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I have been asked a few times in the last 2 months if I would have jumped into self employment if I knew Google would hit my clients and advertisers in March and April 2012. Yes, yes I would. Self employment obviously has its ups and downs, but quite frankly, I feel that a bad day working for myself is better than a great day working for someone else. Period.
Just Have a Plan
That said, bad months need to be planned for. Here is what I have concentrated on:
- Diversification. We have many clients and many advertiser contacts. That helps lessen the risk. I also have started a side commenting business, can go back to staff writing, and have a few other ideas in the shoot. In short, there are backups – lots of backups.
- Save. We make sure to keep cash on hand to cover bad months and build this padding up during the good ones. We also used extra to pay down our mortgage so we’d have less debt liability overall. We’ll be buying a new home, but will be renting out our current home and a room in our new house, which will cover the new mortgage, taxes, and expenses.
- Pay yourself a salary. The reason we could save and pay down mortgage debt during the good months is that we didn’t spend the extra we were making then. We pay ourselves a salary that relies on us making way less than normal and stick to it. I swear by this method and would suggest it to anyone.
My View
Overall, self employment is NOT for everyone. Some of my friends actually like their regular day jobs, and I think that’s awesome. Really. I just want everyone to love what they do.
No matter what you choose, I would suggest having a plan. Plan for good months. Plan for bad months. Plan for layoffs. And make sure to budget in some fun. Just have a plan.
ISAs have the potential to be a very good form of savings or investment, depending on the type of account you have. However, if you don’t look after your ISA properly or don’t do enough research, you could end up making mistakes that cost you dearly. This article looks at some of the biggest stocks and shares ISA mistakes to avoid.
Funds with high fees
One big mistake that many investors make is to go for an ISA that comes with high fees. If you have an investment ISA then some level of fee is essentially inevitable in return for the provider managing your fund, but there is no reason to pay more than you need to. There are lots of different funds on the market, and it is possible to get well-managed funds for relatively small fees.
Failing to move from an underperforming fund
Another classic stocks and shares ISA mistake is to stick with a fund even when it doesn’t do very well. While you can never properly predict how well a fund will do as it largely depends on what happens in the stock market, if your ISA isn’t working for you, it makes sense to move your money elsewhere. Do your research to see how current funds are performing and whether you might be able to get a better deal somewhere else.
Being too cautious
Some people are also quite cautious, and have a tendency to stick with a cash ISA instead of opening a share ISA. It can be very wise to keep a cash element to your ISA as this helps to provide stability and ensures that you have some guaranteed tax-free savings no matter what happens in the stock market, but generally speaking, share ISAs offer a better rate of return in the long term than cash ISAs.
If you’re worried about the risk of investment, look for investment funds that have a lower risk attached to them. These usually come with a lower expected rate of return, but they can give peace of mind to new investors.
Not making use of the allowance
As most people know, ISAs are tax free. This helps to maximise the money you save and so it makes sense to use up as much of your ISA allowance as you possibly can. For the current 2012/13 tax year, you can save up to £11280 in a share ISA. You can also choose to put up to half of that in a cash ISA instead. This is a significant amount of money that you can save tax-free, so it’s worth thinking about.
Not thinking for the long term
Finally, another mistake that some people make is to only think about their share ISAs in the short term. While it makes sense to move your money from an account that is underperforming, also remember that the market does go up and down, but if you are prepared to commit to a longer period of investment (such as five years or more), you have a better chance of getting a good rate of return – so don’t forget to think ahead when you take out the best stocks and shares ISA.
Life insurance is essentially a contract between the insurer and the policyholder. The insurer agrees that upon the demise of the policyholder, they will pay a designated amount of money to the beneficiaries named by the insured. In return for this, the insured agrees to make regular payments to keep this contract in force. These payments are known as premiums.
