Content Creator Tools on a Shoestring Budget

Earning money from home requires means of production. At the software level, I have tried dozens of production applications. Especially the free ones. Disappointment was the product of most of those tests.

Still, over the years some good free apps I did find.

Before recommending what to use, I will recommend what not to use.

I recommend not to waste time with the following:

LibreOffice
Polaris
Apache OpenOffice
AbiWord
UltraSearch
Scrivener
Jarte

These, to name just a few. In my experience, they are clunky,un-optimized software.

This article may seem biased towards towards Windows, offline applications. I have experience with developer operating systems like Linux. Still, my technical expertise is average. Due to this, any PC operating system other than Windows is out of the question for me.

This article favors offline applications because of privacy concerns. I simply don’t trust online applications. It’s better to keep some content, like personal, sensitive information, local.

Everything is much easier and simplified with professional, paid applications, yes. However, nothing compares to the satisfaction of achieving quality products with free applications. Knowing that one did it without lowering oneself to infringement.

Production Applications

Fund Manager

MoneyManagerEX: basic digital ledger.

Data Organizer

TreeDB Notes: used to take notes, and organize information in tree format. Saves all the items in a proprietary database file.
StickyNotes: to take notes that can be attached to the desktop.

Design of Diagrams

draw.io: diagram design, web-based
Evolus Pencil: for Windows, not as good as draw.io, but more privacy

Organizer / Calendar

Borg 1.8.2: the best designed, occupies a considerable memory space
Task Coach: Good, but it takes up a lot of memory space
ToDo List: it is the one that occupies less RAM of the three, and also the one with more features

Office

Kingsoft / WPS has a complete free suite. Each MS Office program has an equivalent.

The three I use:

Kingsoft Presentation: creator of presentations
Kingsoft Spreadsheet: spreadsheet
Kingsoft Writer: word processor

Updated name of Kingsoft programs: WPS Office. But the (still available) versions called Kingsoft Office are equally good.

Another line that tries to be an alternative to MS Office is Softmaker FreeOffice.

FreeOffice Planmaker: spreadsheet
FreeOffice Texmaker: word processor.
FreeOffice Presentation: slide creator

Wanting to leverage Google’s G Suite, but at the same time to keep my usage of G Suite, to a minimum, I could reduce those services to just 4.

Others may trust Google more than me, and use it as their go-to software to produce, and manage things. Goooglevangelists may even go as far as paying for the whole package. To have enhanced access to this assortment of almost twenty applications.

The only four applications belonging to G Suite that I use:

Gmail
Google Docs: store, edit and share documents
Google Sheets: spreadsheet
Google Slides: creator of presentations

Gmail

Google Docs

Creation of Usable Databases

Free programs for Windows that supplant databases like MS Access are hard to find. The only one that turned out to be of any use for me was LibreOffice Base Portable. Yet, when importing a database created with MS Office 2003’s Access, the results were rather bad.

Professional Writing, Reading, Typesetting, Publishing

Calibre: manages all types of documents. It serves as a catalog for a virtual library. Convert all types of document formats: PDF, EPUB, MOBI and the rest
BlueGriffon EPUB Edition: create electronic books. More intuitive than Sigil, but the final manuscript may have formatting errors
Sigil: create electronic books. It is not very intuitive for the user. Great for the finishing editing tasks. Like adding the cover and back cover to an e-book
VersePerfect: poetry writing. It greatly facilitates the process of writing a poem
YWriter: to write books. Organize the manuscript with chapters and other features
Trelby: script writing. Has arbitrary design errors, such as the inability to cut and paste normally
CeltX: script writing. Better than Trelby, but lacks useful features
PDF95: The best virtual printer to print a .DOC / .DOCX / .RTF / .HTML to PDF
Sumatra: the lightest PDF reader I ever used
FoxitReader: good pdf reader, but the most recent versions are heavy
Scribus: I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s stuck in the past and not a real alternative to InDesign, Acrobat, or Distiller.

Get them here: Calibre BlueGriffon EPUB Edition Sigil VersePerfect YWriter Trelby CeltX PDF95 Sumatra FoxitReader Scribus

Graphic Design and Photography

Raw Therapy: minimalist post-processing application.
Pixlr: online alternative to Adobe Photoshop.
LunaPic: online picture editor. It has a lot of features that make it something more - than simply a Photoshop clone,
Inkscape: vector design (alternative to Adobe Illustrator)
FastStone Photo Resizer: resize photos
ImageTasks: make different operations with photos, even change size. Superior to FastStone, since it allows batch processing with several photos at once.
XnView: the best free photo viewer I used. Superior to ACDC, which was the norm years ago.
XnConvert: I did not use it to convert photos. XnView and ImageTasks were always enough for me.
SpringPublisher: creator of business cards, logos and other small designs. Okay for small projects, like a business card or postcard. The free version’s maximum export resolution is 180dpi. Watermarks the document if one attempts to create a bigger format
BusinessCardLand: creator of cards on the web
Picasa 3: discontinued image and photo manager by Google

Get them here: Raw Therapy Pixlr LunaPic Inkscape FastStone Photo Resizer ImageTasks XnView XnConvert SpringPubli sher BusinessCardLand Picasa 3

Web-page design

Kompozer: free alternative to Adobe Dreamweaver, but extremely limited
Google Web Designer: better than Kompozer, web-based

Pre-made Databases

DiscLib: create catalogs of CDs and DVDs with search-able trees of the discs’s contents
Erik's Movie Manager: no-nonsense movie catalogs
DreamJournal: a niche application, but useful if one needs to record dreams for any reason. The one called DreamJournal.exe is a single file but seems to be unavailable on the web. I found Lightened Dream instead

Pseudo-Applications (Tools)

Screen Capture

MWSnap 3.0: excellent for getting screenshots of almost everything
MWSnap 3.0

File manager

FreeCommander XE: Orthodox file manager similar to Total Commander.
FreeCommander XE

Time Management

Xnote Stopwatch: the best free stopwatch for Windows. It allows to edit the time manually.

Search of Local Files

Locate 32: an idea stolen from the classic Macintosh finder. Creates a database, and finds any file on the disk.
Everything: similar to Locate 32, but the database updates automatically.

Extro

Like I said in the title, all these applications are freeware or shareware, no strings attached. Still, it’s always good to reciprocate to the developers if your use of their applications was valuable.

I leave you now, with something for the developers of the applications and tools in this list, and for you, for reading this article: