your email from unwanted newsletters and subscriptions, with just one click.
While entering through this tool to your mailbox you will realize how many people add your mail address to newsletters without permissions. This is something so annoying, in my opinion, do you agree?
By making a little bit more research, I found out that this app is not so good if you are not ok by sharing Google contents and privacy. However, I found also out you can easily unsubscribe from here (so, just clean your email, then change password and everything is done). At the link you can also check if there are other unwanted apps you gave access to your Google account in the past.
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My fav tool to Edit pics from the Phone
SNAPSEED
Snapseed is the best app for photo editing. I can tell you this after having tested so many apps in my iphone that I’m quite sure of this. I’m using it mainly for Instagram images, but you could also edit pics to be used anywhere else, of course.
With Snapseed you can correct all those horrible bent lines, you can turn on lightness and make your image clean and bright, you can even edit just some points of the image. Everything fast and just from your phone.
To the Snapseed creator : You made me an happier person.
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To Track and Optimize your Time
FOCUS BOOSTER
Focus Booster is the pomodoro for Millennials.
If you don’t know about pomodoro tecnique, it’s a way for managing time using a timer to breaking down in short periods, traditionally of 25 minutes. In my experience these periods are too short for some tasks I’m doing daily, but I think that it is good to split tasks into different times and to make a small break between.
With Focus Booster you can set the timing, record all you sessions by clients and track your productivity.
(I admit: some days I can use this, some days really not)
Wuestenigel Desk with Macbook and iPhone via photopin (license)
