Finance for a Freelance Life» Freelance and Alternative Income

Remembering that Freelance Is a “Real Job”

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:00:11 +0000

If you asked me if I work 2 jobs, my first response would probably be “no.” I’d say that I have a full-time job in the field that I want to work in. Oh, I’d then add, but I do a little work on the side to bring in extra money for debt repayment, grad school, etc. How much? Not every day, three or four days a week maybe. Well, last weekend I worked 14 hours for two clients.

Besides following 5 days of 8-hour shifts, an average 7 hours of freelancing is very different from an average 7 hours at my day job. No coworkers, fewer distractions, and a lot more time spent focused on the work. Sure, working with Mr. J. Money (who apparently covets my external hard drive) in person was a lot of fun, but we were also focused on a huge project—the most complicated Blogger to Wordpress migration I’ve ever done (Blogger FTP vs. regular Blogger).

Half the time, I remember that it’s very much a real job (with real clients and real taxes and real work that gets done). The other half, I find myself wondering why I’m so tired or why I can’t find time to do something (until I look at my schedule). It’s not that I neglect the work itself, I find the work very engaging and prioritize it in my schedule, I just neglect the so-called “work/life balance.”

I still haven’t figured out how to keep myself fully aware that I have two jobs, but it’s something I’m working on both for now and for when I start grad school in the Fall. Things that I’ve found help include:

Using a Calendar to Manage All My Clients — Some weeks I don’t, and even if I just have one client that’s just dumb. I also grant all my google accounts access to each other’s calendars & store my events on one calendar which I can access from any of them.
Using a Calendar to Schedule My Personal Life — I’m not an extremely social person & a week can go by without my having any commitments. But when I do make them, I hate to have to cancel because I realized I scheduled a client. And I hate having to move a client even more. So I combine my business and pleasure calendars to make sure that I avoid scheduling conflicts to begin with.
Taking Time Off Between Clients — This is something I need to do because I have a full-time day job as well. I can’t work every night and weekend or 1) I don’t fulfill my other responsibilities & 2) I start to go a little nuts. But even full-time freelancers need to consider their time off between clients. Whether it’s scheduling an hour for a breather, making sure that you’re not working 7 days/week (unless it works for you), or just finding a few minutes here and there, try purposefully taking time off between clients & projects.
Book Myself — If I didn’t freelance, I’d have a lot more time to write for this blog (and I’d have to write about a different topic) as well as more time to work on my other projects. As it is, I try to schedule blocks of time where I update plugins, do theme work I need to get done, and just write. Otherwise, doing one kind of project can take away from your other projects.

This is what works for me. What matters the most is that I always keep in mind that what I’m doing has the same effect on my life as working any other real job would.

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How to Export PayPal Data and Check Your Records for Taxes

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:00:18 +0000

Even if you keep records of payments made by clients or advertisers during the year, it’s important to go over them again before tax time. You can check any 1099s received against your monthly records, but what about payments made through PayPal?

Whether you’ve been keeping financial records all year long or you’re putting together your records just in time for taxes, this post will help you limit your exported PayPal data to avoid duplicate entries. Also, learn how to deal with PayPal’s “Gross,” “Fee,” and “Net.”

How to Export Monthly PayPal Reports

I find that exporting each month separately keeps comparison from getting overwhelming. Also, I’ve had problems with not all the dates showing up on my PayPal reports. Limiting it to a month at a time keeps me in a range, plus I keep my monthly data in different sheets inside the same spreadsheet workbook. But you can export by the quarter, or even a whole year if you feel like it.

To download a PayPal report that you can open in Open Office Calc (free) or Microsoft Excel, hover over “History” in My Account and select “Download History” from the drop-down menu.

Select the dates and choose what type of report to export. While “All Activity” sounds safest, it’s actually full of duplicate content. Every invoice will be reported as “Paid,” but there will be a second entry for the payment itself. eChecks will show up twice as well, the first entry being for the date they were send and the second for the date they cleared.

To avoid confusion and duplicate entries you’ll have to delete, choose to export all completed payments. Excel and Calc will understand both Tab Delimited and Comma Delimited reports, even though they aren’t .xls or .ods documents. You can also choose to save your exports as a different format once you’ve opened them.

Understanding PayPal Gross, Fee, and Net

When comparing your records (or building them for the first time), be sure to use PayPal’s “Gross” amount, not the “Net.” If you reported the amount you actually received (Net) when creating the record, change it back to the Gross and make sure that you’ve used the same set of data across the board.

