With August kicking off our official relaunch of BizAmmo’s small business blog, I’d like to introduce you to the two writers who will be helping me run the show.

Dan Smith — You might remember Dan from his previous posts here. Well, he’s back! And from now on Dan will post here every Tuesday with how-to articles for small business owners.

Jessie Haynes — Jessie used to write for me at my freelance writing blog (as did Dan). She’s a specialist in productivity and organization issues, and she’ll be sharing tips along those lines for entrepreneurs on the first Thursday of every month.

I hope you enjoy their upcoming content and make them feel welcome!

While this blog was recently being updated again after a long break, I’ve been pretty hands-off. We had a half-finished design, and it had been months since I personally posted to BizAmmo. That’s all changing.

BizAmmo.com is being officially relaunched. As you can see the new design is almost finished (just some minor tweaks to make as I find problems or come up with new ideas). I’ll also be posting more regularly, with a particular emphasis on topics like marketing and PR, online business, social media, and green business ideas.

While for the most part BizAmmo has been tutorial and news-based, you’ll see much more opinion and personality shining through moving forward. This is how I write everywhere else — NakedPR.com, AllFreelanceWriting.com, and SocialImplications.com for example. And I’ll be injecting much more of myself into BizAmmo moving forward as well.

Another upcoming change will be a collection of short e-books and reports that we’ll be releasing through the blog. But more on that later….

In the meantime, please just bear with me as I finish up some site changes and get things going again with new post series.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re in the position where you’re in a full time job that you don’t particularly like, have been offering a service outside of this employment on a self-employed basis for a while now and are contemplating making the move to being full time self-employed.

If this is you, then you’ve also probably thought about ditching your employment more than once and jumping straight into your self-employed work full time.

Sound familiar?

Well, firstly, kudos for not doing this.  It takes a lot of mental and physical energy to run both a full time and self-employed role alongside each other and the fact that you haven’t just thrown the towel in with the job from your employer is a great sign that you’re in the right frame of mind to operate your self-employed business on a full time basis.

If you feel that now is the right time to make the move, then there are several points that you need to take into consideration before you do anything.

How financially secure are you?

It’s generally considered that before you make the move to being full time self-employed, you need to be earning the same amount of money from your full time employment – assuming that this amount is approximately what you need to live off – for 3 months.

It is also a good idea that once this has happened, you work for an additional 3 months simply putting your full time employment salary into a savings account, proving that you can survive off your self-employed income alone.

By doing this, it means that you have a full 12 weeks worth of savings set aside should the worse come to the worse and you’re self-employed work dries up completely.  Although unlikely to happen, it gives you enough time to look at what options you have available and make a move to ensure that you start receiving an income once again.

What is the scope for your business to grow?

One of the first things you’ll notice when you go self-employed on a full time basis is the amount of time you have spare.  If you were working a 40 hour week for an employer previously, as well as your own work, you’re going to effectively have 40 hours extra available to work.  Obviously the fact that you’re going full time self-employed is so that you can stop working 60 or 70 hour weeks, but even still, you’ll find yourself with a lot of spare time on your hands.

As this will be apparent, have you thought about what the scope is for your business to grow and expand?

At the moment, you might feel that you’re doing nothing but working and you can’t take any more clients on or serve any more customers, but when you drop the 40 hours worth of work from your employer, is there enough demand for your services that you can fill this gap, even partially?

How reliable is the work?

When you leave you’re full time job, you’re not only leaving behind your desk, computer, colleagues and the pains of commuting, but you’re also leaving behind the security of receiving a regular salary.

You’re own self-employed work might pay well, but if it’s not reliable or regular, then you really need to think about your options.  This doesn’t mean necessarily giving up the idea, but maybe looking at how you can diversify your work so your income is a little more reliable.

How popular are you?

No one is saying that business is a popularity contest, but by having your name out there and known in the right circles, you’ll find things a whole lot easier than if you’re taking the leap into full time self-employed work.

You don’t necessarily have to have an address book full of industry contacts that you call friends, but by making sure that you’ve got a website or blog and a social media presence, you can ensure that you’re doing the basics of keeping your name a talking point in your industry.

Think about the lack of employed perks

Whilst working for yourself full time does bring with it a whole host of benefits, there are some drawbacks when compared to working for an employer.

For example, when you’re working in a salaried role, it’s likely that you might have had medical and dental insurance, as well as having your car’s fuel costs covered for any work related mileage.  Depending on the company you worked for, you might have even had the car paid for.

Go full time self-employed, however and you can forget about all of these perks, which can be a costly addition to your regular outgoings that you haven’t been used to paying and whilst they aren’t necessities, they are all strongly advised to have in place.

What’s your backup plan?

Whatever you’re doing in business, planning is key to your success and moving from full time employment to being full-time self-employed is no difference.  Having advertising plans, financial plans and business development plans in place are all important, but don’t forget a backup plan.

What are you going to do if things all go wrong?  What if work dries up and your left with only the 3 months worth of savings?

