Those of us who freelance or have other small businesses from our homes often have no one to help us navigate the treacherous tax waters. I sit down with Bruce Nowakowski, a Maryland small business accountant, to talk about the basics of freelancing and tax.
1. What can a home-based freelancer claim on taxes as expenses?
It [...]

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No, not writing blog posts, as a verb. Writing blogs, the noun. I subscribe to over 70 writing blogs, and 90% of them are trying to pitch me every day. “Buy my expensive course!” “Join my expensive membership site!” No wonder they can write about making money – they’re taking it from other freelancers! Disgusting.
Now, [...]

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When I left my job at a deeply flawed, borderline law-breaking company last week, I had to do some soul searching. Friends keep asking where I’m going next, have I found a new job, and they’re kind enough to send me job opportunities. It’s very sweet, but I really don’t want to go back to [...]

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This is my first official day out of the office, and my third actual day (they let me go two days early). I have written three articles for pay, 2000 words of my memoir, applied for 6 gigs… And only now remembered to shower.
It is 94° in my apartment, mercifully minus the bedroom, where the [...]

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I haven’t updated this blog in ages. You see, I left the idyllic world of Topless Wednesday™ and No Pants Friday™ to take an office gig. I finished said gig yesterday, after 10 months, with many lessons learned. Here are those lessons, in no particular order:

9-to-5 really doesn’t work for me. First of all, my [...]

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My pal Lisa Kanarek over at Working Naked has put out a book by the same name: Working Naked: A guide to the bare essentials of home office life.
Lisa’s gig is streamlining the home office process, so that you aren’t shoved into a corner of your dining room, buried under a pile of receipts.
For $12, [...]

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Hey everybody! It’s time once again for NaNoWriMo – the National Novel Writing Month!
All the go-getter scribes will be typing or scribbling away to meet the 50,000-word goal by the end of the month. That means a daily tally of 1666 words. Sounds fairly simple – and it is if you are unemployed, young, live [...]

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Last week I wrote about Ray Connolly, who is publishing his story in serial form on his blog, and is making it available for inexpensive immediate download. It was his choice to try this little experiment, but other writers are eschewing traditional publishing in favor of the ebook for different reasons.
Sometimes, no matter how good [...]

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Darren Rowse is the ProBlogger. In fact, he’s THE ProBlogger! And today he released another fantastic resource for bloggers – The Copywriter’s Scorecard for Bloggers.

Totally ignore the price on the banner – Darren is taking $5 off for the next two weeks and selling it for $9.97, just like he did with 31 Days to [...]

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A freelance writer is the sole proprietor of a small business, and treats his or her business accordingly. There are overhead costs, taxes, occasionally there are employees or contractors to be paid, but as a small business in Ontario there is help available.
Opening a business is always tricky. In Ontario, entrepreneurs and small business [...]

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