Archive | working from home RSS feed for this section

The Skinny on the Home Office Deduction and Other Goodies

29 Jun

Finally Fast Tax TimeTaxes are a bear for the self-employed. You don’t have an employer chipping in on Social Security and Medicare, so in return you’re burdened with additional income tax in the form of the self-employment tax. What’s a hard-working, honest businessperson to do? Well, it’s the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. It’s your duty to legally avoid paying excessive taxes. And that’s why you should be very familiar with some common self-employment deductions.

Chief among these is the home office deduction. Why is this single deduction so important? It has a cascading effect. If you qualify for the home office deduction, you qualify for all the incidental deductions that go along with it, including rent, utilities, and office supplies.

The IRS has some restrictions on what you can and cannot call your “home office” for the purposes of this deduction. This home office must be both “exclusive” and “regular.” By exclusive, it must be a dedicated part of the home that’s used only for your business. And by regular, the home office must be used on a regular basis, and not just occasionally or for special events.

In addition, the home office must be at least one of the following: a) the principal place you conduct business, b) the place you deal with clients and customers, and c) a separate structure unattached from your home where you conduct business. So, if your home office is both exclusive and regular, and it qualifies under either a), b), or c), you’re in business for the tax deduction, no pun intended.

For tax purposes, you have to determine what percentage of your home is dedicated to the home office. This is done by measuring the office dimensions and comparing it to the square footage of the entire home. You’ll get a percentage—say that 25 percent of your home is made up of the home office. That means you get to deduct 25 percent of many of the expenses associated with your home. This includes rent or mortgage, household supplies, association fees, basic utilities, phone and internet, and even things like the security system or housekeeping.

And as a self-employed individual, your potential tax deductions don’t stop there. Work-related postage and shipping fees? Deductible. Automobile? Keep a mileage log for your work-related driving, and you can deduct that mileage. You can also deduct marketing fees (like business cards or your website), interest on business credit cards, health insurance premiums, expenses associated with education intended to further your career, and meals and entertainment expenses for client meetings.

In any event, keep careful track of all your expenses, and come tax time do some research and see what you can and cannot claim. It can really make a difference.

If you have any questions concerning the Home Office Deduction that I didn’t cover in this post, definitely check out the IRS website for info direct from the horses mouth. It’s actually gotten quite a bit better in recent years, both in terms of language and navigability.

And in the vain of legally avoiding as much tax as possible, please share any home business tax deduction secrets you’ve stumbled upon in the comments. I can always use a few extra deductions on my return!

Photo Credit

Tags: , , , , , , ,

5 Tips to Restoring Sanity for Work-at-Home Parents

28 Jun

Finally Fast InsanityThe work-at-home life has tremendous appeal for parents. In addition to the “being your own boss” thing, you get to be closer to your young child or children, and that’s priceless. However, to establish a serious business that’s not just a hobby, you have to establish some rules, and you have to learn when to be a parent and when to be a businessperson.

In fact, the trap of working from home is the very issue of accessibility. You’re always home, and so the children expect you to be always accessible. Your children might be too young to understand there’s a time to be together and there’s a time when Mom or Dad needs to sequester themselves and work. Heck, a lot of work-from-home adults can’t even make that distinction.

In any case, it’s important to lay some ground rules, and here are five tips for walking the tightrope between parent and home-based entrepreneur:

  • Start early, start often – If you’ve spent a couple years muddying the waters between parenting and working, it’s hard to correct yourself mid-stream, and it’s hard for the children to understand the change you have to make. Prior to starting your home-based business, draw that line in the sand and develop the discipline from the get-go.
  • Schedule yourself around the kids – You probably started a home-based business to be your own boss and set your own schedule. What better schedule to set than one that maximizes your time with the kids? Whether it’s scheduling around school, dinner, family game night, or extracurricular activities, work when your kids are otherwise occupied, and take off when they’re available. It’s a win-win!
  • Establish a definite office – The children need to understand that work time is work time (and so do you). The clearest way to do so is geographically. When you have a dedicated home office, it’s easier to close the door and roll up your sleeves. When your home office doubles as the play room and the movie room and whatever else, it’s much harder to get things accomplished.
  • Keep them occupied – Whether it’s arts & crafts, a movie, homework, reading, or something else, get creative about developing activities that will keep them busy when you need to be busy. You might even involve your children in some simple aspect of your work (depending on age, of course). They’ll feel engaged, and you have an opportunity for another connection.
  • Involve a nanny – For those you can afford the luxury, a nanny offers the best of both worlds: you get to remain close to your kids, but you can also rely on a responsible adult to care for them when you need to work. There’s also the option of day care somewhere else, but that would seem to defeat the purpose, right?

