- I like free, I like simple
and I like to save time, so in this video, I'm taking
a look at seven websites that cost absolutely nothing
to help you save time as a part of your day. Hello everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more
done and enjoy less stress. And let's jump right in
with editing a PDF document. Now, the first one we're looking at here is something called PDFescape. Now, what I am needing in many cases is the ability to add fillable fields to existing PDF documents, and PDF escape is great for this purpose. You can either use the online version or the desktop version, but we're gonna keep
everything online for today, so I'm gonna select "Free Online". Now, in this case, I'm
gonna upload a PDF document that I've already created on my computer. All I need to do is come here
and choose that given file. Here it is. I'm gonna upload it to PDF escape. And at this stage I can
edit it and add things in a variety of ways. But what I'm really after
is a simple and quick way to add fillable fields. Here I've created a homework assignment and I want my students to
be able to answer right here within the PDF document. So all I need to do is come
up here to the insert tab and I'm gonna select "Form Field". Now I can choose if I
want to add a checkbox, a radio button dropdown,
whatever I want to add here. Well, in this particular document, I wanna add a paragraph. So I'm gonna select text paragraph and then hit the Select button. And now I can just click
and drag with my cursor the area where I want them to be able to provide their answer. So I want them to answer in
a short paragraph form here. If I wanna duplicate this, all
I need to do is right click and hit duplicate. Now I've got the exact
same size, which is great, so it's nice and uniform. I'm gonna do that one more time. I'm gonna hit duplicate, and I've got my third answer down below. Now I can continue to
add things if I want, but in this example, I'm just gonna leave it at
these three things here. On the left-hand side, I'm gonna click this
Save and Download icon. It's gonna download it to my computer and I'm gonna open it up here. And look at this, now I've got a fillable fillable
field ready for me to use, and I can send this out to my students. A great website which is
absolutely free and easy to use. Next on our list has to do with finding
customer service faster and getting the results that you need and hopefully, maybe even speaking to a live customer service representative. How much time have you wasted
going to websites trying to find their toll free number or to get in contact
with customer service? Well, gethuman.com cuts
that time down drastically. So in this case, I'm gonna type in something
like "PayPal", for example. I'm gonna see if I can
get some customer support when it comes to PayPal. What this does is for any company that you type into that search field, it's going to give you it's
customer service number so you don't have to go
searching for it itself. It's also going to show
you the current wait time, how long your average wait
is and the current wait. And if you want to,
you can skip by calling and get the call back right
away from this screen. So this is a fantastic
way to get to exactly what you're looking for. All of the relevant
information here that you need. In fact, if you're wanting
even more targeted help, it's even going to show you
some of the most common things that people are asking and provide you with a quick solution. So a great way to find the service and the support that you're after. Now, the third free
service on my list today has to do with creating content or creating catchy titles. Now, this goes more than just if you are writing a
blog or creating videos. Think of a presentation
that you may be giving, think of a headline or the
title of a webpage or a website or something else that you're creating. Well, Headline Studio is
a service brought to us by CoSchedule. And what this does is it
analyzes your headlines and gives you some great
feedback telling you if you should improve it,
how you can improve it and how it can stack up
against other headlines. So let's take a look
at a few examples here. Let's say if I say, "These websites are great." What if I think that that's
gonna be a great title? Let's see what the headline
analyzer has to say. Well, in this case, it's
giving me a score of 52. Which is really not that great because this score is out of 100. It's telling me that I probably
am using too few words, I don't have a great word balance and it goes into a lot further
description and details as to what all of these
figures actually mean. Let's see if we can
improve this a little bit. In this case, I'm gonna say, how about, "7 websites that you should use today" What about that? Is that a better headline
than the first one that I typed in here? A little bit. It says 59. What if I take a slightly
different approach and I say, "5 reasons why you should
stop using these websites." How about that? What's that gonna give me for a score? Hey, that's quite a bit better. 79 as my headline score. So it doesn't mean that I'm
necessarily going to use this for my next video or
blog or whatever content that I'm creating, but this can be a great start and it's an absolutely free tool. So I can read through this data, I can look at some of the
other suggestions that it gives as I try to craft the
ideal title or headline for my content. The next website on our
list is all about email. Especially if you need an email address to sign up for a newsletter or maybe to access a particular tool, but you don't want to be inundated with all of the marketing and all of the other email
that you're gonna be receiving from that website. So this website is called 10 Minute Mail. And the idea around it is that it gives you a
throwaway email address. Something that you're only going to use for the next 10 minutes or so. So here you can see I've been given this temporary email address which looks rather nasty, but it's gonna work on almost any site. So all I need to do is
copy this email address and use it to sign up
for a new application or a newsletter or to
download a free guide. And what I will do is I will
actually receive that email right here on this page. So I can access the information, I can download the links or
the files that are sent to me, but after those 10 minutes are up, I would no longer have
access to this email address. I can move on and be sure
that I receive nothing in my actual email account. So this can be great if you're just needing
a quick email address, maybe if you're testing out a service, you can use 10 Minute
Mail for those purposes. Now the next free website on
our list might just save you the most time of all. At Ninite.com what you're going to see is a selection of applications. Applications that you know and love. Now, the purpose of this site is really when you are
setting up a new computer. Whether you've purchased a new computer, you've acquired a new computer, and you know how time consuming
it is to start from scratch and you have to download and install or update all of the applications that you're already using
or you know you will use. What Ninite does is give you a list of some of the most popular applications. So for example, let's say
I'm setting up a new laptop and I'm gonna say I want both the Chrome and the Firefox browsers here, I wanna use AVG for security, I definitely want Zoom and Skype and maybe I'll just select a few other things such as Paint.NET and maybe a document reader as well. Now you can select as many of
these files and applications as you like and the very next step is to say Get Your Ninite. And what you're going to receive is a custom installer/updater. Meaning that you'll just have
one file which will allow you to install all of these
applications at once. You don't have to go
from each and every site, first to Chrome, then
to Firefox, then to AVG, you can do it all in one
page, all in one screen and get you started with that new machine or that new computer that much faster. Next up on our list is a website that I use all of the time when I am researching new
applications and new software for my business, either on my
behalf or for someone else. And it's called G2, formally G2 Crowd. What G2 does is that it gathers reviews, real user reviews, from a variety of different software. So, for example, let's
say that I'm interested in learning more about ClickUp. I'm gonna click on this ClickUp icon here, and I can see that there's
over 3000 reviews for ClickUp. So I can either read those reviews here on the left hand side, but I can also look at the other ratings and breakdowns that it gives. I especially like the ClickUp comparisons. They have these comparisons for almost every piece of
software that it reviews. So I can see how ClickUp
is going to compare to some of these other options. But you can also look at
things in different categories. So, for example, if we click
on Project Management Software, now it's gonna gather all of the project
management software together so I can compare and see how
they rank against one another. So, for example, if I wanna
look at the ratings here on G2, I can see that Monday,
Trello, ClickUp and Asana seem to be near the top of the list. But of course I can
dive in that much deeper and click on how does this
rate on quality of support versus ease of use and everything else that is
important to me and to my team Even if it's a much more
obscure piece of software, chances are you will find it here on G2. Now sticking with software, sometimes when you find
the ideal software for you, you realize that it
costs an awful lot more than you were prepared to pay. And that's where
AlternativeTo comes into play. You'll find it at alternativeto.net. So, for example, Adobe
have a wonderful suite of many different products, but they're also very expensive. So, if I'm interested in
using Adobe Photoshop, but I really want something that has almost all of the features, maybe even more features
than Adobe Photoshop but I want it for free, I can click on Adobe Photoshop
or use the search bar up here and find out what it suggests for me. Here you can see that
each of the alternatives are ranked by likes. So the very top one here
is something called Gimp. Something that I have used
many times in the past as well. I can click on that link
and I can read more about what this particular
piece of software does, and I can even go directly
to its official website. So now I can read the further details if Gimp is the right product for me and to see if it will
be a great replacement for Adobe Photoshop. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and I would love to hear from you next. What are some of your favorite websites that help you save time? Be sure to let me know in
the comments down below. Thank you so much for
watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here
to the Simpletivity channel. And remember, being productive does
not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