Life insurance premiums vary depending upon the circumstances of the individual. Insurance writers will obtain a great deal of information on the person to be insured. This information is then used to calculate the life insurance premium. Certain life style choices often result in an earlier death than someone who didn’t participate in certain activities, such as smoking. Factors like this are taken into account when figuring the insurance premium.
Not only is information gathered from an interview with the potential policyholder but usually they must obtain a medical exam. The exam makes sure that the person is insurable based on their health. The results of this exam are also used to calculate the policy’s premium.
When a life insurance policy is taken out, the policyholder must make some decisions in regards to the coverage. Specifically, they must determine what value they want the policy to have. In order to do this, they must consider a wide range of things. They must consider their debt load, mortgage payments and other expenses. A good way to determine this is to plan on obtaining a life insurance policy in an amount approximately 8 to 10 times more than one’s current salary.
After choosing the amount of coverage, the insured must also name beneficiaries. These would be a person or people that the money will go to in the event of the insured’s death. Most insurance companies will investigate the background of these people before underwriting the policy. If the beneficiary appears to be a bit shady, the life insurance coverage may be denied.
Google hurt me. Well, technically, Google decided to take a poop on a bunch of bloggers’ and advertisers’ Page Ranks, so now advertisers are gun shy. But since I run a blog advertising business, Google hurt me. April has been our lowest income month since the business took off last year. We aren’t in any danger of failing as of right now, but the next few months may be tight…
So, as I would suggest to anyone, I took a close look at my roots and decided to diversify our income a little again.
Gourmet Commenting Service
Having said all of that, I am now offering my own commenting with Twitter service for $3 per comment. For anyone who hasn’t looked into this type of service before, $3 per comment is high. I am carrying through on the higher cost by adding other value as well. BUT, do not splurge on me if your other priorities aren’t in order – I am fully admitting that I am a higher investment than necessary, but I hope to pay off well for anyone who tries me out.
This $3 covers reading the entire post that I will be commenting on, leaving 2 sentences or more of my take on the post (my normal kind of comments), and emailing the blog owner if I see that my comment gets caught in spam (happens all of the time now). I will also be keeping up a record for you of where the comments are posted AND Tweeting one of your own blog’s posts from my account weekly – that’s a little more than 1300 followers as of April 24, 2012 – you can choose the post you’d like Tweeted each week (as long as it isn’t spammy and I’ll even add a comment about it if I can fit it in).
Every single comment would have Crystal @ YourBlogName, either my email or the one of your choosing (my email would show my logo when avatars are shown), and your blog’s URL. I will email you a weekly/monthly list (your choice) of where the comments were left. You can send me a list of the blogs that you would like me to comment on or I can create a list of my own – again, your choice.
EVERY COMMENT I AM HIRED TO LEAVE WOULD BE FROM ME. This is not an outsourced business venture. 100% Crystal. Not even Mr. BFS will be helping with this.
Openings
I can only fit in enough time to leave 100 comments per week total right now, so please email me with the number of comments you have in mind per week (1-100). No minimum order is required. When those 100 spots are claimed, I will still keep a list of anyone else who is interested in case spots open up or I am able to carve out time to fit in more per week. If the waiting list gets crazy long, I will stop advertising my services until it is reasonable again.
Right now, 25 spots are filled.
My aim is to keep this organized and everyone completely happy. So you may see me all around the blogosphere with a ton of blog names right behind mine. Please don’t be confused – it’s still all me. Please check out the sites I’ll be linking to if they interest you at all – I am truly thankful for the bloggers that are investing in me. I am really looking forward to this (in fact, I’ve already started).
Twitter Followers
For all of my Twitter followers, do not worry. I will not spam you with crappy post announcements. I am only being hired by awesome bloggers, so these would be posts that I would happily promote anyway. You will not be sad.
Since this blog is all about How I Make Money Blogging, I will be breaking down the past month’s online income and expenses at the beginning of each new month from here on out. Now that Mr. BFS and I are both working from home, we have to make this work. We are aiming for $15,000 every month. You can see my traffic stats for my main blog, Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, at the beginning of every month too. So here we go!