As a work at home mom these tips have made a huge difference in my ability to maintain a good working / parenting balance, but I’m always open to hearing how other work-at-home parents are managing their double duties. If you’re a work at home parent and have developed other effective ways for balancing a home-based business and being a parent please share them in the comments!

Photo Credit

Tags: , , , ,

5 Computer Organization Tips for Your Home Office

19 May

home officeHome-based entrepreneurs know that sometimes organization can be the last item on the list, and this is especially true for one of the most essential components of the home office: your computer. Let’s get your own slice of cyberspace clutter-free. Consider adopting some of these simple rules for tidying up, saving
time, and saving sanity:

  • Get smart about email retrievals – whether you use Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, or any number of robust email applications, you have plenty of organizational tools at your disposal. Get very savvy to three essential types of email organization: labeling & categorization, email filtering, and folders. Labels in Gmail (Categories in Outlook) are ways to sort emails according to client, type of project, personal versus business, or anything else. Filtering is a related concept, but it does the sorting for you as the mail comes in. Lastly, moving emails to different folders is the best option for easy access to key emails you’re likely to need again and again.

  • Bookmarks/Favorites – Bookmarks, or favorites, are best employed judiciously and sparingly. Get those ten to fifteen sites you visit the most—particularly the ones with long URLs or which are otherwise tough to find quickly—and put them in your browser bar with the magic of the bookmark. Also, consider configuring your browser’s options such that your most-visited sites pop up in separate tabs upon startup. Why not have your top five open all at once? You’ll save time and energy.

  • Folder Finesse – Be smart about how you label your files and where you put them. Create a folder hierarchy that makes sense for you. If you are a web designer, you might have a “Web Design” folder which has sub-folders dedicated to each of your clients. And inside the client folders, perhaps you have further sub-folders such as “Design files,” “Images,” and “Correspondence.” And name your folders in short, intuitive, consistent ways—they’ll be easier find with a search.

  • Archive – Know when to archive material, and dedicate separate space/folders for old material you’ll probably rarely, if ever, access again. Sorting according to calendar year seems reasonable, but another system might work better for your business.

  • Pending and Temporary – Maybe you’re not the type of person to immediately sort all your different documents as soon as you get them, but at the very least set aside a bit of time every two weeks to put everything in its correct cubbyhole. Until then, I find two folders to be essential: a “Pending” folder for pending business that needs relatively immediate attention, and a “Temporary” folder to store new, “unfiltered” material that needs to be sorted or dealt with.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

What Should Your Press Release Look Like?

22 Apr

From the FinallyFast Help Desk:

Press releases are a frequent need for large and small companies, and why not? Press releases are a great way to get the word out about products or services through sites like PRWeb.com and PRNewsire.com. In this entry, we give you, as the writer, some tips for crafting an effective press release that will pass muster for the guidelines governing online press release distribution.

The first thing you have to realize about press releases is that they are distinctly different from promotional copy. Superlatives and the kind of positive, biased slant in promotional copy are a no-no in the world of press releases. PRWeb.com and the other PR destinations will only publish press releases that have a somewhat objective, journalistic tone. It’s the difference between “The Robo-Vacuum 5000 will make cleaning around the house a breeze!” and “The Robo-Vacuum 5000 demonstrates a significant time savings for normal household cleaning versus competing robot vacuums in independent tests.”

The other thing about a press release to understand is that it should involve something newsworthy. Merely extolling the virtues of a product or service is not enough; what is the news item you can inform people about? It could be some milestone event—10,000 units sold, record profits, an anniversary, an appearance at a trade show, etc. Find that concrete, newsworthy event, and then you can feel free to explain the product or service in the context of that news item.

