101 Free Tools Every Freelance Writer, Web Designer, and Graphic Artist Needs

by Christin Sander

I work as a freelance writer, web designer, and graphic artist. Over the past several years I have used a variety of resources and tools and decided it would be a great time to compile my favorites. This is a list/review of 101 online resources I feel every freelance creative should have in their “toolbox”.

As any creative freelancer knows, we are always having to learn new things, stay fresh and interesting, and do our best to provide useful products and information to those we serve. I also happen to know that the creative community tends to be very generous and helpful to others. I've learned a lot along the way from other fellow creatives who are always eager to extend themselves and I hope that this collection will be a great help for those who stumble onto it.

This hub has been many hours in the making – putting together an exhaustive list of resources that I hope you will find go “above and beyond” in giving you what you need to be a successful freelancer. If you enjoy it and find it useful please share it on facebook and tweet it out to your creative friends. Many thanks! :)

If you are in the market to hire a freelancer be sure to visit me at Christin's Portfolio.

Web Designers & Graphic Artists

The first 50 are for you!

Adobe Exchange – The adobe exchange is a fabulous place to find free textures, brushes, graphics, templates and anything else you can think of for those who work with the Adobe Suite of products. As an avid user of CS5 Professional Suite – the Adobe Exchange is a constant source of wonderful tools. Free and paid options are available – and many creatives have generously shared their talents to create free items.

Brush King – This lovely site features a wide variety of free Photoshop brushes.

Texture King – Wide array of free stock textures concrete, wood, liquids, fabrics and more.

Texture Palace – 580+ high res free textures for photoshop

Kuler – Create and share color themes and palettes with others. Experiment quickly with a variety of colors. Use the color wheel to pick the right complements and more.

ColorPix – I love this little handy piece of software. Use it to grab the pixel under your mouse and transform it into various color formats. Great for matching colors in different design projects.

Open Source Web Design – This website is devoted to high-quality free templates. Download and share with others. They currently offer over 2000 templates/designs.

Open Designs – Members share free website designs and templates here and there is a nice forum for discussing web design.

MorgueFile – This is a wonderful website for finding completely free images that you can modify and use for various projects. Download photos and share photos that others may use as well. It also features a community and classroom for sharing and learning.

Open Clip Art – This website features high-quality clipart that is completely free to use in your projects.

Every Stock Photo – Search over 10 million free photos all in one place. They pull results from many sites like Flickr, Stock Xchng, etc.

RGBstock – All photos on this site are free for both personal and commercial use. Searchable or browse by category.

Vector Art – This site features many nice free vector graphics (and premium content as well)

Vector Portal – Huge database with over 10 million downloads that features free vector graphics of everything imaginable available under Creative Commons licensing. Their designs are free for use in both personal and commercial projects.

Capture a Screenshot – a Freeware program to capture screenshots – full screen, partial or just selections

Gimp – This is a free image manipulation software that has several photoshop like features. Although it's not as feature rich as Photoshop it can produce very nice images and is a great free alternative to the pricey Adobe products.

InkScape – This is an opensource vector graphics editor and is a free alternative to Illustrator and CorelDraw.

Kivio – Kivio is a free software program that is very useful for drawing storyboards, flow charts, and otherwise outlining your creative projects.

Filezilla – Open source FTP program that is cross platform compatible (mac, linux, windows) used for file transfers.

Tutorial Vault – over 4,700 user-rated tutorials on everything creative under the sun. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks, Photography, SEO, Development and more.

Tutorialized – Vast amounts of Photoshop and Flash tutorials.

PSD Tuts Plus – Some of the most amazing photoshop tutorials you'll ever find are on this website.

Vector Tuts – Tons of vector graphic tutorials for Illustrator, CorelDraw and more.

CSS Zen Garden – CSS can be used to create stunningly beautiful websites and this site showcases the wonderful things that can be accomplished visually with CSS. A one-of-a-kind source of creative inspiration.

Using Photoshop to Design a Website – 70 Tutorials that will teach you how to build a website using Photoshop. Very useful!

My Site My Way – A beautiful, well-organized site filled with royalty free everything – icons, clip-art, shapes, patterns, textures, backgrounds and more all free to use in both commercial and personal projects.

DaFont – Over 12,600 free fonts to choose from. Different licensing usage so check that first before using in commercial projects – but you can find a font for anything here!

DeviantArt – This is the place on the web for artistic inspiration and the wow factor. It also is home to plenty of free resources. Every item is different and you must adhere to the licensing/requirements for whatever you use. It's also a great place to showcase your talents and sell your art.

ColourLovers – A website for sharing color palettes, patterns, ideas, and inspirations with others from all over the world.

Bittbox – great website/blog featuring many freebies and a lot of fantastic design tips, illustrations, and inspiration.

Free Creative Design Elements – Features a variety of free to use (with credit) abstract backgrounds, textures, and design ideas.

Web Designer Depot – This blog is the joint effort of many top designers around the world and highlights the best in all forms of design from typography to tutorials.

W3Schools – Extensive free tutorials on a variety of web development languages XHTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, php, and more. Every web designer works better when they understand and know their way around different coding languages.

1000+ Paper Resources – This site features over 1000 paper resources – textures, patterns, brushes, icons, etc. Any kind of paper look you can think of is represented here.

1^st Page – This is a good freeware web design software that comes bundled with several scripts as well. You will need to have some coding experience to use it – but it's a great free software and I enjoyed using it when I was learning HTML.

100 + Free Business Card Templates – Self-explanatory really. Over 100 different styles, business card templates (psd's)

Browser Shots – This is a great way to see what your website will look like on different browsers. Very handy tool for compatibility testing.

Name Tumbler – Use this handy little tool to help you pick the best domain name for your website. Enter a keyword and it will come up with all kinds of suggestions and help you check availability on a variety of extensions.

Freelance Switch – Great site that features many freelance job listings, an active forum, and many other resources for freelancers of all kinds.

Graphic Hive – Nice website filled with free resources for designers and developers – icons, vectors, psd files and more.

Creative Commons – This is the place to specify the types of usage licenses you want for your work. Instead of simply “all rights reserved” standard copyright a creative commons license allows you to specify how and where your work may be used by others if you so choose.

WikiMedia Commons – Over 10 million usable media files to which anyone can contribute – images, sounds, video etc.

DoNanza – Sign up for free and search thousands of freelance job posts from a variety of sources all in one place. They even send daily emails of all the latest opportunities in your field(s) of interest.

Lorem Ipsum – this website generates “lorem ipsum” text for placement in your project designs. Very useful when you need to see how something looks with text placement.

Coroflot – create a free portfolio online with easy to remember url and traffic statistics. They also have a job board where you can search for your next freelancing gig.

Professional on the Web – Another website where you can list a profile for free and showcase your projects. Users can search via tags and instantly rate projects without the need to sign in or register.

Xenu's Link Sleuth – This free software program checks your website for broken links which can hurt you in search engines

Smashing Magazine – The best resource for valuable information for designers and web developers. You can't not learn something new here.

Writers

Income From Writing - Learn the many ways you can earn income as a writer and why you don't have to work for peanuts! There is also a forum where you can post a link to your portfolio and find other info for writers.

Freemind – the best piece of writing related freeware I've ever used. This software allows me to easily focus my thoughts and do wonderful mind maps – which lead to organized writing, more developed ideas etc.

TreePad Lite – This freeware allows you to easily store, search and organize any type of textual information. It's a great piece of personal organization software. The right pane is a text editor and the left pane lets you easily navigate through folders/info.

Keyword Density Analyzer – Use this tool to see the density of certain keywords on your pages.

Webnote – Although the site is a bit hard on the eyes with the yellow – the tool is very handy and allows you to take notes in a browser which you can then retrieve from any computer.

Remember the Milk – Keep track of deadlines, tasks, and anything else with this free to use resource that will send you reminders by email, IM or text message.

Agent Ransack – This is a great little search utility freeware program that is highly customizable and does a better job of searching your computer for files than the standard windows search utility. I use it all the time.

All Freelance Writing – This website features a lot of great, actually useful “how to's” and advice for freelance writers, lists of paying markets, and several freebie tools and eBooks.

OWL – Most college students are familiar with the owl (online writing lab) It is a vast wealth of information for improving your writing. Polish up those grammar skills and learn about writing styles etc.

Reference – This site features a free dictionary, thesaurus, translator, quotes, search trends and more.

RefDesk – Fact checker resource on the internet indexes and reviews quality, credible, and current web-based reference resources. Tons of resources at your fingertips.

Internet Resources - "Lists within lists within lists of links you can use to write articles, find inspiration or take care of business matters." This is an aptly written description from the website itself – a wonderful compilation of resources it's been in my favorites for years.

The Internet Archive – a non-profit internet library that features historical collections in digital format. Books, music, audio, images and the internet “way back” machine for accessing archived older versions of websites.

The Glossarist – compilation of hundreds of glossaries and topical dictionaries all searchable in one place. Very handy.

The Reverse Dictionary – Enter a description or short phrase and this dictionary will give you a list of words to match your description – surprisingly useful!

