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This article is posted with permission from our partner Lili. Get the digital bank account designed for freelancers with Lili and manage your business expenses, estimate your taxes, and save for a rainy day all with zero account fees. Start a Lili account today. Debt is something many freelancers have to deal with. Student loans. Credit card debt. Car loans. All of this will interfere with your ability to create the life you want. It can even impact the type of work you’re able to do. If you’re like most freelancers, you probably want to do something about your debt. Here are five tips you can use to reduce your debt and improve your financial life. The basic formula for paying off any type of debt is simple – spend less than you earn and use the surplus to pay off your debt. This is called the gap. The larger you can make this gap, the faster you’ll be able to make progress on your debt. The simplest way to increase the gap between what you spend and what you earn is to reduce your expenses. And the best way to do this is to focus on your big three expenses – housing, transportation, and food. You can keep your housing costs low by living with roommates or living in modest housing. Keep your transportation costs low by driving a cheap car, biking, or using public transit to get around. And reduce your food expenses by cooking more food at home and going out to eat less. If you’re young, one strategy you can use is to live like a student. If you think about it, many of us were perfectly happy when we were students living on nothing. But once we start earning money, our lifestyle tends to increase with our income. You don’t need to live like a student forever, but if you can control your lifestyle inflation temporarily, you can keep the gap between your income and expenses high and make more progress on your debt. Spending less will help you pay off your debt faster, but if you want to make even more progress, you need to earn more money, too. Luckily, we live in one of the best times in history to pick up a side hustle (and Lili has the tools to help you maximize your freelance earnings by optimizing your tax refund.) Thanks to our phones and computers, anyone has the ability to earn extra income, even with a busy schedule. Some platforms like Steady or Upwork are designed to help you find that extra income. The beauty of earning money from a side hustle is that every dollar you earn on the side is theoretically a dollar that you don’t need. That means you can use all of the money you earn from your side hustle towards your debt. Even a few hundred dollars per month of extra income can make a big difference in your debt repayment progress. There are so many ways you can earn extra income these days. Here are 7 side hustles apps you can use right now. One thing that makes paying off debt more difficult than it seems is having to pay interest. Whenever you pay your debt, you’re always going to have to pay a little bit more to reduce your balance. I took out $87,000 of student loans when I went to law school. But I ended up paying $102,000 when it was all said and done. Your interest rate matters when it comes to paying off your debt, so your best bet is to reduce your interest rate. The lower your interest rate, the more your money can go towards reducing your debt balance. You can do this by refinancing your debt to a lower interest rate. Rates are really low today, so now is a great time to refinance your debt. There are limitations to refinancing your debt, however. You typically need to earn a good income and have a good credit score. That being said, if you’re aggressively paying off your debt and qualify to refinance, then you should consider doing it so you can get out of debt faster. Much of paying off debt comes down to motivation. Very few people accidentally pay off all of their debt. Instead, it requires taking concerted action. If you’re serious about paying off your debt, you should do whatever it takes to motivate yourself to do so. A strategy I used to motivate myself was to calculate how much interest my debt cost me per day. To do this, take your interest rate and multiply it by your remaining balance. That’ll tell you how much interest you’ll pay each year. You then divide that number by 365 and you’ll get a good approximation of how much your debt costs you per day. The number you see may surprise you. When I first calculated how much my debt cost per day, I was surprised to find that it cost me about $17 per day in interest. Each time I made a payment, I saw that number drop a little bit. It was a small motivator that helped push me as I paid off my student loans. You might be reading this and think to yourself that you’ll work on paying off your debt later. Maybe you need more time to get your life settled. Or in the future, you’ll make more money, so then you’ll be able to put more money into your debt. There are an infinite number of reasons why you might think later will be a better time to pay off your debt. This may be a mistake though. Things won’t necessarily get easier. As we get older, we end up with more responsibilities. Our expenses go up as we start families and buy houses. My wife and I recently had a kid and are buying a house. Even though we make more money than we did before, things aren’t getting easier. We have more things we have to pay for and more people we have to take care of. When you’re young and have no one to take care of but yourself, you’re in a great position to live lean, earn more money, and make real progress on your debt. Don’t fall for the mistake of thinking that it’ll be easier later. It just might not be. So make any progress you can now. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/29/5-tips-for-freelancers-to-reduce-their-debt/
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To finish your freelance project on time, you need to work out a clear plan of action and stick to it. That's easy to say, but harder to do! With some projects, you often lose inspiration, with others, you may hit a standstill. Also, as a freelancer, you can easily reach a point of burnout. When this happens, even the best productivity software doesn’t help. In a nutshell, when you start procrastinating, your creative process looks like this:
Use timeboxingTimeboxing is the method of limiting the time needed to finish the task. You could have probably heard about Parkinson’s Law. According to this law, we use as much time to complete the task as we are given. It means you can spend two hours painting a wall or two days, depending on what deadline you set up for it. To use timeboxing, break your working day into time slots dedicated to a specific task – a virtual meeting with a client, doing the first phase of research, or proofreading a report. Once you get down to testing this system, use a timer to avoid exceeding the time you are supposed to work on the task. Also, don’t forget to assign a small break in between tasks exceeding 30 minutes. Practice mindfulnessPracticing mindfulness can help you learn more about when you get bored, overwhelmed, and start procrastinating. Over time, mindfulness activities will assist you in recognizing your thoughts and feelings which become destructive to your productivity. One of the core aspects of practicing mindfulness is acceptance. It helps deal with perfectionism – a trap we are all vulnerable to as freelancers. By learning how to accept imperfections using mindfulness, you can accept and beat your