Outside of those general considerations, here is the anatomy of a press release:

Headline – Make your headline short (up to 80 characters) and attention-grabbing. State the newsworthy item in the headline, along with the company or individual’s name.

Lead-in – The first sentence should include a geographical region and date separated by dashes, such as “Reno, Nevada – April 22, 2011,” which is followed by another dash and then the first sentence of the press release.

Summary – Your press release’s first paragraph should be all that anyone needs to understand the gist of your article. If the reader stopped after the summary, they’d still know what the press release is about. This is the best place to include any SEO keywords, if applicable. You should also include the web address for the company.

Body – Overall, the press release should not exceed 750 words or so. And divide your content into short paragraphs.

Quotation – If possible, a quotation from an appropriate principal is an acceptable way to inject some promotional slant into the material. You have to be objective for the rest of the press release, but a quotation is a way to “let loose” and promote the product.

Boilerplate – Every press release should end with a small paragraph that is essentially a biography of the company or individual talked about. Two sentences should do.

Contact information – Finally, give people a way to contact the organization for more information.

Tags: , , , , ,

Using the Lessons of the Squeeze Page to Increase Traffic

14 Apr

People love free stuff. It’s kind of a universal rule. How can you leverage that love of free stuff into significantly increased traffic for your blog? Read on, loyal reader: the secret lies in the squeeze page.

What is a squeeze page? It’s a standalone web page that is designed to “squeeze” the visitor’s email address out of them. Sounds kind of aggressive—and it often is, with plenty of call-to-action phrases and some hard selling. But marketers know that squeeze pages operate best on a “carrot” rather than “stick” basis—the “carrot” of free stuff is often a much more persuasive argument for someone to leave their email address than the “stick” of high-pressure sales tactics. So, marketers will offer a “Ten Free Secrets to Wealth Creation” brochure, a digital coupon for products on the site, or some other free enticement, in exchange for the user providing their email address. Freebies are seen as an effective way to counteract the reluctance of many people in giving their email addresses out, fearing spam.

How does this relate to increased traffic for your blog? You want an email list of visitors to your site. Why? So you can send out periodic messages to remind them of your existence and suggest they visit your blog to see the latest and greatest new content. Email communications—call them “blasts,” call them newsletters, call them whatever you want—are an effective extra weapon you shouldn’t neglect.

That said, you may or may not want to add a squeeze page to your blog. You might find this “hard sell” technique a little personally distasteful or grating for your users. Also, a squeeze page by definition is a kind of cul-de-sac—it shouldn’t lead anywhere else, as you’ve funneled your user to the correct spot for your “conversion” (getting their email) and you don’t want them wandering any further. So, depending on how your blog is designed, it might not make sense to add such a page in the first place.

But you can use the squeeze page-style freebie to build an email list and subsequently increase your traffic. First, determine your freebie. As many blogs are expertise-driven, you might simply craft a brochure or guidebook sharing some of that expertise.

Second, determine where and how to place your squeeze page-inspired section. You could, for instance, have a dedicated squeeze page-style sidebar on your main page, with an autoresponder and email form, along with information on your freebie and an invitation to sign up. Entreaties to “sign up,” “become a member,” or “join the community” are particularly effective to mention alongside a description of the freebie itself. You could also frequently incorporate similar information in a blog entry if you don’t want a permanent presence on the main page. In either case, it’s crucial you have language assuring the user that you respect their privacy, and that you won’t be selling their address to any nefarious third party.

Come up with a free offering, add an autoresponder to swap freebies for new email addresses, and in no time you’ll have a considerable community email list to compound your visitor traffic.

Tags: , ,

How To Give Sales Performance Reviews

7 Apr

Business Ideas from FinallyFast

A sales performance review is a review of an employee’s performance when they sell a company’s product or service. Businesses use these types of performance reviews to analyze their sales techniques and presentations, and look for areas which require improvement. Although some people may think the beginning of the year is the best time for businesses to review their sales performance, you can actually generate noticeable results by giving the reviews at any point during the year. Feedback can boost morale, improve performance, and can also help resolve issues and get to the bottom of factors effecting employee performance.

 

When To Give The Reviews

Although many businesses give their sales performance reviews on an annual basis, a monthly or quarterly review might be your best bet. With an annual review, problems in accounts sit on the books for months, and low productivity flies under the radar, creating more loss. Your employees may find the different approach for sales unusual at first, but the more frequent reviews will actually yield regular spikes of high volume sales, and improved morale.

 

How To Construct The Reviews

 

  • Compare recent profit and loss statements to your short-and long-range goals in order to see how you measure up. Use the comparison to determine your sales goals for the upcoming year. These goals will also help you determine the top salespeople on your payroll.

 

  • Communicate to your sales staff the sales goals for the upcoming year. In addition, note that periodic reviews will be performed in order to reach these goals.

 

  • Have your staff compile a list of individual accomplishments achieved since their last review. This will this make them feel as though they are going into the performance review with a good measure of their actual performance, and help to refresh your memory when it comes to deals they have closed and projects they have worked on.

 

  • At the end of each quarterly or monthly sales period, determine the amount of sales that each member of your sales staff made, ranking them by their achievement.

 

  • Give each salesperson their review for the period. Go over the salesperson’s list of individual accomplishments, and point out the ones that have contributed to business. Communicate to them whether they have met the sales goals or not, and discuss bonuses, raises, or promotions according to their rank if necessary. If the salesperson did not reach the sales goals, discuss how the goals will be achieved in the next sales period. When you are offering your feedback, positive or negative, be sure to provide concrete examples that illustrate your point. Finally, have the salesperson sign the performance review, and keep it in their personnel record.

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Super-Pro: Essential Tips for Blog Formatting

1 Apr

If you’re a serious blogger—motivated by passion, income, notoriety, or a little bit of all three—it’s high time to get serious about formatting, which can make the difference between a blog that exudes professionalism and legitimacy, and a blog that looks slapped together by your nine-year-old. Here are a few specifics to get you started.

  • Start out your entries in a similar way – For example, see how this very entry gives you a brief, one-paragraph summary of what to expect? Intro summaries are great for applications that link to your blog with an excerpt, like Facebook. They’re also nice for the attention-span-challenged; that is to say, everybody.

  • Use the platform tools – We may not have all the tools of a true word processor at our disposal, but we can still make things nice. Use bold and italics to separate and emphasize key text. When you quote a lengthy quotation, use Blockquote. Use proper bullets or numbering when making a list. If your entry is separated with several headings, do something consistent and special with those headings to make them stand out. WordPress calls some of these effects “Kitchen Sink” tools, and you should definitely use everything—including the kitchen sink—available to you.

  • Hand coding is your friend – Sometimes, you love a theme but hate a certain part of it. Say that the theme’s picture captions are atrocious. What can you do? That’s when it pays to get familiar with hand coding HTML. In most platforms, such as WordPress, you can toggle between “Visual” (plain text) and “HTML” input screens. Don’t worry, you don’t need to learn the language, but you can learn just enough to be dangerous, as the saying goes. Realize that most of what HTML involves is tag words with brackets, and you’re halfway there. Throw in a <small> before that pesky caption to get it to a decent size. Toss in a <center> when your photo frustratingly persists in aligning itself on the left. Learn the table tags to make a chart that doesn’t look like it was smashed with a brick.

  • Strip formatting from other sources – With the ubiquitous copy-and-pasting going on, either from other websites or from your Word document or elsewhere, formatting can get pretty funky, from font to spacing to weird little artifacts and on and on. Start fresh and kill the formatting—usually with a “Remove Formatting” button—or at least take steps to exactly translate it. WordPress has special “Paste from Word” and “Paste as Plain Text” tools in its Kitchen Sink which will better preserve formatting. In Blogger and others, pasting your text into the “Edit HTML” window is the best option. Keep in mind, however, you may still need to tweak. Never forget to preview and proofread!

Tags: , ,

How to Craft a Winning Nonfiction Book Proposal

21 Mar

From the FinallyFast Help Desk:

You conquered the unconquerable foe: you’ve actually completed your nonfiction book! Self-publishing’s an option, but you’d also like to put your hard-fought masterpiece in front of publishers and literary agents. Here are the elements, in order, of a well-assembled nonfiction book proposal that will help you separate your submission from the rest.

Overview (500 – 700 words): What is your book about? Rise above the fourth-grade book report and find a meaty, exciting, or otherwise compelling start that will draw them in. Start specific: ask a question, cite a startling statistic, or share an intriguing detail you cover in the book. Once you grab them, maintain their attention through the strength of your authorial voice, and demonstrate your passion for the material.

About the Author (300 – 500 words): Who are you? Speak in the third person – never in the first person – and emphasize any life experience you have that relates to the subject of your book. Stay away from hyperbole or purple prose—“Jane Doe’s life has been one breathtaking adventure after another”—but don’t be afraid to brag about yourself and your accomplishments, including any writing-related accolades you’ve received.

Chapter Outline: The length of this section varies, but essentially you want to list each of the chapters/sections in your book, and provide a two- or three-sentence snapshot of what the section covers. The chapter outline provides an at-a-glance summary of the book.

Marketing and Publicity (400 – 600 words): Agents and publishers want to make sure that your book actually has an audience. Don’t say your book will be read by “everybody” or something trite like “the young… and the young at heart.” You’ll come across as more savvy if you are specific: “single moms under forty,” “classic rock enthusiasts,” and “tween boys” are more in the neighborhood of where you need to be. For publicity, state not only a cheerful willingness to do the usual signings and press junkets, but also state any built-in audience or promotional opportunities you might possess, whether you run a blog with 20,000 visitors every month or you have a sponsor lined up who has already agreed to tie-in with your book in some way.

Comparative Works: You may think your book is one-of-a-kind, but likely it’s similar (in subject matter or approach) to many successful books already out there. Find those successful books and make a list of five to ten comparative works. More recent books are the best for this purpose, particularly books that have received a lot of buzz.

Sample Chapter (10 – 15 pages): Your sample chapter doesn’t have to be a full chapter, and it doesn’t have to be your first chapter. Choose your best chapter, or at least one with the best combination of intrigue and comprehensibility (that is, it can be understood on its own without the other parts of the book). And please, proofread everything!

Tags: , , , , ,

Getting Paid…Minus the Headaches

17 Mar

From the FinallyFast Help Desk:

Here’s a topic that’s near and dear to the hearts of all work-at-home freelancers: actually getting paid! It seems there are always employers out there ready to slow-pay or no-pay you for independent contractor jobs. But here are a few commonsense things you can do to make sure there is plenty of green at the end of your gig.

  • Go through a reputable freelance website – there are many reasons to funnel projects through a freelance website such as Guru.com or Elance.com, even if you initially get the job elsewhere. Reason #1? Escrow. The agreed-upon funds for the job are paid to a third-party prior to any work being done. That way you know the employer is actually serious about the job, has the funds, and won’t suddenly go AWOL when they have what they need from you. On the flip side, escrow protects the employer. It’s really win-win. Reason #2? Arbitration. If there is a fundamental disagreement about who owes what to whom, you’ll have a digital “paper trail” of correspondence on the site and a third party ready to find a solution. The bad news about freelance websites is that they involve membership fees or administrative fees, and often both. But that conveniently brings me to the next point…

  • Add fees to your invoices – Most employers understand that you’d like to net rather than gross your bid amount. That is to say, if you bid $1000, you don’t want to end up with $910 after transaction fees, admin fees, escrow fees, and whatever else. You’re already responsible for all your own taxes; don’t get nicked by fees. Find out what your freelance website charges—including for escrow, which is often a separate fee—and have the confidence to tack on fees to your amounts.

  • Establish a pay schedule – Going along with the first point, most freelance websites give you the ability to set up project agreements and milestone events, including at what point in the process you get paid, whether that’s a certain date or the delivery of a certain product/service. It’s extra work, but it sure gives your request for payment a little more juice and legitimacy. Let’s face it – freelancers have to endure the kind of slow-pay, didn’t-get-to-it-yet, went-on-vacation-for-a-month excuses that employers would never even think of trying to pull with regular employees. It’s a reality, so at least create a formal, written schedule to lessen those excuses. Plus, if you’ve used escrow, clicking the “release escrow” button is a lot easier for some smaller employers than the “release money from my bank account” button.
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

%d bloggers like this: