1. Paypal – Okay. This one was my biggest surprise (although maybe it shouldn’t have been). I almost didn’t include it in the actual list. Because there is technically a free option without the fees though, I did, and apparently people love their Paypal!

Tied for 2nd place in our list were:

2. WordPress – Can’t say I’m surprised (WordPress rocks), and

3. Gmail – I’m not a Gmail user myself (have an account but don’t use it for anything). I wasn’t surprised to see it nominated, but was surprised it was so high on your list.

Next we had:

4. Google Docs – With several nominations, I wasn’t surprised this made the list.

5. Open Office – If anything, I was surprised OO wasn’t higher.

Then we had a three-way tie for sixth place:

6. Skype – I don’t use this as much as I used to, but okay, it’s spot-worthy (especially if you need to talk to clients overseas a lot).

7. AVG Antivirus – This was a nomination I didn’t expect to see on the top ten list, but I do suppose we need something to take care of any nasty little buggers that might destroy our work!

8. Thunderbird – I was very surprised to see Thunderbird on the top ten list (an email client for those not familiar with it).

And then we had yet another tie, for 9th place (both related to the images you may need to find and / or edit for your blog posts, sites, or articles):

9. Stock Xchng – This is the free stock photo site I personally love (and if you need better quality, their premium site StockXpert.com is excellent as well).

10. GIMP – I think GIMP is absolutely worthy of a top ten spot, but honestly I was surprised it made the cut. I’m glad to see others agreed with me. If you aren’t familiar with GIMP, it’s a pretty robust image editor (free replacement for Photoshop essentially).

So a big thank you to everyone who voted in the survey and everyone who nominated great freebies for freelance writers! It was interesting to see what tools and services other writers get the most value from.

If you haven’t taken a look yet, this is also just a reminder that there’s a new “stuff for writers” link at the top of this site. Be sure to check out the free section of that for free reports and more that I’ve released.