Please keep in mind that I had been working in a professional position with my very own cubicle from June 2005 to July 2011 for $35,500 a year at my highest point (less than $3000 a month). My husband was a public school librarian for $47,500 a year (less than $4000 a month).
As you can see, our advertising business and regular advertising is really the only thing we are leaning on right now. I will grow passive income streams online at some point, but right now we need to put all of our effort into the growing business.
February 2012 Expenses
Outsourcing: $200.00
Paypal: $1244.61
Empire Expansion: $245.00
My Newsletter Monthly Giveaways: $50.00
Prize for Another Blog’s Giveaway: $25.00
Yakezie annual membership dues: $60.00
TOTAL: $1824.61 (about 10.47%)
I am now outsourcing my social media, my BFS newsletter, blog carnival submissions, niche site development for 6 new niche sites, my backups and back end work, staff writing on co-owned sites, and any sponsored posts. Plus, Jesse and I are buying up at least 1-2 dormant sites a month to grow our online empire (we took this month off). We are trying to keep our overall spending to less than 15% of what we bring in for right now just to help us feel comfortable, especially now that Mr. BFS is working from home with me.
February 2012 Net Income = $15,600.72
Please keep in mind that more than a third of that is being put away for taxes. BUT YAY!!!
Any recommendations, questions, comments, or anything?
My husband quit his day job as a school librarian about 4 weeks ago and joined me at home. I wrote a few tips about working with your spouse after our first week at home together.
Here are a few more tips of the trade that have kept us from murdering each other:
- COMMUNICATE – yes, I mentioned that one before, but it is HUGE and worth mentioning again. If we didn’t communicate, our business and marriage would fail – it really is that simple.
- Assign Tasks – each of us has our own jobs now. Mr. BFS checks and replies daily to all of the emails that are forwarded to us by our clients, which is more than 50-100 every day now. He is also the record keeper and types in all of the info for every deal we close or transaction we make. Lastly, he sends out the letters to anyone who we have an incomplete deal for to find out if they have been paid or not. My job is to provide customer service to all of our clients, act as the middle man between the advertisers and our group as a whole to develop ad campaigns, to run those campaigns, and to answer any direct questions anyone sends us about the business. We each take turns contacting past ad contacts with our most updated client lists. In short, we each have our own assigned duties so we do not waste time looking over the same stuff or step on each other’s toes.
- Separate Work and Home - even though our day job happens in our home offices, we do stop talking about work and just hang out over the weekends and for most of our evenings. We talk about our plans with friends and family, the vacations we would like to go on this year, whether or not we should get a puppy, and we just hang out. We even curl up on the couch together to just veg out on tv if we don’t have plans with anyone. Overall, we keep ourselves from just talking about work 24/7.
Those three tips above have really helped us. We’ve only had a couple of crappy days and both of them were because of ignoring one or more of the tips above. I’ll be sure to let you know what else we learn along the way.
Any other big tips that I missed in this post or my last one?
Since this blog is all about How I Make Money Blogging, I will be breaking down the past month’s online income and expenses at the beginning of each new month from here on out. You can see my traffic stats for my main blog, Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, at the beginning of every month too. So here we go!
Please keep in mind that I had been working in a professional position with my very own cubicle from June 2005 to July 2011 for $35,500 a year at my highest point (less than $3000 a month).
As you can see, my advertising business and regular advertising is really the only thing we are leaning on right now. I will grow passive income streams online at some point, but right now we need to put all of our effort into the growing business.
January 2012 Expenses
Outsourcing: $353.00
Paypal: $807.91
Empire Expansion: $1090.17
Scribe SEO software: $0.00 – I cancelled the service since it has taught me what I needed to know
BFS Giveaways: $0.00 – I paid at the end of December and will be sending the January prize tomorrow
My Newsletter Monthly Giveaways: $25.00
Prize for Another Blog’s Giveaway: $25.00
TOTAL: $2301.08 (about 11%)
I am now outsourcing my social media, my BFS newsletter, blog carnival submissions, niche site development for 6 new niche sites, my backups and back end work, staff writing on co-owned sites, and any sponsored posts. Plus, Jesse and I are buying up at least 1-2 dormant sites a month to grow our online empire. I am trying to keep my overall spending to less than 15% of what I bring in for right now just to help me feel comfortable, especially now that Mr. BFS is working from home with me.
January 2012 Net Income = $17,979.04
Please keep in mind that more than a third of that is being put away for taxes. BUT WOOT!!! WHOO-HOO!!! So happy!!!! Since this is the fifth month in a row that I beat the $10,000 mark, Mr. BFS and I are now aiming for $15,000 a month or more.
Any recommendations, questions, comments, or anything?
Last week was the first full week that my husband worked from home with me. So far, so good. I am really happy that he is a fast learner and so grateful to have help!
Here are some tips I have picked up so far about working from home with your spouse:
Have separate working spaces or you may end up driving each other nuts. We have separate offices and that seems to be working well.
Communication isn’t just good for a marriage, it is really important for the business too. We make sure to tell each other what’s going on so we don’t miss anything big while we find our groove.
Lists help. Mr. BFS has his daily task list and I have mine. Things are added throughout the day as needed to both, but in the end, the lists are completed and we keep our sanity.
Start small. Mr. BFS is learning the business from the ground up and it has meant that the more difficult tasks are easier to learn since he already learned the basics.
Take each other’s opinions seriously. Just because Mr. BFS hasn’t been doing this for the last year with me doesn’t mean I should ignore his suggestions. In fact, he has already stream-lined our record keeping so it is more accurate and faster.
Make sure each of you have reasonable expectations. I got ticked off the other night because I was still working and Mr. BFS was out testing his prototype board game. I never asked him for more help, so he had no idea why I was mad.
Have outside hobbies. I do not want my marriage to ever suffer because we are spending every waking second together. So I have friends to go out with and blogging like this to do and Mr. BFS has reffing, board gaming, and Curling. We also have joint activities like poker night and bowling.
Have you ever worked with your spouse? Could you share any tips?
If you are self-employed, chances are you have been inundated with credit card offers in your mailbox. Every business seems to get bombarded with offers every day. However, what many self employed individuals don’t realize is how detrimental credit card debt can be. Credit is essential to most self-employed small businesses, and being in debt makes that credit harder to come by.
What You Need Credit For?
If you are self-employed, there are variety of things that you could need credit for. As the old adage goes, “It takes money to make money” and that is incredibly true. Even for the smallest eBay seller, you need to buy supplies such as shipping and postage. And if you are waiting to get paid, you need to purchase these items on credit first.
The need for a credit card can be great depending on the business. If you’re mobile, you may need to purchase gas. You may need to book travel to meet a client, or pay for a bunch of proposals to be professionally printed. Either way, until the revenue comes in, the credit needs to be there.
How Credit Card Debt Hurts You
Being in credit card debt can negatively impact your credit score, which, in turn, makes lenders less likely to extend credit to you. Since most banks view a business line of credit (even a business credit card) as risky to begin with, your poor credit history will not help you.
If you do have a low credit score due to credit card debt, and the bank is willing to extend you a credit card, you will most likely end up paying higher interest rates and fees, and usually have a lower line of credit. Both of these could make using the credit card more difficult.
As a result, you should strongly consider building a solid credit score and credit report prior to getting a line of credit for your business. Even if you’re self employed, having good credit is essential.
A funny old man sits down at a restaurant and orders chicken soup. Once it’s delivered, he calls his waiter over to the table.
Waiter – “Yes sir, how can I help?”
Man – “Please taste the soup.”