If you don’t have a solid backup plan, it might be worth considering whether your current employer can work with your goal of becoming full time self-employed by reducing your employed hours over a period of time, for example, or even letting you take a hiatus for a few months to see how things go with your own owrk.

Making the move from working for an employer full time to working for yourself full time is possible and thousands upon thousands of people do it each and every year.  However, it’s not as straightforward as you first may think and these points should all be considered before you make any lasting decisions.

For any successful business, there will come a time when you think that you could do with an extra pair of hands.  It may be simply to help you keep the administration side of things in order or it could be to work directly alongside you, allowing you to effectively take on twice as many customers as before.

If you’re currently in this position and are considering taking on a member or staff, there are 7 points that you should think about before you start looking to expand.

1.  Do you actually need someone else?

So your workload is increasing and you’re finding it difficult to keep on top of all of the work that you’ve got coming in, without even thinking about incorporating some type of social life.  Having someone working with you to help you out seems like the perfect solution.

However, whilst it may seem like the ideal answer, there is one other perfectly feasible option – better time management.

Being able to manage your working time and priortise your workload is one of the key traits of any successful business owner and you might be surprised at how much free time you actually have – and how little you really need a helping hand – once you take a long, hard look at your work and the way that you carry everything out.

2.  Can you afford to take someone on?

If you have gone through the processes and realised that you really do need to take someone else on, then it’s important that you are fully aware of the costs involved as unfortunately, you don’t just pay for the person’s wage.

For example, you have to pay contributions towards the employee’s Social Security tax (12.4% of the gross salary), State and Federal Unemployment Taxes (up to 6.2% of the gross salary, but the exact amount can vary due to most employers being able to benefit from credits) and Medicare taxes (equivalent to 2.9% of the gross salary).

Using those 3 taxes alone, you are looking at over 20% more on top of the employee’s salary – and that’s before you take into consideration the additional insurances you need as a company, as well as increased utility bill expenses and any working materials and utensils that the employee will need.

3.  Do you have the space?

You may be able to run your business from your home office or a small rented office, but if you’re going to take someone on, you’re going to need, in theory, twice as much space as you’re currently using.

Of course, you won’t need two of everything – filing cabinets, fax machines or even kitchen equipment, for example – but even if it’s most basic form, you’re going to need the space for a desk and computer.

4.  Is it actually a member of staff you need?

Although it may be clear that you need help, you may be able to benefit more from working with a freelancer or an agency.

As mentioned above, when you’re taking on a member of staff, you have a whole host of different costs that you need factor into your budget, all of which are necessary to ensure that you are working within the law.  Take on a freelancer or an agency worker, however and many of these are not needed.

Costs such as insurance and initial costs to ensure that the welfare of the worker are still required, but you don’t need to think about Social Security taxes as the freelancer or agency will take care of these for you.

The negative side comes in the fact that freelancers and agency workers often charge higher rates than what you would pay a salaried member of staff, so it really is a decision of which is better for your individual circumstances.

5.  You really can’t discriminate

It may sound obvious, but if you’re deciding to take on a member of staff, you have to be so careful when recruiting to ensure that you do not do or say something that could be deemed discriminatory – the problem is, you might not even know you’re doing it.

It’s common knowledge (unless you’ve been stuck in a cave for the past 50 years) that you can’t discriminate on the basis of religion, ethnicity or sex.  But did you know that you can’t place an advert and ask for a mature member of staff or not hire someone because of their family responsibilities?

According to the United States Constitution, you cannot discriminate based on age for anyone over the age of 40 (younger in some state laws) and even if someone had a large family that they cared for regularly and you felt it would impact on the job, if they said that they could work, you would more than likely face legal proceedings if you did not take on the person based on those grounds alone.

6.  Are you planning on offering benefits?

We’ve already gone through the necessary additional costs that you have to pay by law if you’re taking on an employee, but have you taken into consideration any benefits that most would consider to be commonplace from an employer?

A pension, medical, dental and life insurance are all considered to be relatively standard benefits offered by an employer, with these 4 accounting for around a minimum of $3,000 a year alone.

You may decide that you don’t want to offer any benefits – and you have no legal obligation to – but keep in mind that the more benefits you offer, the greater the likelihood of your employee being satisfied within their role and therefore having a greater work output.

7.  Don’t forget the legalities

You’ve decided that you definitely need a full time member of staff and a freelancer won’t suit your needs.  You’ve got your budget setup and can afford all of the additional costs, as well as some benefits.  You’ve bought all of the necessary equipment, organised the office and are ready to advertise, interview and hopefully recruit.

Now what?

Once you get to this point, there are three things that you have to.

Firstly, you need to keep #5 in mind and don’t discriminate in any part of the job recruitment process.  There are some exceptions, but generally speaking, make sure that you don’t discriminate in any sense.

