One of the reasons you decided to work freelance, whether part-time or full-time, is to have the chance to work from home. You may receive some tax benefits from having a home office. Read on to learn how can you take the home office deduction on your taxes. Home Office Deduction Rules First, the IRS requires you to use your home office “exclusively and regularly”
In this series, we personally test traditional online freelance marketplaces to share first-hand experiences and honest assessments of marketplaces and resulting jobs, as many freelance writers turn to these outlets to find writing gigs. You can read all the posts in the series here. This week, I tried Amazon Mechanical Turk. Mechanical who? Why, Mechanical Turk. Yeah, the name doesn’t make any sense to me
Every now and then I talk about the excuses freelance writers make for their lack of success when they’re not happy in their careers (and how they need to take personal responsibility if they want to change that). Let’s talk about the latter half — making changes. It’s not enough to knock off the excuses. You stopped blaming the economy for your lack of work.
Everyone makes mistakes. But when it comes to freelance writing, a lot of people make the same mistakes! New writers regularly set themselves up for failure. Even experienced writers get too comfortable in a routine and forget some of the essentials. The thing is, most freelance writing mistakes are easy to avoid. Today let’s look at some of the most common, and most foolish, mistakes
In this series, we personally test traditional online freelance marketplaces to share first-hand experiences and honest assessments of marketplaces and resulting jobs, as many freelance writers turn to these outlets to find writing gigs. You can read all the posts in the series here. If you spend any amount of time online reading the many freelance writer’s blogs that dot the virtual landscape, then you
If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen an all-out rant the other evening about a complete customer service nightmare related to Amazon.com and UPS. Here’s a run-down of what ultimately happened: I ordered a small chest from Amazon (directly, not a 3rd party seller). Being a somewhat large item shipping-wise, it took a while to get to me. I checked the tracking.
Market research is important. You should always know what your competition is doing, because it gives you insight into your market. But copying successful formats and strategies is not generally the way to succed for yourself. Imitation may occasionally be the sincerest form of flattery, but not in business. Jessie Fitzgerald asked me on Twitter today if I owned AllFreelanceBlogging.com. I don’t, but I joked
What’s more refreshing than a brand new year. It’s another chance to do things right with your freelance writing business and your finances. Here are seven things you should do during these first few weeks of January to get your finances on the right track. 1. Evaluate your rates. As you think about your writing rates for 2010, consider how you fared last year. You
I love my cats. I really do. But today I was reminded of why I don’t like having pets in my workplace. But first, here are the little brats: I converted about a third of my bedroom into an office years ago. I sleep in there for hours. I work in there for hours. I don’t let the cats in there. You know how cats
Today my vacation time comes to an end. For the last week and a half I’ve enjoyed some time off. I didn’t go anywhere exciting, but rather just enjoyed some peace and quiet and finished a lot of much-needed housework (although I’ll still be cleaning and re-organizing for weeks I’m sure — haven’t tackled the dreaded closets yet!). Even though we’re only a few days
In this series, we personally test traditional online freelance marketplaces to share first-hand experiences and honest assessments of marketplaces and resulting jobs, as many freelance writers turn to these outlets to find writing gigs. You can read all the posts in the series here. There are a lot of different sites that post adverts for freelance writers. Since October, I have used Craigslist, Journalism Jobs,
I love this time of year. It’s exciting for me when I get to sit down and look back on my business and make plans for the year to come. Every year there are goals I reach and those I don’t. I change goals or make new ones throughout the course of the year. This is the time of year when I create the big
Have you ever created a business plan? If so, you know how difficult it can be. In fact, I personally believe that these are among the most difficult freelance writing projects. That being said, you don’t want to pass these gigs by if they interest you and you have the experience to deliver. As strange as it may sound, there are many organizations that hire
In this series, we personally test traditional online freelance marketplaces to share first-hand experiences and honest assessments of marketplaces and resulting jobs, as many freelance writers turn to these outlets to find writing gigs. You can read all the posts in the series here. This week, I did some work with Demand Studios. I have a very long history with Demand Studios. As many readers
Let’s talk about credit for freelance writers. Having good credit is important for freelancers because our income is scrutinized a lot harder when we apply for credit cards and loans. Because a freelancer writer’s income is somewhat less predictable and harder to prove than that of a full-time employed worker, we need to have a solid credit history to help get approved for credit card