The fee PayPal charges for many transactions is a business expense, so be sure that your records contain a column for PayPal fees as well and add them all up. I keep all three columns—Gross, Fee, and Net—but I don’t use Net for my taxes.

Honestly, the end result will be the same whether you report your Gross earnings and then deduct the fee as part of your expenses calculation or you just report the Net. BUT, this method is more thorough and technically accurate.

Keeping good records makes tax time far easier. Going through your records with copies of your monthly PayPal exports gives you accurate records and peace of mind.

If you’re a blogger trying factor a variety of income into your taxes, check out my post on taxes for bloggers.

As always, I am NOT a tax professional. I have a few things to say on organization and double-checking your records, but I cannot guaranteee anything which may be interpreted as tax advice.

Content © Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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4 Financial Fiascos that Freelancers Should Avoid — Guest Post

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:00:49 +0000

The following is a guest post, but it’s on a subject that I’m familiar with–financial challenges faced by freelancers who are running a one-stop-shop. When it’s your job to be accounting, management, sales, and workforce, getting everything done becomes a challenge. Being overwhelmed in any one area throws the others off balance.

When living on a freelance income, it becomes especially important to use your money wisely. However, sometimes you can fall into some bad habits that can put your business and income at risk. It’s important to understand common financial challenges a freelancer faces and implement solutions that will cover your bottom line.

Freelance Feast and Famine

Problem: You only look for work when you’re between projects. Your freelance business goes through a vicious cycle of: no work, heavy advertising, too much work so you kill the advertising and then once a few projects are off the plate, suddenly there’s no work again. Then the crazy cycle starts up all over again.

Solution: Devote at least 10% of your week to looking for new clients. Schedule projects so that when one ends another one fills its place. If you’re overloaded, try setting up a client waiting list.

Expanding on Credit

Problem: Your freelance business is growing. You need to invest in better reporting software, new business cards, website redesign and a host of other improvements that will elevate your business to the next level. You don’t have the money now, so you put it on your credit card. Then when the credit card bill comes, your clients are late on their invoices and you can’t pay the bill.

Solution: Avoid the debt trap. Never buy anything unless you have the money in your business to cover it. Freelance income isn’t always reliable, and you should never spend money that isn’t there. If you have an unexpected expense that has to be covered, make sure to pay off the credit card bill as soon as you can to avoid leaving a balance.

Payment Procrastination

Problem: You’re so busy doing your client’s work, you don’t have time to send invoices, and collect on your debts. A month or so goes by and when you finally get a chance to send the invoice, the client sits on it or worse, doesn’t pay it.

Solution: Make sure to set a regular billing schedule. Set terms on your invoices, letting your clients know how much time they have to turn around invoices. If your client is consistently pays late or is difficult with your invoices, consider firing your client and finding one that doesn’t mind paying on time.

Self-Employment Castaxtrophe

Problem: Something always seems to come up and you’re spending the money you should have put aside for taxes. Then when it’s time to pay your taxes, you’re scrambling to get your estimated tax payment.

Solution: Make your estimated tax payments using Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS). If it is easier to pay your estimated taxes weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc. you can, as long as you have paid enough in by the end of the quarter. Using EFTPS, you can access a history of your payments, so you know how much and when you made your estimated tax payments.

The financial side of your business is every bit as important as the rest. But when you’re passionate about the work you’re doing, it’s hard to plan for the parts you dislike. Many financial fiascos can be avoided if you implement some basic financial planning practices into your business. Make sure to schedule time to do the paperwork, be proactive about scheduling projects, and put money aside for lean months and future expansion.

This was a guest post from Kathryn Katz, a Certified Personal Finance Counselor who works for Consolidated Credit Counseling Services in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Their non-profit credit counseling agency helps families through financial crisis.

Content © Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Organizing your Small Business Finances – Guest Post

Guest Poster — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:00:20 +0000

Hi, this is Mr Credit Card from www.askmrcreditcard.com. Today, I am going to write a post about organizing your business finance for Mrs Micah. Please feel free to drop by my site and if you are looking a credit card, then please check out my best credit card deals page.

I decided to write about the topic of organizing your business finances simply because I noticed Mrs Micah is also doing freelance blog consulting and design work. I myself run my website and I’d thought I’d share some things that I have learned about this. I will highlight in this post some very basic steps you have to do when you have your own business and some tips about going about doing it.

Set up a separate business checking and savings account – This step is obviously very elementary, but which bank you set up with and what sort of services you look for is very important. Many bloggers have stated the benefits of online savings banks or online “high yield savings accounts”. I personally prefer a branch near my place because very often, you might receive checks from your vendors and having the convenience being able to walk to a branch manager.

Make sure you scrutinize things like overdraft fees, minimum balances, check writing fees etc. Ask if your bank has got automatic sweep feature between a savings and a banking account? As most of you would know, checking accounts generally do not pay interest but savings do. Many banks are able to offer low fees to business owners but they not move excess money from checking to savings account automatically so there is quite a bit of opportunity cost there. Some brokerage houses have such automatic sweep features which you should try to explore. You might also want to check out how Mrs Micah optimizes her bank account.

Set Up Quicken or QuickBooks – When you have your own business, keeping track of finances are so important. While folks procrastinate in their personal finance, I would suggest not delay in setting up a proper financial system in place. For most simple business, Quicken should do. I won’t be giving a Quicken tutorial here, but here are some tips when you are setting it up.

The most important thing is to categorize your expense properly. What do I mean by properly? While Quicken allows you to categorize expenses in whatever way you want, I found that for tax preparation purposes, the best way to categorize your expenses is to simply to follow the categories in the IRS schedule C (Form 1040) that you will have to fill out if you have a business. Here is their list of “expenses” –

Advertising
Car and Truck Expense
Commission and Fees
Contract Labor
Depreciation
Employee Benefits
Insurance (other than health)
Interest: includes mortgage
Legal and professional services
Office Expense
Pension and Profit Sharing
Rent or Lease
Repairs and Maintenance
Supplies
Taxes and Licenses
Travel, Meals and Entertainment
Utilities
Wages
Other Expenses

If you categorize your expenses according to schedule C, then come tax time, it is easier to just export the data to Turbotax. Or if you gave your file to your CPA, it would be a breeze and you will save money on the fees he or she would have billed you for the extra hours to sort through all the mess.

Operating Agreements and Insurance – If you are in a partnership, then make sure an operating agreement is in place. Make sure you have a buy-sell agreement in place if one partner wants out. If your business already has positive cash flow, then find out if purchasing buy-sell insurance makes sense for your partnership. If you have a partner who is the key rain maker and salesperson, consider taking out a key-person insurance which can protect your business and give it time to find a suitable replacement in case anything happens to that person.

Retirement Plans – Most of us are familiar with IRAs, Roth IRAs or 401ks. Many folks who start their business continue to contribute to their IRAs. But rather than just take it for granted that this is the way to go, a business owner has to explore all opportunities. For example, a sole proprietor can consider an individual 401k which allows higher contribution limits than the traditional IRA. There are other plans like SIMPLE, SEP for example, which you have to explore.

Get a separate business credit card – Like everything else, you want to separate your business finance from your personal finance and you want to have a separate small business credit card. If you are not in a position to get a separate business credit card, then you can use a personal card, but make sure you use one just for business.

I prefer a business credit card because issuers tend to have features like monthly statement summaries for their business credit cards and not for their consumer cards. You also tend to get extra rewards for “business type expense” spending on the card. Here are a couple of other tips I have in this area. Firstly, get a rewards card. Your priority in your business on the expense front is to cut cost. Get a cash back business credit card that can earn you cash rebates. Or if you fly a lot for your business,then a rewards card may be a better choice.

Diversify your sources of funding – If your business needs working capital, then make sure you diversify your sources of working capital. For example, do not just rely on your business credit card. I have received many letters from readers complaining that their credit cards have slashed their business card lines by 50% and they cannot operate their business! Do not let this happen to you.

Make sure you have a business line of credit from your bank or a secured loan from your credit union. That does not mean you cannot use your credit cards as a means of financing. For example, you can make use of a 0% APR business credit cards to get a computer and manage your cash flow more efficiently. But do not rely solely on it.

Get a History with the Business Credit Bureaus – To be able to get loans, lenders will look at a business’s credit history. To establish one, you have to make sure that business credit bureaus like Dun and Bradstreet and Experian are aware that you exist. You can register your business with them to get a start. This is important for business that need working capital and need working capital loans. For service based folks like what Mrs Micah is doing, perhaps that is not so important. But those that sell physical goods will probably need to establish a good business credit history to get financing outside of vendor financing.

Have an emergency fund – Sounds like a boring pf advice, but this applies to businesses too. If you rely only on credit and have no back up plan, then events like the recent (and still on-going) credit crunch and shut your business overnight. Bill Gates (in the early Microsoft days) figured he wanted Microsoft to have 2 years of emergency funds! Smart thinking.

Conclusion – There are probably more things we could talk about in regards to business finances. Hopefully, you have found these helpful. And just in case you want to know (and for full disclosure), I use the American Express Plum Card for my business.

