Leaving early, working from the couch, taking vacations without asking permission – these are just a few of the many advantages of being self-employed. But despite the freedom, it’s not all fun and games.
As a freelancer, you are responsible for all parts of your business: accounting, contracts, administration, and more. And if you’re not strategic, freelancing can quickly go from a creative’s dream to a nightmare of unanswered emails and twice-scheduled meetings.
Fortunately, today’s technology can make running an independent business much easier. With the right AI tools at your disposal, you can achieve even more success as a freelancer.
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From scheduling platforms to website builders, AI-powered technology can save you time, money, and sanity as a freelancer. Below you will learn about some popular AI tools that you may want to adopt for your business.
Using Grammarly is like having a built-in writing assistant to proofread, edit, and spell-check your work, essentially ensuring that your words make sense. (Because we’ve all written something about getting too little sleep.) Grammarly also helps define your tone and style and helps clarify the message you are trying to convey.
Cost: Grammarly’s free plan may be all you need for casual writing. It includes spelling and grammar checks, as well as analyzing your tone. The Pro plan is a step up: It costs $12 per month (after a free trial) and includes everything on the free plan, plus sentence rewriting, pitch adjustment, personalized suggestions, plagiarism detection, and more.
Best for: This tool is great for writing emails, sales copy, blog posts, social media captions (or anything else) while running your freelance business.
Note: Grammarly is now part of Superhuman, a productivity suite that includes integration, scheduling, and email tools all in one place.
You can think of Notion as a digital notebook, but with AI superpowers. It’s an all-in-one workspace that freelancers can use to track and manage projects, take notes, assign tasks, and much more. For example, you can use Notion AI to create and store client guides, create proposals, create workflows, or collaborate with team members.
Cost: Notion has several tiers to choose from, including a free option. The free option only includes an AI trial, but still gives you access to Notion forms, sites, mail, calendar, and databases. To access Notion’s AI Agent (for complex tasks that use information from connected applications), you’ll have to pay $20 a month.
Best for: Notion is a hub for all things project management with a range of robust capabilities. If you’re looking to reduce your tech stack, it could be a good solution.
There’s nothing worse than sending dozens of emails back and forth to schedule a meeting, only to have to reschedule it at the last minute. And when you’re self-employed, you’re likely to schedule a lot of meetings with different clients, contractors, and collaborators.
Enter Calendly, scheduling software that lets you connect your personal calendar and customize your availability so clients can easily book an appointment. All you have to do is share your meeting link.
Cost: Calendly offers a free plan that limits you to one meeting type. If you have multiple types of bookings (say you need to offer a 30-minute discovery call and a two-hour onboarding call), you’ll need to pay for the Standard Plan, which costs $10 per month.
Best for: This is for anyone who meets with clients or customers and needs an efficient scheduling system.
ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence tool with seemingly endless applications. You can treat it like a virtual assistant and assign it a variety of tasks and to-dos. Use ChatGPT to help you brainstorm content topics, write outlines, compile research, compose emails, prioritize tasks, summarize notes, and more.
Cost: ChatGPT offers a free plan with limited messaging, features, and memory. Upgrade to Plus for $20/month for expanded capacity and messaging, plus advanced reasoning and the ability to create custom GPTs. (There is also a Pro plan for full access to ChatGPT’s capabilities, but it will cost you $200 per month.)
Best for: Freelancers of all types who want to save time on daily tasks like writing, brainstorming, research, and more can benefit from this tool.
Read more: 5 ChatGPT Tips to Help You Create a Better Budget
In today’s online world, clients may think twice before hiring you if you don’t have a professional-looking website. But don’t let that scare you; You don’t need to know anything about coding to create a presentable website.
Squarespace AI helps you create a custom website for any type of freelance business you run. You’ll use your feedback on brand personality, content, and website sections to create suggestions for your custom site, which you can refine for a fully customized website.
Cost: Squarespace’s Blueprint AI Builder is free, but you must pay for a Squarespace account to publish your site. Prices range from $16 to $99 per month, depending on what features you need.
Best for: This tool is a great solution for any freelancer who wants a professional website as soon as possible, but doesn’t want to design or build it themselves.
Accounting and invoicing are often overlooked in freelancing. But without them, they can’t pay you. FreshBooks is accounting and billing software with time tracking, expense management, financial reporting, and other accounting tools to keep your company’s finances clean and organized. Instead of keeping a spreadsheet of expenses, proposals in random Google Drive folders, and a handwritten sheet of hours worked, you can consolidate everything in FreshBooks.
Although it focuses primarily on automation, FreshBooks integrates with third-party tools to harness the power of AI for expense tracking, invoicing, and more.
Cost: FreshBooks recommends two plan options for freelancers: Lite, which typically costs $21 per month, and Plus, which typically costs $38 per month. (Both the Lite and Plus plans were on sale for 60% off at the time of writing, and both offer a free trial.) One of the main differences between these two plans is the number of clients they allow you to bill: Lite limits you to five, while Plus gives you 50.
Best for: Freelancers who need to send proposals and invoices with minimal effort will get a lot out of FreshBooks, especially those who care about looking stylish. It’s also a great tool for anyone who wants a less chaotic way to document business finances.
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While AI can dramatically speed up your workflows, save you money, and expand your ability as a freelancer, you can run into problems if you don’t use it responsibly.
Below are some guidelines to keep in mind when using AI as a freelancer.
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Don’t use AI to create deliverables. Whether your job is blogging, designing logos, or producing social media content, your clients pay you for your skills. Don’t use AI to create those deliverables and charge your clients as if you did the work yourself. After all, your customers are paying you to do the job. If they wanted AI to do it, they wouldn’t have hired you.
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Be careful when sharing personal or sensitive information with artificial intelligence tools. AI conversations can be used to train large language models (LLM), putting your (or your customers’) private information at risk.
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Only use reputable tools. Be careful when using an AI tool without a proven track record. Reputable tools will publish their privacy policies, offer customer support, and fix security issues when they arise.
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Check AI outputs. If you’ve used AI in the past, you probably know that it can make mistakes. Don’t trust AI results – be sure to check all facts, figures and statistics, and check for plagiarism.
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AI tools are an incredible resource for freelancers in any industry. But they should enhance his career, not take his place.
Use AI for administrative and work-intensive tasks that consume valuable time but do not require deep thought. And save the creative, highly skilled tasks to yourself – your work needs you and your human brain.