Lousy Writer – Everything you need to know to stop writing junk. This site is a no-holds barred resource for learning how to improve your writing skills. Grammar and usage, common mistakes, style guides and more – plus it has a great title.

HubPages – A great place to share what you know and polish your writing skills while earning some residual income. HubPages features an outstandingly supportive bunch of writers of various skill levels who really seem to help one another. I learn something new here every day.

Squidoo – I don't have personal experience with this website, but do know of several people who say they enjoy it. Like HubPages you post content and earn shares of ad revenue.

Triond – Another site where you get paid ad share for content only here you can share videos, pictures, and a variety of other things.

Writing Whale – This blog is designed with aspiring freelance writers in mind and provides a lot of great tips and ideas aimed at those just getting started in their freelance careers.

Freelance Portfolios – Use this site to create your own free portfolio of your work. A portfolio is a great way to share samples of your work and get the word out. If you don't have the ability to build your own website – use this free solution.

Freelance Writing – Wonderful resource with plenty of articles, job listings, tutorials, writer's guidelines to over 900 publications and more.

WordPress – Free blogging software with many different templates, widgets, etc to make your blog or website special. Also customizable with premium content, but the free features are more than enough to get most people started.

Blogger – This free blog is not as fully customizable as WordPress, but it is definitely worthwhile and easier for beginner's. I use both blogger and WP and both have features I really enjoy.

AgentQuery – Large, free database of literary agents featuring current contact information, work history, book titles sold etc.

Freelance Writers International – Free membership. This website has thousands of resources including job postings, calls for submissions, publishers guides and many learning resources.

MIT OpenCourseWare – Free writing courses from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Includes expository essays, short stories, scientific writing and more.

Free-Ed – Several free writing courses available here – essentials of writing, critical thinking, essay writing, technical and scientific writing and more.

Learning Lab – Several free tutorials online for the development of essential writing skills

Whisper Jobs – A very good job board for journalism and magazine jobs with plenty of other resources as well.

The Ivory Tower – this website is hard on the eyes with flashy things, but filled with great free listings for various writer's markets arranged according to genre.

DuoTrope – This website is a great free resource for fiction writers. Search for fiction publishers by genre and it also includes a free submission tracker – very nice.

How to Write Magnetic Headlines – We all know that getting a reader hooked and interested in reading means you need a great headline – this site has a lot of great information on attention grabbing headlines.

Creativity Portal Writing Prompts – A wide array of prompts from photo prompts to self-discovery questions.

30 Tools For Writers – An excellent compilation of writing tips that will definitely improve your writing

101 Writing Prompts & Ideas to Challenge YourselfA hub I wrote filled with a wide array of writing prompts & ideas for writer's of all kinds

Literary Rejections on Display – Sometimes it helps to know that you are not the only person facing multiple rejections. Humor can reinstate that desire to keep on trying and this blog does a great job.

I Write Like – This fun little website will compare your writing to that of famous authors and tell you who you resemble. I resemble Edgar Allan Poe and Dan Brown ;) which is just super fine with me!

Query Shark – This site is a real gem for learning how to query correctly. This is for fiction writer's only, but you submit a query and it is critiqued – often harshly, but that is how we learn what works.

Bookends – See the "must read posts" from this literary agencies blog for all types of useful information on how to pitch books, query and what NOT to do - written by a literary agency.

Fuel Your Writing – This site will do just that. Stellar resources and advice for writer's of all types in a beautifully designed, easy to navigate website.

SEO Copywriting Made Simple – This totally free eBook does an excellent job of showing exactly what search engines look for and the results may surprise you.

ProBlogger Job Board – This site features a lot of decent writing jobs you can view for free as well as advice on how to blog for your own business.

Writer Beware! - This is a great website that warns about all the different scams out there that plague writers. I consider this an invaluable resource. Can be used by any writers of any genre.

279 Days to Overnight Success – This is a free full-length eBook in which a full time writer explains how he became successful and the strategies he used. Very informative.

Absolute Write – I particularly like the forums on this website which are filled with a lot of great information, arranged well by subject. You can also find jobs here.

Tjobs – a great site for finding legitimate freelancing jobs – no schemes or “business opps” etc are allowed here – they have a category for writing jobs as well as design.

The Write Jobs – A job board for writers of all kinds from freelancers to journalism jobs.

Daily Power Words Writer's Blog This is my own meager personal writing website/blog that I post writing tips and resources too quite often. I know shameless plug ;) sorry...

I hope you have enjoyed the resources here and that you will please pass them on by sharing the link to my hub with others! Thanks :)