Content © Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Balancing college life with starting a new business – Guest Post

Mrs. Micah — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:00:30 +0000

This is a guest post from MD of Studenomics. A personal finance blog aimed that 20somethings that deals with entrepreneurship and debt reduction. For more quality articles please consider subscribing to the feed.

As many of you college students read this, odds are that you are either taking a break from your studies or having a lazy day. We all need our breaks and we all need our lazy afternoons. However, how much relaxing can we really do in college? I personally believe that college is the ideal time to start a side business.

But there’s one big question – How do you deal with the stress of exams and running side business?

Start small with your side business

If you plan on opening a tanning salon or buying a franchise then maybe you should hold off until after your college graduation. I decided to start running a blog because I enjoy writing about money and because frankly the overhead charges were minimal. I know friends that offer tutoring services, sell shirts, play at weddings, wholesale textbooks, etc. The bottom line is that I recommend starting small so that there is less stress and less capital involved.

Cut something out

I personally won’t stop watching The Office on Thursday nights or Ultimate Fighter on Wednesday nights. Other than that I’m willing to cut out all television from my life. The trick is that you need to cut out time consuming activities from your life if you want to have enough time to start a side business. I know there are certain things that we can’t give up but there are also many, many facets that we could all quit today and not miss out on anything.

Do something you enjoy

I do NOT like the feel-good quotes of how following your passions will make you lots of money. I do agree that you need to enjoy what you are doing or else you will procrastinate and the quality of your work will suffer. I know that there is good money to be made in many construction fields.

Great, but I don’t want to be outside in the cold and I love talking about money. This is why running a personal finance blog is the best fit for me. I may not make much money at all but it’s the love of the topic that helps me write an article when I know I should be studying for an exam or completing an assignment.

You need the personality to start a side business

You do not have to be a genius. You do not need a brilliant idea. You do not have to work 18 hour days. You DO need a high level of ambition. You definitely need to have an entrepreneurial drive. If you are content with working a steady job for a steady paycheck then that’s cool. If you are more risk adverse and don’t want to rely on someone for a living then now is the time you should get the wheels in motion for a side business.

I have friends tell me all of the time that they are sick of their job and want to quit so that they can from for themselves. First of all, you don’t quit a job just because you hate working. You quit because you want to work harder on other endeavors. Second of all, you must comprehend that all of the responsibility is on YOU. There is blaming Steve in Accounting or Johnny from Storage. The blame is shifted on you.

If you don’t want to deal with all of this new found responsibility then a side business may not be the ideal income generating solution for you.

Content © Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Holiday Budgeting on a Freelance Income – Guest Post

Mrs. Micah — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:00:21 +0000

Holiday budgeting can be challenging for any household. When one or two of your incomes are dependent on freelance, it gets even harder. Most frugal freelancers pay for their monthly expenses using funds generated from the month before, and they have an emergency savings account to cover any gaps that can occur from month to month.

When you add the cost of holiday gift giving, hosting a holiday party and getting a few more holiday decorations, it can be a tremendous strain on your finances. This year is especially rough, and money is tight for everyone. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), two-thirds of American families are going to be adjusting their holiday shopping plans.

Before you go to the mall and start spending, here are some things to consider, when coming up with your holiday budget:

To Gift or Not to Gift

It takes a lot of time to network, cultivate relationships and gain long-term, valuable clients. Most businesses participate in the holiday season by sending appreciation gifts to their client list to keep themselves Top of Mind and ensure that in the New Year, business will continue to come their way. It doesn’t hurt to make sure your clients know that you appreciate them, but it will be another holiday expense that takes away from your household budget.

If you have any talent with HTML and Photoshop, you can make a personalized holiday greeting, saving on cards and postage. You still let your clients know that you’re thinking of them without breaking your budget. If that’s not your talent, AmericanGreetings.com and other e-Card services could be useful.

Also, if you have to choose between a cheap promo gift, and not giving anything at all, my advice to you is to avoid the gift. A bad gift can stick in a client’s mind, coloring your future relations with them.

Don’t Count Your Dollars, Before They Come In

Even the best paying clients can lapse during the holiday season. Holiday pressures for business owners to provide bonuses and host holiday parties can divert cash flow and cause your otherwise prompt payers to sit on your invoice for thirty days. You should never count on that “check in the mail” until it arrives.

If it’s an existing client, look back at last year’s payment schedule. It should give you a pretty good idea of how they’re going to handle your invoices this year. If it’s a new client, don’t count on anything until the money clears in your checking account.

Avoid Robbing Peter to Buy Paul a Gift

It might be tempting to dig into your emergency savings account or divert some household budget to cover your gift giving, but it’s really a bad idea. A freelancer’s income is always fluctuating and you can’t count on anything in this economy. If you dig into your savings account, and a real emergency happens, such as your car breaking down or a power surge frying the computer you do your freelance work on, you might not have the money to get you through that financial crisis.

Put Down the Credit Card

With the recent passing of the Credit CARD Act of 2009, many creditors have cut credit limits, increased interest rates and added or raised fees. The cost of maintaining a credit card balance has gone up for many consumers and if you’re a freelancer that’s on a tight budget, you might find that the cost is too great. Think about it. If you charge your holiday expenses on the credit card, and after the New Year go through a period of little to no work, you could find yourself in quite a bind. Charging your holiday gifts without a guarantee that you can pay it back in a timely manner can lead to a future financial disaster.

If you’re a freelancer that’s not on a budget, it’s never too late to start. Mrs. Mica created a great series last February on “Where’s My Money Going?” which challenged readers to track spending and use that report to make a better budget. Take care of your finances so it doesn’t interfere with your enjoyment of the holiday season.

About the Author:
Kathryn Katz is a single mom, internet marketer and professional copywriter. Kathryn is a Certified Personal Finance Counselor and works for Consolidated Credit Counseling Services. This non-profit credit counseling agency offers a variety of educational booklets, including a Holiday Survival Guide.

Content © Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Multiple Income Streams: Why I Started 5 Companies (and maybe you should too) – Guest Post

Mrs. Micah — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:00:42 +0000

This is a guest post by Joel, who shares his thoughts on the importance of multiple income streams and how to develop them.

Quick! How many streams of income do you have? If your main source of income was to dry up over night then what would you fall back on? If your answer to the first question was “One” and your answer to the second question was “Umm…” then this will be an important post for you to read whether you are self employed as a freelancer or firmly entrenched in corporate America.

My goal is to show you why creating multiple income streams is a smart risk management tool as well as share a few ideas for starting businesses that can provide those multiple income streams, and of course hopefully provide a useful how to guide so that you can have some concrete information to help you decide the best way for you to start creating some of your own multiple streams of income.

Safety in Diversity

Just as many financial planners and portfolio asset managers preach the benefits of a diversified investment portfolio I would like to take that concept a step further and apply it to not just passive income from an investment portfolio but also to your active income/earned income from your job or business.

The reason that many planners are so hyped up about creating a diversified investment portfolio is because diversifying is a great tool for managing risk. Diversifying allows one to “spread out the the risk” across the overall “bucket” of investments so that if any one individual investment goes horribly wrong then the overall negative impact on the group of investments as a whole is minimized.

Many things go into creating a diversified portfolio but the one thing that you have likely heard mentioned is the correlation of each of the individual investments within the group of investments. For the sake of this discussion all that you really need to have a firm grasp on is that correlation measures the relationship between the different investments – more specifically the degree to which certain investments can be expected to perform in a similar fashion or not.

All of that to say that diversifying income streams (like investments) should be done in a way so that correlation between the different income streams is taken into account (i.e. If something happened to very negatively affect my Income Stream #1 would it also affect my Income Stream #2 in a negative fashion?)

Let’s take a look at some practical examples both from some of my personal experiences and then most importantly from the owner of this blog. Granted, I do not know Mrs. Micah personally but as you can tell by reading her about page – Mrs Micah is well on her way to having this multiple income streams concept down to a science.

This blog is one of the best places I could publish a post on this topic because if you will notice in the about page that Mrs Micah at the age of 24 already has 4 sources of income (that I can count) that include working as a library paraprofessional, writer, blog consultant, and quilter/crafter (not including source #5 which is marrying someone with a job! Incidentally, a very real strategy for some but we won’t go there )

The very first business that I started years ago was an independent agency selling Florida health insurance. I loved running the agency (and still do along with the much needed expertise of my business partner and head sales manager Mark – yes, I am the financial/computer nerd of the operation and he is the expert sales leader of the operation if you haven’t guessed ) but as with any business undertaking it is smart to think of not just the present but the future and to try to capitalize on different trends in the market as well as prepare for any potential risks.

One risk to any health insurance provider or agency is the risk that future government intervention will negatively affect the individual health insurance business model. What this meant for me is that even though I had one income stream that was developed nicely (the health insurance agency) there was still work to be done in preparing for any potential decrease in that income stream. The first step that I took to make a second income stream for the agency that was not subject to the same governmental risk as the first income stream was to have all agents able to make money selling Florida life insurance.

This second income stream provides a way for any agent in the agency to continue to make a substantial income working to help clients with their insurance needs even in a “government takeover” of health insurance worst case scenario. This second income stream could best be characterized as an intra-company alternative income stream but as the title of this post implies I also took additional steps to form other companies that produce additional income streams.

Starting Multiple Businesses

Certainly one could start just one company and implement many of the “intra-company” alternative income streams and adequately hedge against most risks while starting a wildly successful company but if you are like me (and many entrepreneurs are since according to the Kaufman Foundation the average entrepreneur starts more than one company) then you likely love the thrill of starting new projects and new business ventures. While many serial entrepreneurs start multiple companies because they love entrepreneurship (as do I) it should also be thought of as a smart business strategy.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What is your primary source of income?
How dependable is that source of income?
What risks are there that the income will disappear or be substantially reduced in the future?
What can you do to minimize those risks?
What is your fall back source of income if your primary source of income dries up?
Are your alternate sources of income subject to the same risks as your primary source of income?
What additional sources of income can you develop now that will act as a hedge against losing your current sources of income?

If you find yourself starting to feel a little overwhelmed and thinking to yourself “What is he thinking?? I have enough things to do with my current company without trying to start another company!” just keep in mind that one of the beauties of the Internet is that small businesses can be formed, websites can be built, and new streams of income can be developed in months and even days rather than years.

Certainly hard work and discipline will be required but I would challenge you to figure out where your area of expertise and/or passion is and see how you can put that to work providing you with an additional income stream. If you love crochet then build a website about crochet where you can publish new crochet designs and interact with other crochet fans. If you work as a Human Resources Manager then build a website that is packed full of great tips and inside knowledge from the HR field.

For me, I love anything related to the web, entrepreneurship, and finance. I am a CFP® and a self professed Internet nerd so it was only natural that I would take my love for those things and create a website for comparing credit cards, a website with tools for finding domain names, and a new site I just started working on – a site for comparing car insurance online – with the ease of setting up a mini online business the Internet can be a great avenue to begin to add some alternative income streams to your “portfolio” of earning potential.

My challenge to you is to ask yourself the above questions and then see what you can do to gauge the risks associated with your primary income stream, think of ways to minimize that risk, and then think of additional sources of income that are negatively correlated with your primary source of income and then find yourself in the enviable position of not having to be ultra dependent upon just one source of income. What do you think? What are your tips for developing multiple sources of income?

Content © Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Save on Christmas Spending with Swagbucks

Mrs. Micah — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:00:12 +0000

As I mentioned last month, I’ve been using Swagbucks to earn a little extra spending money. Unlike similar groups such as MyPoints or Cash Crate, Swagbucks doesn’t use surveys. Instead, the primary way to earn points (Swagbucks) is through searching.

My previous article covered my thoughts on the search engine and other ways to earn money through Swagbucks, such as direct referrals and points for purchases.

Though I’m using it for fun money, I’ve been thinking about other applications. In particular, Swagbucks can be used to cut the cost of Christmas spending. There are three ways you can use Swagbucks to save money on Christmas and another way that your spending on presents can save you on later presents.

1. Buy Christmas Presents Straight from the Swagbucks Store

Swagbucks has a store or “prizes” section, where you redeem the Swagbucks you’ve earned for items, cash, or gift cards. By earning Swagbucks, you can buy these Christmas presents for free.

To give you an idea of what sorts of things are available directly through Swagbucks, here are some items currently in the SwagStore (10/16/09):

The Office, Season 5 episode (single) – 60 SB
HD Digital Camcorder – 2440 SB
Time Subscribtion (28 issues) – 185 SB
Obsession by Calvin Klein cologne gift set – 790 SB

The selection changes periodically. It’s not always going to be things that people on your gift list will want. At the same time, there are things like the Office Season 5, Fringe Season 1, which people are probably going to be wanting this Christmas.

Since we’re already into October, you may not have time to save up for larger items (depends on how you plan to use Swagbucks) until next Christmas or perhaps for other events during the coming year.

2. Redeem Swagbucks for Christmas Gift Cards

If Swagbucks could only be redeemed for items, it might be harder to find the gifts you want. However, you can redeem Swagbucks for gift cards to various places including Amazon.com, which sells far more than books. These gift cards can be used to purchase presents or can be the presents themselves.

An important thing to know about Swagbuck’s gift card program is that most of the gift cards are electronic and many come in small units (so you can cash out more easily). This means that if you want to give someone $25 in gift cards, you have to give 5 separate cards.

Also, unlike electronic gift cards purchased from some locations, gift cards from Swagbucks have a short waiting period so that the orders can be done in bulk. For example, Amazon.com electronic gift cards codes are posted on the 16th and 30th of every month. Amazon.ca posts on the 1st and 16th of every month. This is good to know for planning.

3. Redeem Swagbucks for Christmas Cash

You can also redeem Swagbucks for plain old cash, which works as a gift or can be used to buy gifts. It’s more economical to redeem them for Amazon gift cards right now (45 SB to $5 on Amazon vs. 70SB to $5 cash), but sometimes cash is the best answer.

4. Shop Swagbucks Partners for Presents and Earn Points

In a reversal, you can also earn Swagbucks for some of your Christmas shopping. This is not unlike getting cashback on purchases, only (like most rewards credit cards) it’s in the form of points you can redeem for something else.

Swagbucks has a number of retail partners (you can check it out at their site even before signing up). If you buy from them through Swagbucks (instead of just going to the retailer’s site or store), then you earn Swagbucks in return, generally 1 SB for every $5 spent.

These Swagbucks earned through Christmas shopping can then be used in turn for presents in any of the three ways listed above.

Little Ways to Save Money for the Holidays

There are a lot of little things you can do to save or earn money for the holidays. Starting in October, you won’t have time to pay for an entire Christmas with Swagbucks, but every bit helps.

(It’d be interesting to see if someone could start saving Swagbucks in January and pay for a whole Christmas with Swagbucks. It shouldn’t be too hard if you’re buying one present each for around 10 people and keeping it to approximately a $20 value…harder if you’re going for something bigger, but you could use it to get one big present for one special someone too. Anyone feel like taking up that challenge?)

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5 Steps to Optimize Your Freelance Job Search

Mrs. Micah — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:00:43 +0000

Many people who do freelance work don’t do it full-time, or don’t jump into it headfirst. It can be a struggle to freelance when you’re already working a job. The least-fun part of it is the search, often squeezed into small blocks of time. But here are 5 steps to optimizing your freelance job/gig search.

1. Stake Your Hunting Ground.

Every good hunter knows where the best hunting ground is. Do you do well on Craigslist? Forums? eLance? If you’re not sure, take a look at what these different places are offering. Ask whether you’d be able to do it, whether you’d be willing to work for the prices and whether you’d get along with the types of people who are offering the work. This step may also mean asking other freelancers in your field where they find jobs and using Google to find postings sites (or lists of such sites).

This part can be done in one big block or in little blocks as you discover new places to look.

2. Set Your Traps.

Use whatever means are available to make sure you don’t lose track of these sites. If you use multiple computers, consider bookmarking on delicious. Or bookmark in a folder on your browser. Or subscribe to postings feeds (create a folder in your reader so that these don’t mix with pleasure or other reading).

Maintain these traps—delete the ones that are never working and add new ones as you find them. Otherwise you end up overwhelmed in postings you don’t want or missing out on ones you do.

3. Visit Your Traps.

This can be done in a few minutes here or there. Got 5 minutes, 10 minutes? Do a quick scan of your bookmarks of job posting feeds and see what catches your eye.

4. Gather.

Find the best way of storing potential jobs for use in applying when you have time. Evernote? Google Docs? Notepad? Wordpad? I suggest avoiding larger programs which take forever to open–like Microsoft Office and Open Office.

Be sure to put in a link to the posting!!

If you can be disciplined about it, consider making a tentative job bookmarks folder. But only do this if you’re going to delete the expired ones.

5. Apply!

Some of your postings may expire before you have time to apply for them. Don’t despair, delete and move on. Applying normally takes longer blocks of time, but if you prepare some response templates ahead of time, then you can use larger blocks of free time to apply for the jobs you’ve rounded up.

Happy hunting!

(No cute woodland creatures were harmed in the making of this post.)

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Swagbucks – How to Earn Extra Money Searching and Shopping

Mrs. Micah — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:31:49 +0000

After seeing a number of other bloggers talking about it, I recently decided to see what all the Swagbucks fuss was about. I wasn’t really sure what a Swagbuck was, but it seemed to be an option to earn a little on the side without doing surveys or making much of a change to your routine. That sounded interesting enough for me to give it a go.

What are Swagbucks?

Swagbucks are points. One swagbuck isn’t equal to one dollar. Swagbucks can be redeemed for all kinds of things through the Swagbucks store. Swagbucks have different values based on what you redeem them for.