inner critic faster. Even a few minutes of meditation every day will help you to become better at listening to yourself and confront your negative or critical thoughts that often block your productivity. Prepare a plan for the dayFinishing projects on time is not the only domain of the freelancer’s work where we tend to procrastinate. Some freelancers who want to grow their portfolio and income also procrastinate in acquiring new projects. For instance, they have an old portfolio posted on freelancer websites which they don’t update. Once some potential clients write a message or want to connect, their email response time is too long to even be considered as a potential partner for the project. If you procrastinate on growing your client base, you should seriously think about it. Developing your brand should be one of the most important activities on your to-do list if you don’t have a full pipeline of projects. Monitor how your project pipeline changes. For example, you can use some sales CRM where you can track what projects are almost finished and if you have more projects in the backlog which you can start working on later. If your project pipeline is weak, consider getting more active on Fiverr and Upwork or develop your own inbound lead generation machine. Make invoicing more effortlessPaperwork is something every creative mind hates doing. Once you have pulled yourself together to deliver a project on time, you have to deal with invoices and taxes. If you don’t have a reliable bookkeeper or accountant to work with on a regular basis, you need to educate yourself on what your invoice should contain and when you have to send an annual statement. Some freelancers are still using Excel or Word templates to prepare their invoices. However, using them introduces even more chaos to your work. They often get lost or look unprofessional. That is why to make the billing process more effortless, you should consider automating the administrative tasks with some billing software and work closely with an accountant. Following up a client with overdue invoices is also important. Setting up recurring emails can help avoid uncomfortable conversations and set up invoice reminders on autopilot. Set up a Pomodoro timerPomodoro is a productivity tool that helps you by working in cycles of 25 minutes. Instead of spending hours to resolve a task, you break your working time into shorter periods. Let’s see some tips on using Pomodoro technique to beat procrastination.
Don’t work on one task during multiple Pomodoro sessions. This way you won’t notice any progress over time. Break big tasks into digestible parts and spend no more than one Pomodoro session to solve each.
If, on the contrary, some tasks take less than 35 minutes to complete, pick up a few other smaller tasks and finish them during one Pomodoro session.
Don’t forget to make a five-minute break after your timer rings. It’s tempting to continue working on the tasks after the 35-minute session is over. However, that’s not how it works. Make some notes on where you finished and come back to the task later. Reward yourself moreCreate positive emotions related to finishing the task by rewarding yourself for completing it. That’s how our brains work! Your brain associates a task completion with a positive reward and urges you to continue achieving next milestones. Every day, write down your three biggest achievements and give yourself some small reward. A reward can be anything you can think of – a good cup of coffee or a relaxing bath. You can also create rewards for bigger tasks – a vacation or buying a new computer. Done is better than perfectInstead of perfecting each task to never finish it, do what you can do at this given time. If you are planning to get more projects through your website, don’t plan for a top-notch website and invest $10,000 in it. Start with a website builder and create it on your own. Once you get more work from this channel, you can consider introducing some improvements to the website performance or design. Over to youProcrastination is one of the main issues that can block your growth as a freelancer. However, by applying some tips and using appropriate tools, you can regain more focus and increase your productivity day by day. So go for it! via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/28/7-ways-to-conquer-procrastination/
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I started writing for fun when I was 13. Fresh out of primary school, I marveled at how the written art form made me feel invigorated and in love. Years later, I have written about design, real estate, computer science, data centers, pharmaceutical monitoring, and plumbing. I became both a freelance and in-house content writer for a few brands. And in those years, my writing got better, though not without the usual frustrations of finding the right words or the dread of writing a perfect intro. Here are some of the best content writing strategies I’ve learned over the years. I hope they can help you level up and ease your writing process. During my first year of writing seriously, I would stare at a blinking cursor for hours because I couldn’t come up with a good introduction. I wanted it to be neat before I moved on to the next phase. I could have used that wasted time to write the body of the content, but I always get stuck perfecting the first lines. Over the years, I realized that I could write the introduction last and still end up with great content. I first heard this tip from a Hubspot online course: As long as you have an outline for your writing, you can ditch the introduction and focus on your main point. Now, once I get a good grasp of the body of the piece, I can craft a great intro fast. Writing the introduction last can only be effective if you have an outline. Otherwise, tackling the main points will prove difficult. Outlining was not part of my writing routine when I was a newbie. I would just write on and on until I ran out of words. An outline provides structure to an otherwise lumpy article. Writers are not born to say things smoothly in print. We have so many varying wild thoughts that may or may not help us prove our point. Outlines tame those wild thoughts. When you have a good outline, you'll know what you’ll talk about next. You’ll know how you’ll end. And you will definitely know how to start. As all writers do, I get frustrated when I have no words to explain my great ideas. The best tool I have learned to use to combat this is the thesaurus. It has a bad rap among the writing community, because it can be used to make writing sound pompous or out of context. And I agree with that, but what I like about the thesaurus is it gives us a list of words we already know — words we have forgotten in the moment but perfectly understand when and how to use. It’s also a good tool to learn unfamiliar words in a niche industry. Great content writers should be able to write about various fields, like marketing, technology, and digital tools. A thesaurus can help writers avoid generic words and use more specific words that target the intended audience. Only brilliant writers write to their knowledge and still come up with great content. The rest of us need to do some research before we begin to jot down our thoughts. During my first year as a freelance content writer, I would dread the research part so much that sometimes I’d skip over that step. What followed were horrendous editing remarks, and a note: revise! The truth is that without proper research, our content flies in fluff and vagueness. Research solidifies our content and gives it form. Better yet, research improves our base knowledge, helping us become better writers for the next project, and the next, until we become that expert writer. Research doesn’t have to be so time-consuming. We don’t have to go to libraries or scour experiment results like academics and scientists do. A good abstract statement from a research paper is enough. As are explainers and ultimate link resources from authoritative websites like Harvard Journal, The Lancet, and MIT Technology Review. If it helps make your writing persuasive and lively, include it in your research. The actual writing is difficult, yes. But how about the editing? Where you thought you had delivered great writing, you often get surprised, upon rereading, how horrible your writing really was. “It doesn’t matter how good you think you are as a writer,” says freelance writer Harry Guinness, “the first words you put on the page are a first draft.” Good content writing is mostly a result of excellent editing. Writers appear intelligent to readers because it take days, even months, to refine what they really want to say in print. But if you’re someone who writes every day, you can get so caught up in the world of your content that cutting anything is difficult. The best way, I've learned, is to leave your piece before editing it. Even a day or two will do wonders. You’ll go back to it with fresh eyes, feeling the way your eventual reader will. So, after a grueling writing session, pause for a while and do something unrelated to your work. Walk outside. Read fiction. Watch YouTube. Then go back to it and revise, revise, revise. I grew up thinking the passive and active voices were just two literary techniques I could use interchangeably to add variation to my writing. Over time, I have learned to use the passive voice with intention. For the most part, perhaps 90% of the time, I make my point with the active. The active voice powers up your writing. It makes the content concise, lively, efficient, and to the point. Narratives are less confusing, more understandable, and flow better. The passive voice, however, is useful in certain situations. When we focus on the receiver of the action — what affects them— using passive voice is all the more necessary. Used too much, however, it leads to clunkier sentences and confusing narratives. Only use the passive voice with calculated intent. When you want to emphasize the receiver of the action, when you don’t know the doer of the action, when the doer is obvious or general, or when you want to sound diplomatic, stick to your passive construction. Otherwise, make it active. While this advice doesn’t apply to all types of content writing — certainly not to legal and medical journals — web readers generally favor short paragraphs and sentences. Big blocks of words can bore the average reader. Even if you have great content, an engaging introduction, and dynamic words, longer paragraphs will lead the readers to assume your content is lengthy and complicated. With millions of pieces of content flooding the internet every day, your chances of getting noticed get slimmer. With some time and work, we can break down long sentences and paragraphs into digestible bites. (That’s why taking time to revise is vital!) Shorter paragraphs lead to shorter sentences, and shorter sentences lead to better engagement. At least that’s how my experience goes. If you can’t leave your long paragraph writing style, use it moderately. If you want to build tension, create shorter sentences. But if you want to establish a continuous flow of thoughts, longer sentences and paragraphs will do. In my practice, I use shorter sentences at the beginning of a piece to hook as many willing readers as possible. Once they get a good grasp of the premise, I will shower them with well-seasoned long paragraphs and sentences. Content writing is born out of consistent and persistent practice. The more you write, the better your content will be. That’s the only way. Like me, you too will develop your techniques and strategies to improve your output. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/27/content-writing-strategies-that-really-work/
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Being productive as a freelancer has immense benefits. It means fewer distractions, enjoying doing your work, and completing work faster or in the shortest time possible with better results. The Pomodoro technique is an effective and popular time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo. Cirillo wanted a way to stay hyper-focused on work, which led him to create this technique. He realized that to remain hyper-focused, one shouldn’t commit to working for long periods but break tasks or work in sections with brief breaks in between. Each session is called a Pomodoro, where you spend 25 minutes focusing on a single task. When the timer stops, take a five-minute break. Iterate four times, after which you can enjoy a longer break of 15-30 minutes. Repeat the action for the remaining part of your day. The primary focus of this method is the 25-minute work sprint. This is what makes this method utilitarian, as it makes work appear less tedious but manageable, improves focus by combating distractions, and helps you to manage your time effectively. Here’s how you can be a more productive freelancer using this method. Have a task listThe first step to being successful with the Pomodoro technique is to plan your tasks. In your plan, spell out early the number of Pomodoros you will perform during the day. The best practice is to put the most important task at the top of the list and the least important task at the bottom of the list. For example, if you are a freelance writer, you can set your first Pomodoro to involve writing your first draft or blog post. Likewise, freelance social media managers can make their first Pomodoro about creating content on Canva or any other tool, and web designers writing code. You may schedule other tasks like responding to emails, blogger outreach, job searches, or social media marketing in your third, fourth, or fifth Pomodoro. Bend the time rules, if neededThe Pomodoro technique recommends you perform a 25-minute work sprint with a 5-minute break in between. However, this may not work for everyone. For some people, 25 minutes may be too short to perform any meaningful work. Similarly, the 5-minute break may not be long enough. That’s not enough to prepare your breakfast or take a lunch break or perform a yoga exercise, which is why you don’t have to stick to 25 minutes of work and 5-minute breaks. The trick is to experiment with what will work best for you before completely immersing yourself in the method. One way to tweak the method is by making your Pomodoro longer. For example, you can switch to a 45-minute or one-hour work sprint with 10-15-minute breaks between each Pomodoro. Finding what works for you is the best way to get motivated and focused during your Pomodoro. Divide your task correctlyThere are cases where you will find yourself with smaller or recurring tasks that require less than one Pomodoro, such as reviewing edits or replying to social media comments. These can be combined with other smaller tasks in one session. On the other hand, complex projects like writing code, a scientific paper, building a website, or creating an online portfolio may take several hours. They should be broken down into different Pomodoros. Thus, you may have four Pomodoros, each with actionable steps toward the same project. Dividing your task correctly helps you avoid distraction, procrastination, and multitasking and helps you make clear progress in what you do. Document and track your accomplishmentsLast but not least, you need to track your progress. Documenting and tracking your progress helps you see whether your efforts are paying off and where you might be failing. There are several web-based productivity apps you can use to document and track your accomplishments. One app you can use is Todolist, where you can use the work or break reminder timer to enforce your Pomodoro. Besides customizing how long your Pomodoro sessions will be and marking or scheduling the next Pomodoro, these apps can be integrated with other work software, allow you to share the workload with subcontractors, and personalize your tasks. The most important thing is the progress data. Once you have it at your fingertips, you can easily set actionable daily goals or see your productivity trends. Where you make progress, you can iterate the process to stay motivated and productive. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/26/how-to-use-the-pomodoro-technique-to-be-more-productive/
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Quarterly tax deadlines come around like clockwork, four times a year, but even for seasoned freelance professionals, remembering to pay the Tax Man quarterly (and having the cash available to do it) can be easier said than done. A quick intro to those who are new to freelancing, or who are considering leaving a staff job to become self-employed: When you’re employed by a company and get paychecks, your employer deducts certain taxes from your paycheck on your behalf, including your federal income tax, the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare, and sometimes state income taxes as well. But once you’re self-employed, you’re responsible for sending in those tax payments. And since you’re considered your own employer, you have to pay a bit extra in “self-employment tax” to contribute to Social Security and Medicare (companies pay some of these taxes on their employees’ behalf). In other words, even though your full tax return is only due once per year, you need to make tax payments shortly after earning the money – once per quarter. It’s called a “pay as you earn” system. For 2021, the remaining quarterly tax deadlines are September 15, 2021, and January 17, 2022. Paying taxes will probably never be fun, but if you do a little bit of planning (and lower your expectations), it doesn’t have to be completely miserable. 1. Choose the Simplest Possible Method to Find Your Payment AmountThe main reason to pay your quarterly estimated taxes is to avoid getting hit with an underpayment penalty. If you’re earning a bunch of money and not paying any taxes until you file your annual return, the government will be displeased about your tardiness and tack on some extra money onto your final tax bill in the form of a penalty. To avoid the underpayment penalty, you can choose between two approaches: you can either make quarterly payments equal to 100% of your previous year’s tax bill (110% if you earn more than $150,000), or quarterly payments equal to 90% of your current year’s tax bill. It sounds a little complicated, but if you expect to make about the same as you did last year, you can follow the first approach, which is actually pretty simple. For 2021, you’d take the amount of tax you paid on your 2020 return, divide it by four, and that’s your quarterly estimated tax amount. Pretty easy! (If you’re just now getting around to thinking about things this year, you’d want to pay 75% of your 2020 tax bill before September 15, 2021, and the other 25% before January 17, 2021). Multiply those numbers by 1.1 if you’re a high earner. Of course, if you end up making a lot more money in 2021 than you did in 2020 (or end up having a bigger tax bill for other reasons), you’d still need to pay additional taxes when you file your annual tax return, but you wouldn’t be hit with a large penalty. But this approach isn’t great for everyone. If your income drops by a huge amount, you might not want (or be able) to make excessively large payments that will just end up being refunded at the end of the year. If your income rises by a huge amount, you’ll probably want to go ahead and start paying the tax money that you’re eventually going to owe, even if you’re not at risk of a penalty. If you take the second approach – trying to approximate what you’ll owe in taxes for the current year – you should know that unless you’re a fortune teller, your odds of getting the number exactly correct are basically zero. After all, even if you’ve calculated your profit for this quarter, if you don’t know what your profit is going to be next quarter, you won’t hit the number on the nose. And that’s OK, explains Rus Garofalo, founder of Brass Taxes, a firm that specializes in taxes for freelance professionals. “We’re just trying to get in the ballpark, we’re not trying to hit a bullseye,” he told me, adding, “I think people get overwhelmed and want to get it exactly right, which just isn’t an option for something like this.” It’s also helpful to keep in mind that the size of the penalty itself is relatively small: about 3% for a full year, so the penalty for underpaying by even $2,000 would generally be $100 or less. While the formula for the penalty is complicated, it’s based on the amount you underpaid and how many quarters you were late. Unfortunately, the federal government doesn’t offer much help when it comes to choosing how much to pay quarterly, but as Claudia Yi León, founder of Taxes for Artists, points out, with a few small tweaks, the IRS’ withholding estimator can be used for this purpose. 2. Automate What You Can“Do all your thinking once, and then schedule everything out, so you never have to think about it again,” suggests Yi León. Her approach is to calculate her payments and use Gmail’s “schedule send” function to send herself an email with the dollar amount and the link to the IRS payment site, timing it to land in her inbox a few days before the payment is due. If you’re old-school and use the paper vouchers that a tax preparer gives you, you can still do some of the work in advance by addressing your envelopes to the IRS, licking the stamps, and putting the checks and vouchers inside. Place the envelopes somewhere visible so you won’t forget about them – you can even write the deadline somewhere small on the envelope. If you’re planning to pay a fixed percentage of your income in estimated taxes, that can be automated too. Most major banks will only let you automate transfers of a fixed dollar amount, but Catch, financial software for freelancers, lets you set aside a percentage of each paycheck you receive, either moving it into a separate bank account or paying it directly to the IRS. 3. Remember: The Money Isn’t YoursPart of what makes paying taxes so hard is that we become attached to money as soon as we touch it, even if we know we’re destined to part with it soon, says Garofalo. “Part of that money you’re holding,” Garofalo says, “is not yours, so you need to emotionally disassociate yourself from it.” This is where the classic freelancer advice comes in: consider moving a certain percentage of every paycheck into a separate bank account. Doing so protects you from accidentally spending the money you’ll need to pay taxes – and, hopefully, makes parting with that money a bit less traumatizing. 4. Consider Expert HelpIt’s possible to do your taxes on your own, but it isn’t easy. Before you assume that paying a tax professional is financially out of reach, shop around; it may be less expensive than you expect. Brass Taxes serves freelance clients across the country, as does Taxes for Artists (although Yi León currently has a waitlist on her tax practice, Taxes for Artists is available for workshops and 1-on-1 tax consultations). If you are working with a professional and you’re still overwhelmed, keep looking. Not every tax firm is used to working with freelancers. “Your tax person has to understand your industry, and you have to feel comfortable talking to them,” says Garofalo. 5. Move to Alaska – Just KiddingThe rules and deadlines for quarterly tax payments vary from state to state, although many align with the federal government. If you really want to simplify things, you’ll need to move to one of the states without a state income tax, like Alaska or Florida. Obviously, that’s not a practical suggestion for most people, but you should make sure you have a plan for filing state taxes, if you’re required to do so. “The caveat I always say is check with your state,” says Yi León, adding that tax prep software like TurboTax also adjusts their vouchers to comply with varying states’ laws and schedules. This article is for informational purposes only, and may not apply to your specific situation. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/22/how-to-make-paying-quarterly-taxes-less-miserable/
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SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Google “Goal Setting” and this is the first thing that comes up. It is the standard for how everyone from your boss to your personal trainer will tell you to plan for the next great thing. SMART goals reinforce the mindset that success is in the destination, not the journey. They ask you to limit your dreams to a specific, quantifiable target in the future. The problem is, we live in an uncertain world — no one really knows what will happen tomorrow, next week, next month. The last year-ish has proven this to be true more than ever, but really…hasn’t it always been the case? A year ago, would you have predicted where you are today? Do you believe the same things? Do you have the same goals, the same problems? Do you spend your time with the same people? Most business strategists and self-help gurus promote the idea of big goals, strategic plans, and long-term thinking. The thing is, those plans and goals aren’t going to help you when things change and you have to adjust quickly. In order to survive (and dare I say thrive) you need to plan for the unplannable, make yourself antifragile. “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” Instead of using static SMART goals to plan for a scenario that might be irrelevant in six months (or even tomorrow), use these strategies to become antifragile. Take a moment to get clear on where you are now, who you are, and what you value. What are your strengths and weaknesses? This is your starting place around which everything should be organized, at least for now. Don’t get stuck on letting these things define you. The person you are today most likely won’t be who you are next year. Relevancy is iterative. How do you decide what you’re going to focus on next? What you’re going to eat for dinner? Where you’re going to live next year? Planning out possible future scenarios in detail is a waste of your time because most of those plans will never happen. If they do happen, the plan you made will be stale once you get there and you’ll have to re-do it anyway. Create flexible systems with criteria you can use to help you plan your work and life instead of long-term plans. Then you can use those criteria to be nimble about your decisions. Goals and plans are only as good as the systems you’ve built to revisit them and adjust accordingly. The person making that 5-year plan today is not the same person who is going to be living that plan in 5 years. Create a system for checking in on your structures regularly. Get a new baseline and update that framework so that it is always reflective of your circumstances and context at the time. Flying by the seat of your pants is great…until it isn’t. 2020 re-taught us lessons that our grandparents have always known about being prepared for disaster. What would happen if you lost your job? If your business lost its biggest client? Building in redundancy wherever you can will serve you in the long run. This can take some investment upfront, so use your tools above to identify crucial areas to focus on first. Setting goals should be an exercise in defining what success looks like overall, not limiting yourself to that definition of success at a specific moment in the future. Let’s face it, things change. In reality, that is the only thing you can be certain of. So why build goals with deadlines and numbers that don’t actually push you toward what is the best thing for you in this moment? Instead, build meaningful goals that will help you now instead of forecasting the next best thing. Here’s how to do that: 1. Quality instead of quantity Often we don’t know exactly what we want to strive for until we go through a process of defining it. Using qualitative goals allows you to have something to aim for while honoring the fact that you’re not going to be the same person or business next month or next year. If you make $18K in a month and work 35 hours, does that mean you failed? If you launch 1 new product and take on 4 new clients, did that also diversify your income? If you lose 50 lbs. but still feel like crap, have you achieved your goal? Give yourself the flexibility to aim higher but not be confined by numbers for the sake of numbers. 2. Ambitious but ambiguous Achievable is great but seriously aim for the stars. Don’t limit yourself to what you think is possible at this moment, because it is only a moment. Circumstances change constantly. Make that ambitious (qualitative) goal, map out a few ways you could get there, and then explore until you find the right path. Chances are you’ll find other options along the way that you never even thought of, that end up getting you where you want to go. 3. Relevant…now Make sure your goals are relevant to who you are and where you’re at now. While keeping in mind that who you are today is not where you’ll be tomorrow. Relevancy is iterative. You should always have a north star and orient around it, but that north star might move in the sky over time. What’s relevant to you in your 20s will likely be irrelevant in your 40s. Your “why” will change as your life does. 4. Timelines, not deadlines The truth is, most of us set SMART goals, whether for our work or life, and then put them on a shelf where we revisit them at new year’s or our annual review, and a) feel guilty about our lack of progress, b) see that we’ve blown them out of the water, or c) find that they’re no longer relevant. Reinforce your qualitative goals with quantitative timelines (AKA, actual dates). Do this in short cycles so that you have time to see progress and then adjust as things change because they will. You don’t have to plan out the next five years of your life right now, just get clear on what you think you want that to look like and what progress looks like at this moment. We all have our list — “What I learned in 2020…” Truth is, most of that is already forgotten. If you take one thing away from the dumpster fire that was last 18 months, let it be that you need to live your life now, not wait for your “five-year plan” to manifest. The future is always uncertain, use that to your advantage instead of letting it destroy you. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/21/smart-goals-are-so-2019-do-this-instead/
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Some issues that freelancers face are universal — things like getting paid on time, navigating taxes and managing your career. Freelance writing comes with its own challenges, from copyright and contract considerations to libel and slander claims. That’s why our team at Dinghy, together with Freelancers Union, recently brought together a panel of industry leaders to offer freelance writers key advice for running their businesses. If you missed the event, don’t sweat. This blog is the second in a series recapping our panelists’ key insights. (Also check out our first post-event blog on rates and negotiating.) Umair Kazi, Director of Advocacy and Policy at The Authors Guild on Copyright and Protecting Your WorkUmair Kazi is the Director of Policy and Advocacy for the Authors Guild, the nation's professional organization for writers, aiding and protecting authors’ interest in copyright, fair contracts, and free expression since 1912. With a master’s degree in creative writing from Columbia University and a degree in law from the University of Iowa, Umair has a unique blend of expertise that he puts to work leading the Author’s Guild’s advocacy efforts and lobbying for author rights. Drawing on his expertise in copyright, Umair warns writers that there is “an entire universe of different ways in which work of authorship is exploited.” Educating writers about how to protect their work, he emphasized the following points: Copyright is a bundle of six exclusive rights. All writers should understand what copyright entails in a nutshell. Umair explains, “Copyright is actually a bundle of rights and there are six exclusive rights that a creator of a work or an author has.” They include: 1. The right to make copies of the work. 2. The right to prepare derivative works. (e.g., new works that incorporate material from an existing work, such as adaptations, audio books or movies) 3. The right to distribute copies of the work to the public. 4. The right to publicly perform the work. (e.g., for playwrites and authors of music scores) 5. The right to publicly display the work. (e.g., primarily for works of visual art) 6. The right to perform sound recordings publicly through digital audio transmission. (e.g., for musical recordings) Ideas alone are not protected by copyright. “Just because you create something doesn’t necessarily mean there’s copyright,” he notes. “The specific requirement is that it has to be an original work that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression. That basically means that ideas are not protected. There has to be sufficient detailing of the originality and it has to be written down, recorded or exist in some sort of tangible form.” Copyright in the U.S. is framed as an economic right. “Copyright is a right, but it’s also ownership of your work,” Umair says. “It’s an important right in the sense that in many countries it’s considered an inalienable right — almost like a right of speech. It’s a natural right. In the United States, it’s framed in some respects as a natural right but primarily as an economic right; the author’s economic right to have a limited monopoly over their work.” Writers should carefully consider copyright as it relates to contracts and the bargaining process. “If you’re writing web copy for a very specific niche business, like a mattress brand — something you wouldn’t otherwise use in your work — then you might say OK, I’ll make this a work for hire. It makes sense for the company that’s hiring me to have ownership of this. In that respect, you can negotiate an upfront services fee and divest yourself from those rights,” Umair explains. “But if you’re a journalist, you can use that piece in an anthology or you can create a podcast out of it. There are so many other licensing opportunities now for those works. You really don’t want to give up your rights for a 5,000-word investigative journalism piece, and I’ve seen that happen quite frequently unfortunately.” He adds, “It’s so important to really carefully read the contract, especially now. A lot of digital media outlets are looking for ways to become multi-channel content providers, because they’ve seen how lucrative the podcast space is or how lucrative the short web documentary space is. With that in mind, freelance writers will start seeing contracts where the digital media outlets they’re writing for are not just asking for rights to publish the work. Even if they’re letting you retain the copyright, they might be asking for a more expansive grant of rights.” “Writers should think more about how instrumental their piece is in these downstream channels,” advises Umair. “The publication wants the piece because they want the story. The story that the writer has worked on and given expression to. Without that expression, you don’t get those adaptations, you don’t get those short documentaries. It’s hard to really put a number on it. If you write a piece that’s very popular, you’re generating a lot of good ad revenue for the publication. That could be something you take the next time you submit something to increase your rates.” Copyright is undoubtedly complex, which is why writers sometimes find themselves in hot water for accidental or alleged copyright infringement. The good news is that freelance writer insurance — brought to you by Freelancers Union in partnership with Dinghy and NSM Insurance Group — provides media liability coverage for claims of copyright infringement, as well as legal fees to defend your name, and much more. Learn more and get a free quote online in minutes. To hear more from Umair and our other panelists — which include Wudan Yan, Independent Journalist and Co-founder of The Writers’ Co-op; Ryan Goldberg of the Freelance Solidarity Project; and Rob Hartley, Co-Founder of Dinghy, offering first-of-its-kind freelance writer insurance — view the recorded event. Plus, stay tuned for insights from other panelists coming soon. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/20/issues-facing-freelance-writers-in-2021-copyright-protection/
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Recent changes in the federal state and local tax (SALT) deduction are having a ripple effect in New York and several other states. This may impact your freelance business, because New York State (NYS), among others, is now instituting a new irrevocable pass-through entity tax to offset the shortfall they are experiencing on revenue from SALT as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017. In many states, especially those with higher-than-average property taxes, like New York, the SALT deduction cap of $10,000 from the TCJA changes resulted in a tax increase (due to a reduced deduction) even for mid-income individuals who itemized these taxes. As such, the state experienced a revenue reduction, inspiring the need to replace the revenue with the new optional pass-through entity tax. If you operate a business as a partnership or if you are considering selecting this entity type for your business in New York, the new tax will affect you directly. Whether the impact is positive or negative depends on a number of factors that we summarize below. You should also think about how comfortable you are permanently opting to itemize your state and local taxes at the entity level each tax year. How freelance businesses may be affected by the new pass-through entity taxThe new pass-through tax election was made effective January 1, 2021, and will remain in effect unless it is changed by legislation. As noted previously, the pass-through tax is an optional election by partnership and S-corporation (S-corp) entities, and it is irrevocable after the election is made for each tax year. You can read the related IRS Notice 2020-75 here: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-20-75.pdf. New York (and other states) are taxing income from partnerships (multi-member LLCs) and S-corps, but not single-member LLCs at lower rates than would occur if they were taxed at the owners’ individual tax rates, if the owner chooses to apply the new pass-through tax to their qualified business income. Factors to consider before you elect into New York’s new pass-through entity taxBefore you decide to elect into the new pass-through entity tax, it is important to understand how it affects your business, because the impact depends on the type of business entity you have and whether or not you choose to itemize your SALT. · Opting into this tax change may not be in the best interest of some NYS taxpayers because the state charges higher tax rates for taxpayers who have lower incomes and are in lower tax brackets, This is especially so if you don’t itemize your deductions. In these cases, it may actually be a disadvantage to opt in. · This is an optional tax deduction, but you must elect to take it each tax year if you choose to take advantage of it. · Although the taxes are paid as a part of an entity owner’s individual income tax return, the pass-through income is not subject to tax at the individual’s rate, thus no double taxation, and a potential net savings for the business owners. · The taxes paid on the pass-through entity income are deductible and not subject to the $10,000 SALT cap. · If you determine it would be advantageous to itemize your SALT at the entity level but you are a sole proprietor with a single-member LLC, you can set up a multi-member LLC or an S corporation to benefit from the pass-through entity tax changes. · You must make the irrevocable election to go this route by the first estimated payment due date (March 15) of the calendar year prior to the year in which your tax return is filed. · The election is made annually and is effective for the current taxable year. For the 2021 tax year only, an election must be made by Oct. 15, 2021. · You must also make four equal estimated tax payments for every quarter of the calendar year of the lesser of 90% of the current year tax or 100% of prior year tax. For the 2021 tax year, estimated payments are not required. What is considered qualifying income for the pass-through entity tax?Essentially, if you have a pass-through business, you can pay additional state tax from your company entity, then claim the offsetting credit against your individual income tax liability, since the SALT deduction cap does not apply to business taxes. Therefore your entity-level tax will assess a liability directly on your business before the income passes to you as an owner. In New York state, qualified income for this offset credit includes income paid to partners/shareholders, including individuals, trusts, and estates at the rates below. Pass-Through Entity Tax RatesIncome Level | Rate · Under $2,000,000 = 6.85% · $2,000,000 to $4,999,999 = $137,000 plus 9.65% on the part of income over $2 million. · $5,000,000 to $24,999,999 = $426,500 plus 10.3% on the income over $5 million. · $25,000,000 and over = $2,486,500 plus 10.9% on the income over $25 million. Normal NY income tax ratesIn addition to the pass-through entity tax rates above, New York residents and those with New York-derived income from sources other than the pass-through entity must also report such income, which is taxable at rates ranging from 4% to 10.9%. Bottom line: Weigh all the factors before you elect the New York pass-through entity taxTo determine if you should opt into this tax change, you need to consider your income level, your individual tax bracket, your entity type, and whether it is worth changing your entity selection and itemizing your SALT to take advantage of the potential tax savings at the federal level to offset any increases at the state level. In addition, you need to factor in the varying tax rates for federal and state income tax, the NYS pass-through tax and SALT taxes. There may be additional guidance as the year progresses, so watch for updates about these potential impacts. Jonathan Medows is a New York City-based CPA who specializes in taxes and business issues for freelancers and self-employed individuals across the country. He provides tax, accounting and business articles for freelancers on his website, http://www.cpaforfreelancers.com, which also features a free newsletter, blog and a comprehensive freelance tax guide. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/19/should-freelancers-opt-in-to-new-yorks-pass-through-entity-tax/
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Your content marketing strategy plays a huge role in your overall marketing ROI. And a great way to get the most out of each piece of content is to promote it via email marketing. Contrary to popular belief, content marketing is not synonymous with just blogging but also includes other forms of content such as video (say, YouTube marketing, webinars, etc.), audio (say, Spotify podcasts), interactive content (say, quizzes, calculators, etc.), and more. Each of those content types serves a different purpose, and they can all bring customers to your business with some strategic email marketing. Strategies for successful content marketing via emailThere are plenty of ways you can tie the knot between your email marketing and content marketing efforts. Here are seven effective ways to leverage the power of email marketing for your content. 1. Integrate lead magnets into your emailsA lead magnet is a piece of exclusive digital content — an ebook, checklist, case study, whitepaper, report, guide, etc. — that helps your potential customer solve a specific problem. Your email subscribers (not yet customers) are likely in the early stages of their buyer’s journey and have signed up for stellar content. They may not be ready to become your customer just yet, but you can nurture a strong relationship with them by offering a free, relevant, and valuable resource — a lead magnet. As the name suggests, lead magnets are usually used to generate email opt-ins by incentivizing people to share their email address in exchange for the free resource. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use lead magnets in the next stage of the marketing funnel to keep adding free (and impressive) value to your audience’s life. Based on specific triggers, such as when a new subscriber signs up for your email list, you can use autoresponders to build automated time-based sequences that deliver relevant lead magnets to nurture your leads (in this case, a welcome email with a special offer/discount as a “thank you” for subscribing). Lead magnets are a great way to improve your content marketing engagement rates, especially when you embed them into emails. As lead magnets show subscribers your content marketing, they persuade subscribers to view eBooks, webinars, videos, and podcasts they would have otherwise never seen. This will drive views to your content marketing, increasing your sales in turn. 2. Create a targeted email list for your YouTube subscribersVideo marketing statistics suggest 83% of marketers feel YouTube has boosted their marketing efforts and that 68% of consumers prefer to engage with brands that make videos. The icing on the cake? Email marketing campaigns that contain video content generate 96% higher click-through rates than campaigns that don’t use video content. YouTube videos create a personal bond with viewers, often referred to as a parasocial relationship. When viewers have a parasocial relationship with you, they are more likely to trust you as an authority, as you have built a personal brand-to-customer connection. This means that when you include your content marketing as a lead magnet in a YouTube video (or vice versa), subscribers are likely to engage with both. Building a dedicated YouTube subscribers email list will drive your content marketing strategy in two key ways. First, it will increase traffic to your content marketing. This will boost your content’s Google ranking, which will draw more eyes to your work. Second, it will give you a loyal group of customers to learn from. As a great content marketing strategy offers readers exactly what they want, the feedback you get from your email list subscribers will help you produce better content. Here are some best practices to get the most out of the emails you send to your subscribers:
3. Improve your podcasts with creative newslettersIf you host a podcast, you’re talking to your listeners directly. But the connection only goes one way. Email marketing is the perfect channel to bridge the gap between episodes and keep your listeners engaged. Using email marketing, you can send newsletters containing fun ‘behind-the-scenes’ content to your podcast listeners. This content could include show notes, recaps, funny responses from listeners, further reading, or even competitions. These newsletters serve three functions:
Let’s talk about that last point. If you want to use newsletters to grow your audience base, you can simply incentivize existing subscribers to forward your emails with a giveaway or competition. This will increase your podcast and email audience, driving the reach of your content marketing and increasing your sales. 4. Raise webinar attendance with effective email sequencesWebinars (web seminars) are video presentations, workshops, or lectures hosted online, typically with the help of webinar tools. These online events are interactive in nature and a great way to share your knowledge with your audience, strengthen customer relationships, and exude brand authority. Creating an email sequence can be effective in increasing your webinar attendance. Here’s a quick step-by-step approach to do just that:
Create an email campaign specifically for the purpose of promoting your webinar. Ideally, these emails would arrive before you invite people to the webinar. Each campaign email should give your subscribers small nuggets of information, which will grab their interest and slowly build momentum for your webinar. For best results, always include links to your other content marketing in these campaigns. This will give your subscribers more information on topics they are interested in and drive traffic to your marketing. 5. Transform your emails with your most popular infographicsIf you’re making infographics as part of your content marketing, email marketing is the perfect way to distribute them. Rather than sending long-form emails that nobody has the time to read, compiling all the key information in an appealing infographic gets the message across faster and more effectively. Plus, you can better persuade your subscribers by clear, relevant visuals and calls to action instead of slabs of text. Here are a few ideas on how to use infographics to enhance your emails:
6. Make your emails interactive with your quizzesContent marketing and email marketing have one key thing in common: they keep people’s interest. That’s where fun activities like quizzes come in. Quizzes are an engaging piece of content marketing that grabs people's interest, entertains them, and links them to your website or other content. Luckily, quizzes are also one of the easiest pieces of content you can distribute through email. Here’s how to make a quiz:
This will give you an email that looks like the example below. Of course, quizzes can also drive your email list subscribers. Ensure you embed your quizzes on your website and include a link for people to join your email list at the bottom of the page for best results. 7. Increasing the reach of your blog articles via emailLast but not least, and one of the most straightforward strategies, is to promote your latest blog posts via email. In doing so, you increase the reach of your articles and get that much-needed initial traction for your content that’s hot off the digital press. Time to tie the knotEmail marketing is a great tool to improve your content marketing. Good email marketing adds value to your existing content, directs traffic to key pieces of marketing like webinars and events, and builds a greater relationship with your customers. If you want to create a connection with your customers through content marketing, leveraging email is the way. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/19/how-to-market-content-via-email/
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This article was first published by the IRS and has been reproduced with permission. Subscribe to IRS tax tips here. It's summertime, and for many people, summertime means change. Whether it's a life change or a typical summer event, it could affect your income taxes. Here are a few common summertime activities and tips on how taxpayers should consider them during filing season. Getting marriedNewlyweds should report any name change to the Social Security Administration. They should also report an address change to the United States Postal Service, their employers, and the IRS. This will help make sure they receive documents and other items they will need to file their taxes. You should take some time to read up on the comparative advantages to filing your taxes jointly or separately so that you're prepared when tax time comes around. Sending kids to summer day campUnlike overnight camps, the cost of summer day camp may count towards the child and dependent care credit. Working part-timeWhile summertime and part-time workers may not earn enough to owe federal income tax, they should remember to file a return. They'll need to file early next year to get a refund for taxes withheld from their checks this year. Gig economy workIf you're dipping your toe into app-based gig work to boost your income over the summer (such as ride sharing, delivery services and other activities), you are encouraged to visit the Gig Economy Tax Center at IRS.gov to learn more about how participating in the sharing economy can affect their taxes. And if you're selling items at craft fairs or farmers' markets, accepting payment via Paypal, Venmo, or other peer-to-peer services, make sure you're aware of the new regulations about reporting this income on your taxes. via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2021/07/16/summer-fun-that-could-affect-next-years-tax-return/ |
AuthorI have 5+ years experience working as a medical transcriptionist. When I am not working, I enjoy sports like playing basketball or judo. I love making friends and connections. Archives
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