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admin | May 18, 2012

3 Ways to Save on Your Business Taxes

If you run your own business then you likely know how frustrating, confusing and downright frightening tax time can be. Before it comes time to file those dreaded tax returns, keep these tips in mind to help you to save a bit on your taxes.

1.) Get copies of previous returns. If your tax situation has not changed much then you can use your last year’s return to help you know what paperwork you need to collect. If your circumstances have changed, then be sure that you make a note of those changes.

2.) Review calendars, appointment books and to-do lists from the year. There is a good chance that you have missed a business trip, lunch meeting or other tax deductible tidbit. Keep track of those meetings throughout the year. Any classes or conferences that you attend, business associates or clients that you entertain and stock purchases that you make can all be used to lower the tax you owe. If you mark these things down in a calendar or other notable place, you can review them before tax time to ensure that you have not left out a deduction.

3.) Keep your bank statements and credit card statements in an easy to find place. Gather them together and look through the transactions for deductions that you may have missed. Try to keep all of your tax related papers together throughout the year so that you can get your hands on them quickly at tax time. You want to be sure that your accountant has all needed information at once so that you can get your taxes filed and over with quickly. Getting this information to your accountant before he needs it will ensure that you have lower fees overall which is another great way to save money at tax time.

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This article was written by Nixon Williams Accountants at http://www.nixonwilliams.com/, the UKs leading accounting practice serving freelance contractors, interim managers and consultants. Click here to learn more by visiting our website.

5 tips on how to write good and consistent blog posts

All right, this isn’t necessarily a Making Money blog post, but the by-product will help you write some great Making Money 2 Blog posts!

It’s one thing to write a quality post every once in a while, but to do one weekly or even in rarer cases a few times a week – it takes great skill! That brings me to write this post to help everyone even myself out when it comes to this topic.

1.) Know your basics
Remember the days of grade school and your English teacher constantly reminded you of organization, grammar skills, and how to persuade your audience. When it comes to things such as writing blog posts and articles, this automatically comes to mind. It’s not a want, it’s a NEED! Typically, if the first 5 seconds do not captivate your audience, it’s pretty much a point and click kind of bye bye system! You need to have correct spelling, and really know what you are talking about. It’s hard to convince your audience when your post is marred with errors. I’m not saying you have to be absolutely perfect, but be coherent in your posts to get your point across.

Writing Blog Posts

2.) Research!

I know one of the primary things for my Major (Poli Sci/Business Admin) back in College was doing research. Things are constantly changing especially now in a technological society where new technology is coming out every year or two. You have to find out what things are really popping (popular) these days, and find that healthy balance between what you want to talk about and what they want to know! You have to be two steps ahead of the game or at the least adapt to change! Blog posts these days are not distributed or done the same as they were 2,3, or 5 years ago. You have to be more mobile with your posts in a society that focuses on Smartphone usage. Keep up with technology!

Research

3.) Learn from others
Don’t just reiterate what others do, and simply copy and paste. If there’s an opinion on a strong subject, take a side that’s not mentioned and make a new blog post. When you learn from other people that have a much wider view and have been in the blogging game for some time, you can learn a lot. You can learn about what made them successful, the types of bumps on the road they had to endure. The wisest thing is to learn from their mistakes so you don’t make those same ones. This helps you become a stronger writer, and will get you to where you need to be a bit faster!

Learn from Others

4.) Stay Motivated
This is one of the hardest things to do especially when it comes to writing. Inspiration comes from everywhere, but you should really inspire yourself! You don’t have to write a blog post every single day. However, trying to keep to a schedule of writing weekly or even bi-weekly is something that you can work towards to make you sharper! Google loves fresh and unique content. The better you are at producing this content, the better your site will do! Sometimes, it takes a bit longer to really get the results and the type of blog posts you want, but you have to really keep motivated and stay on your grind!

Stay Motivated

5.) Be yourself
This is pure common sense, but some people STILL don’t get it! When you put yourself in the posts, you become human. You start thinking of looking outside in; the perspective of the reader! It’s easy to take on a character or copy and paste a post such as Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, or a Liza Irby. However, to truly be yourself, and give your own advice from the experiences you’ve been through – it takes a lot more. It’s much more rewarding!