In this series, we personally test traditional online freelance marketplaces to share first-hand experiences and honest assessments of marketplaces and resulting jobs, as many freelance writers turn to these outlets to find writing gigs. You can read all the posts in the series here. The Background on Textbroker When you write for the content mill known as Textbroker, you are ghostwriting for individual clients. You’ll
Thanks to Thursday Bram for bringing this story to my attention. I don’t think it’s any secret that I despise oDesk. Why? Because they not only allow, but encourage, clients to cross the employer / client line with their software that lets clients actually watch you work, while you’re working from your own machine in your own home, etc. I’m not going to get into
When you hear the phrase “nickel and dime” chances are that you think of being a buyer — asked to pay for ridiculous little add-ons to a product of service, greatly increasing the overall price. Can you also be nickel and dimed as a freelancer? Absolutely. How Freelance Clients Might Try to Nickel and Dime You As a freelance writer, you probably either give a
In this series, we personally test traditional online freelance marketplaces to share first-hand experiences and honest assessments of marketplaces and resulting jobs, as many freelance writers turn to these outlets to find writing gigs. You can read all the posts in the series here. I’m depressed. Yes, yes, I know this isn’t LiveJournal but still…depressed. Huh? What? Tear myself away from this jelly doughnut and
Here at All Freelance Writing we talk a lot about freelance writing rates and being paid what you’re worth. Our primary mission is to help writers who want to grow and improve their freelance writing careers. But wanting to earn more isn’t enough. You have to deserve it. Feeling that you’re worth more is only half of the battle. Don’t get me wrong. It’s important.
The two things I loathe about a freelancer’s finances are health insurance and income taxes. I thought I hated paying taxes when I worked full-time for someone else. Seeing the money that was taken out of my paycheck was depressing. I didn’t know how good I had it. Paying tax as a freelancer is even worse. Not only do we pay more taxes, we have
In September I bought an “Individual” membership plan on Elance. The cost was $9.95 and with it I received 20 bright and shiny proposal credits. When you bid on jobs at Elance it costs you anywhere from 1-3 of these juicy credits (Elance actually calls them “connects” but I’m going to continue to call them credits because…well…that’s what I think they should be called). A
It’s funny, really, that the toughest year of my maternal life was the one I thought would be the easiest. I spent a year finishing my Masters, teaching every day and writing every night. In my spare time I raised a toddler while I worked on growing his younger brother. That was the year before the hardest year. During those seemingly hard months, I dreamed
If you’re anything like me, your office is a tiny cell of a room where there’s barely enough room for your bed and your fainting couch, and opening the filing cabinet can turn into an acrobatic feat. When saddled with limited office space, its time to think vertical and utilize your wall space. This month’s freelancer DIY project is how to hang shelves. Even if
This week our “Getting Started” series post is a bit later than usual due to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the U.S. We’re kicking things off with a bang though, as we welcome Linda Formichelli! Linda will talk about getting started as a freelance magazine writer. It’s a topic we don’t touch on very often here at All Freelance Writing since my own career is
One of the most lucrative projects for freelance writers is writing feature articles. Of course, this is not always true. There are some clients that don’t pay as much as the industry average; this is to be expected. But overall, I have found that writing feature articles is a great way to increase income while having a great time along the way. For the sake
As many of you know, I got my start in online freelance writing with residual sites, content mills and cheap SEO content. The lowest I was ever paid was .01 per word—and I thought that was perfectly fine. The blogs I frequented at the time gave me no inkling that there was a bigger, better world out there for someone without a degree, no formal
I know what you’re thinking, Ugh. Budgeting. The only thing worse than budgeting is licking sandpaper. As boring as it feels, budgeting is especially critical for you as a freelance writer, because your income is less predictable. Creating a budget takes just three steps: totaling your monthly income, subtracting your expenses, and adjusting your budget based on the result. You’ll create your budget using the
In this week’s installment of our “Getting Started” series, we’ll hear from Christa Miller on what it’s like to start writing for trade publications. One of my own favorite projects is ghostwriting client features for trades. Interested in breaking into the style, either ghosting or by-lined? Christa offers some tips help you get there. Here’s what she had to say: On How She Started Writing
How would you feel about having your freelance writing schedule booked weeks or months in advance? Do you wish you had the luxury to be more selective in the freelance writing jobs you take on, able to turn down anything that doesn’t appeal to you? Plenty of freelancers are already in that boat, myself included. It’s a great place to be, but a reader brought