Being a self-employed freelance writer means that I am responsible for every aspect of my taxes. There is no company to tax my paycheck each month, so in turn I have to pay my own quarterly taxes. At the end of the year I sit down with my tax professional in order to complete my final return, and of course, find out if I am going to owe more money or get a rebate! As you can imagine, I do whatever I can (within the law) to make sure that I get money back from the IRS.
There are many common tax deductions that freelance writers forget about time after time. This is why I have a professional help me out with my final return every year. After all, I do not want to leave any money on the table.
Here are a few of the most commonly overlooked tax deductions for freelance writers.
1. Hosting fees and domain registry fees. If you are a freelance writer you probably have your own website. You might as well deduct the cost of hosting it, and keeping your domain name up to date.
2. Even though not as common in today’s day and age, postage fees are tax deductible. As you can imagine, before email was all the rage this was a huge deduction for many. But even now, you may buy a roll of stamps every month or so.
3. All office supplies are tax deductible. This includes everything from that new business computer to paper clips to post-it notes. Do not forget any of these items when tax season rolls around.
The list of possible tax deductions for freelance writers is quite large. This is why it is a good idea to have a professional assist you. And remember, you need to keep receipts for all these deductions. This way, if you are audited by the IRS you will be covered.Â
Showing my monthly income totals has brought many questions from readers. After all, there are many people out there who hope to succeed in the world of freelance writing; and I don’t blame them. This is a great way to make a solid income from the comfort of your own home.
Of course, a lot of the emails I receive are alike. In other words, readers seem to want to know the same things about my freelance writing career.
Here are three of the most common questions that I am asked on a regular basis.
1. How did you decide to get started with a career in freelance writing?
This is a tough question to say the least. I had been working in sales and marketing for a couple of years, and pretty much got tired of making money for the company. After saving up a few months worth of living expenses, I finally decided to take the plunge. Remember, it is going to be scary moving from a steady paycheck to an unsure situation. But the reward that follows the risk can be huge!
2. What are some of the biggest mistakes you made early in your career?
For me, there are two things that come to mind. First off, I burnt myself out trying to work too many hours a day. Yes, you need to work hard in order to get your freelance writing career up and running, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I was working 14 hour days without any breaks most of the time. In time, this led to complete and total burn out.
The second mistake that comes to mind was not following up with clients after the first project. I was of the thinking that if a client needed more work they would ask. While this was true in some cases, I am sure that I missed out on some jobs because I did not follow up in a timely manner.
3. How long did it take you to start making big money?
I earned $52 my first month as a full-time freelance writer. As you can imagine, this was a bit scary. But from there, things started to pick up. The next month I made over $800, and by month three I had eclipsed $2,000. Shortly thereafter I was earning a consistent $3,000 income, which was more than enough to cover my bills at the time. From there, I worked hard to increase my income until it reached at least $4,500 per month. For me, this is a solid income, and one that allows me to live comfortably. Of course, there are those big months when I take home close to $10,000; those are the months that I live for!
If you have any other questions, feel free to leave a comment or send an email.
Even though it is nice to have repeat visitors, gaining search engine traffic is really the only way to increase overall performance. Not only can search engines help to increase traffic, but when this happens, you will also begin to see an increase in earnings. The question is: how do you increase search engine traffic?
For me, this is not an easy question to answer. I do not know much about search engine optimization, or what the engines are looking for. But by reading other blogs and forums, I have picked up some basic knowledge here and there.
Finally, this month I am starting to see an increase in the amount of traffic that is being sent to this blog from the different search engines. Just as I was getting frustrated with finding a way to increase my visitors, the search engines decided to do much of the work for me.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how I did this? I assume I am starting to get more organic traffic because this blog is growing, inbound links are increasing, and the quality of the content is above average. Outside of that, I have not made any changes that would positively affect the traffic that I receive from search engines.
I am at the point where writing good content is my main concern. In my opinion, if I keep this up, I am sure to see an increase in readership as the months go by. For now, I am glad to see my organic traffic on the rise. I can only hope that this trend will continue as I add more and more content.Â