Be Yourself

I think in the most raw form, Ice T said it best “Dumb people learn from experience. Smart people learn from other’s experiences.” I think that can be applied to most aspects of life. The content below is a bit vulgar, but there is a raw validity that I think you might be interested to learn! Thanks for reading this post!

5 Tips to get on your Social Media game!

Nowadays, I have to say that if you don’t have any kind of social media presence, you are really backtracking to ancient times. Cue the dinosaur! All right, joke over! Seriously, Social Media is becoming 20% of the most sought after, searched and used mediums online. That’s really significant especially when it comes to mobile computing. A great percentage of those on the phone are usually on their Twitter, Facebook, etc because it’s easier to update on the go! Here I’ll have a few tips so you don’t get lost in the sauce when you build your Social Media game up! Let’s level up, shall we?!

YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube! On one of my business sites, I gave a pretty good entry into why I foresee the future of YouTube being the king. One thing, YouTube is acting more and more like a social media system. The ability to share your content on a number of platforms, the easy mobile accessibility, and the way you can now create dialogue, comment, and make reply videos makes it a very valuable tool! You need this asap!!! If you don’t at least have a YouTube account, please go out and get one. Being making your videos and you’ll find that you’ll at least have some good video content. Another incentive is Adsense on YouTube. While it might be hard to get Google Adsense on your own site, good videos on YouTube will surely get you the Adsense quicker. It is much easier to become an Adsense partner on YouTube just for the simple fact people love watching and hearing content more than they like reading it!

Facebook! While I am not on there regularly, I still do see a lot of value in it. Remember when I talked about Edge Rank (Facebook’s SEO) a while ago? Well, it’s still pretty prevalent now. I posted up a recipe that I did a few weeks back for an event called Tigerfest. Now, I posted the picture on my site and within hours I got over 26 likes and some re-shares. Now, what I’m trying to tell you is Facebook sees your likes and puts it as a priority share on other people’s news feed. You know how Twitter has a trending topic or you get retweets and it becomes a real focal point! It’s much like that! This is POWERFUL! Not only does your post have the opportunity to be shared, but it becomes a focal point! Use this as power! Get people to like your posts, like your post yourself if you have to just to draw a bit of attention! Also, if you really want to do it, build your fan base, build a Facebook fan page so the dialogue is there!

This brings me to Twitter! Learn how to use Twitter as a good gauge to see your competition and know your target audience. One of the main reasons why I love using Twitter is the fact that I can truly network DIRECTLY with people I would not do otherwise. I often share quality information, retweet, and respond back. This helps me to build RELATIONSHIPS! You need this! I’ve made some quality connections, and some money just from being active with certain followers. You’ll find tons of business people, entrepreneurs that have good information! In fact, I probably would not have this blog up and running if it weren’t for people like Jawar, Lisa Irby, and other folks that really dig into this blogging/internet marketing thing. Another tip I learned is using hash tags. This is kind of like labeling your post, so people that look for specific can use #blog #site or whatever to find your post easier. It’s like keywords for SEO on your blog!

Tumblr! I think the power of Tumblr is still slept on. I have a few Tumblr sites that I get traffic from for mainly my Playstation and my Cocktail blog. If you are posting memorable quotes, inside jokes, great pictures, and even videos, this is the site for you! It’s really image based! And the way things are spread virally is exceptional. Some posts that I’ve made months ago still get likes and repins, so you can only imagine how powerful it is for long term traffic.

Pinterest!! Yes, I’ve made a few posts about this, and I will say it again and again. Get to this market while it’s still a bit new! I thought it was like Tumblr, but it is very different. Yes, you can share quotes, you can share videos, and pictures. However, the thing I love about this is the organization! You can make separate boards for your different likes! This means if you have a number of blogs, then separate them! Have your general interests for gaming go to your game blog, cocktail recipes to another blog, etc. Also, another thing is if you have a product or service that caters to females, THIS IS THE SITE FOR YOU! Exploit that on the quiet, but make sure you somehow NATURALLY promote your blog!!!

I’m sorry this post is a bit long, but I hope you gained some valuable information! Take care, and happy Monday!

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