At the time I’m writing this, you can get Season 5 of The Office for 60 Swagbucks, you can get a $5 Amazon.com or Amazon.ca giftcard for 45 Swagbucks, you can get $5 cash via Paypal for 70 Swagbucks, you can get an 8GB iPod Touch for 3000 Swagbucks. The price is based on the item’s value to Swagbucks, not its regular market value.

How can you earn Swagbucks?

1. Swagbucks Search. The primary way of earning swagbucks for yourself is to use the Swagbucks search engine. When you search, you win periodic Swagbucks in various denominations. I used the search for two weeks before writing this and it’s not something I can predict but you do win them.

To make searching with Swagbucks easier, you can add Swagbucks search to your browser’s search options. They support Firefox, IE7, Safari, Opera, & Chrome (though for some you have to follow short instructions vs. just installing a plugin, in Firefox it’s instant). There’s also a Firefox toolbar for the more committed.

2. Swagbucks Referrals. You can also refer others to Swagbucks and earn matching search points for up to 100 points per person. I was a bit worried at first that this was some sort of pyramid, but it’s a simple one-level referral with a cap on matching points.

You don’t get points if people who sign up through you sign up more people. Points are only matched for searches, not for shopping, swagcode, or referrals.

3. Swagbucks Shopping. You can also earn one Swagbuck for ever $5 spent through the Shop & Earn section (different from the Swagbuck redemption shopping area). Swagbucks also shows deals that certain stores are offering. I’ll share more thoughts on this below.

4. Swagcode. As you spend time on the Swagcode site, blog, etc, you may get pieces of Swagcode, similar to the Swagbucks that show up when you use their search. These can be redeemed for Swagbucks, but cannot be shared.

Another way to earn swagbucks is trading in old video games or cell phones through the go green program. I haven’t looked into this since I have neither old video games nor old cell phones.

Which methods of earning Swagbucks are worthwhile?

So, are any of these worthwhile? I’ll offer my thoughts on them in the same order.

1. Swagbucks search is pretty good for general searches. It’s powered by Google and Ask and it’s like a younger sibling to them both. I’ve been using it the last two weeks to search for things which don’t require too much specificity. That’s maybe 95% of searches, though I haven’t remembered to use it for all 95%. Like Google, there are sponsored search results–which they mix in, but label.

If you sign up, I recommend using it for most general searches where you just want a piece of information, or finding the url of a company website (e.g. “Comics Curmedgeon” which you can’t remember is at joshreads.com), or for the old Google spellchecker, or as a way of locating the Wikipedia article without searching at Wikipedia (which I normally find more annoying). If you think you’re going to have to sift through pages and pages of search results looking for the one result you need because it’s so rare, then use Google.

2. Swagbucks referral has potential. I wouldn’t (and didn’t) sign up expecting to make all your money via referrals. Referrals depend on whether other people sign up and whether they actually use the search option. If you’re lucky, you may have referees who find it fun and earn you the full hundred matching points. If the people you refer don’t search, then you’re out of luck.

3. Swagbucks shopping, hmm. I haven’t made up my mind on this one. My advice is to comparison shop and ignore the Swagbucks you’d earn when making the decision where to buy. Since Swagbucks can’t be quantified because they’re worth different amounts depending on how you redeem them, it’s hard to include them in your comparison unless you only redeem for one thing.

4. Swagcode I wouldn’t go out of my way for. If it’s worth your time to visit the site, read the blog, stay up to date on new ways to earn and look for things you can spend your Swagbucks on, go for it. But unless you’re already planning on it, I wouldn’t spend time lurking on the site in hopes of Swagcode. I see if as a fun little perk.

You can also get swagcodes by following them on Twitter and Facebook, which may be more your thing.

My Take on Swagbucks

So, will I continue to use Swagbucks? What will I spend them on?

I’m not going to pursue Swagbucks as some big moneymaking scheme. However, I’m going to keep using the search engine for all those easy searches because–why not? It returns the results I need and I can add up the Swagbucks little by little. When I buy items online, I’ll try to run a quick price comparison and see if it’s worth earning a few Swagbucks on the way.

The Swagbuck redeeming store doesn’t have too much at the cheaper level that I’m interested in, but I can redeem them for Amazon gift cards…which I can redeem for books. And I do love books.

I appreciate that you can redeem Swagbucks without amassing a thousand points first. If I have enough, I can also save up some for buying Christmas presents on Amazon and elsewhere. We’ll see.

If you’d like to try Swagbucks yourself, you can sign up here.

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