Waiter – “Is it cold?”
Man – “Just taste the soup.”
Waiter – “Is it too salty?”
Man – “No, no, just taste the soup.”
Waiter – “Is there something in it?”
Man – “Taste the soup.”
Waiter – “Fine!…Where’s the spoon?”
Man – “Ah-hah…”
Now to get to the point – let me taste your soup!!! How do you expect for your readers or an advertiser to find what they are looking for if you don’t have a way to search your posts? They may have something that interests them and would love to find your posts about it…hard without a search box. And if you are one of my clients, and you don’t have a search box, you are driving me nuts! So repeat after me, a search box is your friend. A search box is your friend. A. Search. Box. Is. Your. Friend.
Now you may be thinking, but I have archives, isn’t that enough? No, sorry, but only your biggest fans will spend the time needed to peruse your archives to find the post that they are looking for. Those of us just looking for a post on cell phones or what your view on cable is won’t be able to find it without a search box.
Just in case I haven’t been clear – LET ME TASTE YOUR SOUP!!! Thank you.
I am not a professional or a financial advisor. These posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own decisions based on personal research.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
When Life Gives You Lemons, Diversify
Google hurt me. Well, technically, Google decided to take a poop on a bunch of bloggers’ and advertisers’ Page Ranks, so now advertisers are gun shy. But since I run a blog advertising business, Google hurt me. April has been our lowest income month since the business took off last year. We aren’t in any danger of failing as of right now, but the next few months may be tight…
So, as I would suggest to anyone, I took a close look at my roots and decided to diversify our income a little again.
Gourmet Commenting Service
Having said all of that, I am now offering my own commenting with Twitter service for $3 per comment. For anyone who hasn’t looked into this type of service before, $3 per comment is high. I am carrying through on the higher cost by adding other value as well. BUT, do not splurge on me if your other priorities aren’t in order – I am fully admitting that I am a higher investment than necessary, but I hope to pay off well for anyone who tries me out.
This $3 covers reading the entire post that I will be commenting on, leaving 2 sentences or more of my take on the post (my normal kind of comments), and emailing the blog owner if I see that my comment gets caught in spam (happens all of the time now). I will also be keeping up a record for you of where the comments are posted AND Tweeting one of your own blog’s posts from my account weekly – that’s a little more than 1300 followers as of April 24, 2012 – you can choose the post you’d like Tweeted each week (as long as it isn’t spammy and I’ll even add a comment about it if I can fit it in).
Every single comment would have Crystal @ YourBlogName, either my email or the one of your choosing (my email would show my logo when avatars are shown), and your blog’s URL. I will email you a weekly/monthly list (your choice) of where the comments were left. You can send me a list of the blogs that you would like me to comment on or I can create a list of my own – again, your choice.
EVERY COMMENT I AM HIRED TO LEAVE WOULD BE FROM ME. This is not an outsourced business venture. 100% Crystal. Not even Mr. BFS will be helping with this.
Openings
I can only fit in enough time to leave 100 comments per week total right now, so please email me with the number of comments you have in mind per week (1-100). No minimum order is required. When those 100 spots are claimed, I will still keep a list of anyone else who is interested in case spots open up or I am able to carve out time to fit in more per week. If the waiting list gets crazy long, I will stop advertising my services until it is reasonable again.
Right now, 25 spots are filled.
My aim is to keep this organized and everyone completely happy. So you may see me all around the blogosphere with a ton of blog names right behind mine. Please don’t be confused – it’s still all me. Please check out the sites I’ll be linking to if they interest you at all – I am truly thankful for the bloggers that are investing in me. I am really looking forward to this (in fact, I’ve already started).
Twitter Followers
For all of my Twitter followers, do not worry. I will not spam you with crappy post announcements. I am only being hired by awesome bloggers, so these would be posts that I would happily promote anyway.
You will not be sad.
How do you diversify?