It’s January and photographers all over the world are either getting ready to launch, or revamp and set new business goals for 2015. But one of the most common actions is looking for tools to help you elevate and streamline your brand and workflow. So today I am sharing some of my personal favorites have used and guess what? They are all FREE! Yes free to use for your business. While with the majority I have currently upgraded to monthly and one-time payment plans, there is still so much flexibility if you can’t fork over the cash right now. But with sincere focus this year and working your way to getting more clients, you’ll be happy to be making payments on these because that’s means that you grown to a capacity that no longer meets the free minimum and that’s a good thing! So let’s move on to the 10 free photography business tools I love!
1. WUFOO 
I love Wufoo forms! And yes I still use the free version. This is a powerful tool for online forms and getting information from clients and prospects. You can embed one on your site or link it out and what’s more is that the free version allows you to have up to 100 entries per month and 3 different online forms.
I personally do not use sticky albums for my clients (although I very well use it for myself!). But I always hear fantastic things about how it let’s photographers showcase their work and how it’s an amazing tools for referrals plus clients love sharing it with family and friends. Sticky albums is a custom app that photographers can provide to their clients to be able to share their images to the world at their fingertips! I signed up for a free trial a long while ago and still use it as my walking portfolio on a daily basis. Anytime I want to share my work with a potential client, it’s as easy as shooting them an email within the app where they will also have access to the portfolio. For me I feel it’s much less work for someone to be directed to the app verses a website. I mean come on it can be set up to be on a home screen… how easy is that?
3. Drop Box
Oh Dropbox, how I love you so. You’ve given me hope when I thought I would be left in the dark. Dropbox is a cloud based service that allows you to share, archive, backup and access your files anytime you need them (via your phone, ipad, laptop..whatever) it syncs almost immediately. This tool isn’t just for photographers, and if you don’t have it I suggest you run, not walk and go get it downloaded now!
No excuses people. “my house is too messy”, “my clients live too far”, “I don’t have a designated room for clients consultations or ordering”. These are all common complaints from photographers who are maybe too scared to venture into in person ordering. I am a huge HUGE advocate of in-person ordering. I like to be there when my clients choose their images, I like to help them during the process and offer a full service experience to avoid the back and forth (and sometimes miscommunication) that can occur from email and delayed contact). For this, I love Google hangouts! If my child is at home sick, or a client lives too far it doesn’t mean that my day has to go to waste, I can easily contact my clients through google chat and proceed with conducting a live online version of my consultations and ordering appointments. I’m still there for them, answering questions and attending to their needs without leaving them out in the cold. Better yet, I have used this tool even to conduct mentoring meetings and connect with other photographers from all over the world. There is a limit of 10 per private meeting, but if you host your chat live on air there is no limit, you’ll just have to make sure to go back and make it private once your meeting is done. I do prefer this over skype simply because I always have better connection.
5. Mailchimp
This little monkey is a good friend of mine. I have been using this FREE tool for years! It’s super easy and straight forward to use. Mailchimp will help you deliver your beautifully crafted emails to your clients and give you feedback on what’s going on behind the scenes for record keeping.
6. Hootsuite
You know that rabbit hole you fall into just when you think you’ve got your to-do list together and you’re anticipating a productive day? The moment you open facebook or any other social media avenue, regardless of you’re on there just for work purposes can quickly suck you in like the beast of darkness that it is! Yes I think social media is evil!! You go on to create a work post and there it is….. a cute baby napping with panda, and scroll down just a little more and someone has taught you how to “properly” cut into a pomegranate. Up until social media, I never thought I would need to know or see some of these things things riding the news feed wave but I guess I do? In comes hootsuite to save you from the darkness. Not only is it a good way to detour your way to more time **OFF** of social media, but it does that so well by actually giving you MORE time to be productive in other areas. Scheduling. I hated this word until I decided to stop fighting it and started automating. With Hootsuite you can easily schedule your business posts even weeks in advance allowing you the freedom to not be tied down to the computer. Now I take one day each week or sometimes every two weeks to schedule all of my posts and hootsuite does the rest for me. From there I can just check in and engage!
7. Big Cartel
Need e-commerce to help you get sales in check? Big Cartel has you covered with it’s free plan, it allows you to have a maximum of 5 products. I used big cartel way back in the day when I opened a clothing boutique business that didn’t go very far..oops! But what I have seen lately is photographers using this shopping cart system for session categories and listing availability. I’m on the verge of adding this again to my arsenal of business tools very soon!
8. Studio Cloud
For free studio software, honestly it can’t get better than this. I used it for my first 3 years in business and I loved it! Although it was a bit limited, it did just I needed, which was track invoices and my business expenses. There are way more features than I could ever explain to you in this short sentence so go check it out for yourself!
9. Shootproof
So I have you covered right now in almost every aspect that a photographer *thinks* they need. And I say this because I have spoken to so many people that still do everything on paper and excel spreadsheets. I really love that minimal approach but there is one thing you probably can’t do without and that is- A client gallery. You can do in-person all day long but you must make the images available so that clients have a place to download and share them. With Shootproof you can upload up to 100 images free! Now I don’t use them for my immediate clients but I have used it for smaller events and I love the “pinterest” style interface when clients click on the link to see their works of art.
10. GoToMeeting
Have a meeting? Or need to do in-person ordering? Gotomeeting also has you covered for that. It’s a much “cleaner” and I suppose more professional interface than Google Hangouts. So for that alone I give it 5 stars!