Secondly, you need to draw up a legal contract of employment.  Whether you write this yourself or have someone else do it for you, always make sure you have your lawyer look through it.  It may cost you an hour of their time, but it will be well worth it should they find a problem that could stop a potentially costly legal case.

Thirdly, don’t forget to speak to IRS.  There are several things that you need to do in relation to the IRS when deciding to become an employer, primarily applying for Federal Employer Identification Number, registering for the necessary taxes and completing the relevant form for the employee.  However, it is strongly advised to speak to your local IRS office as there are some differences between states.

Taking on a member of staff could be the best thing that you ever did and help you progress your business further than you could by yourself.  Make sure that you keep these 7 points in mind, always abide by the relevant laws and you should be able to find your perfect employee problem free.

The 2009-10 tax year finished on 5 April 2010 and if you’re particularly organized, you might have not only received your self assessment tax return in the post, but you could have completed the online variation and received the figure of the amount of tax due for the last financial year.

Now, if you’ve kept an eye on your earnings throughout the past 12 months, chances are the figure shown is not too much of a surprise.

If you’ve been a little slack, though, well, the amount of tax due can seem to knock the wind out of you.

Whether you were expecting the amount of tax due or not, if you haven’t got money to pay it, take a look at these 5 steps to know what to do next.

Don’t worry, but don’t ignore it

If you’re in the position where you can’t pay your tax and have already done a bit of research, chances are the first piece of information you came across was not to ignore the invoice.  As tempting as it can be to bury your head in the sand and hope it will all go away, don’t, as I can guarantee that as long as you’re alive (and sometimes even when you’re not), HMRC will keep hunting you down until they receive their money.

Start by checking the details you passed to HMRC to calculate the amount of tax owed.  If it seems like it’s a lot different to what you were expecting (even if you weren’t keeping tabs on your income penny for penny, you’re likely to have a rough idea), then check the figures you submitted, as you may have added an extra zero somewhere.

If it turns out that the amount of tax due is incorrect, then great – contact the HMRC and inform them of the mistake.  If it’s not correct, however, then most importantly don’t worry.

Pay before 31 January 2011

Whether you submit your tax return online today and receive the amount of tax due instantly or you send a paper version to HMRC before the 31 October 2010 deadline, you have until 31 January 2011 to pay any tax due.

Giving you 10 months to save up the necessary money to pay your tax, understanding this simple step actually resolves a lot of people’s worries.

Pay within 6 months

If you get to the end of January 2011 and still can’t pay the necessary tax due, you have until the end of July to pay the full amount owed, in full, before HMRC look at getting serious with their collection of the monies owed.  Be warned, though, you’ll pay more than the initial tax bill.

There are 3 additional charges you’ll incur if you leave it until 31 July to pay, starting with interest accruing every day from 1 February, which is currently 3%.  You’ll also be charged 5% of the outstanding bill on 28 February if you haven’t paid by this date and a further 5% of the bill if it still hasn’t been settled in full on 31 July.

Setup a payment arrangement

HMRC know that not everyone can afford to pay their tax bill in full and whilst they expect those who can to do so, they do offer the possibility of setting up a payment arrangement to spread the cost over a certain period.

As each individual case is different, HMRC doesn’t give any details as to what a general payment arrangement may involve.  However, there have been many reports that payment arrangements have been setup that allow for the tax to be paid across several months and whilst HMRC doesn’t promote it, they do not often add substantial interest charges (if any) to payment arrangements.

There are various ways that you can pay your tax bill and chances are you’ll be able to use one of the options – as long as you don’t ignore it and hope it goes away.

Although this might be the case, it is always strongly recommended to put aside around 20% of your earnings on a weekly or monthly basis.  By putting this money into a savings account, you can guarantee that when your tax return comes, you’ll have enough money to pay it and assuming you claim all of your deductions, some left over to reinvest in your business.

N.B. I am not a qualified tax advisor and all of the information I have provided in this post is a combination of personal knowledge and resources from HMRC. The post is not supposed to act as tax advice and I recommend that you contact a qualified tax advisor if you have any questions about your own individual circumstances.

With the 2009/2010 tax year coming to an end on April 5, if you own a small business in the UK it is likely that you’ll already have had on your doormat a letter from HMRC asking you to complete a self-assessment tax return. If not, don’t worry, it will (unfortunately) be on its way.

Whether this is your first or fifteenth year of completing a self-assessment tax return, unless you are extremely organized, chances are you will delay completing the form for a few weeks (or months). Although this isn’t a problem (as long as HMRC have your paper tax return before the 31 October, you won’t incur any penalties), it’s strongly advised to complete it as soon as possible.

The reason behind this is simple – the longer you leave it, the more of a rush you are in to complete it and therefore the less time you have to make sure your tax return benefits you as best as possible.

For those of you who have just re-read that last paragraph, there are no errors in it. Your tax return can benefit you financially as fortunately, it isn’t all about giving and these 5 tips should all be looked at before completing your tax return to ensure that you get the most from it.

1.  Make sure you declare your house

If you work from home, one of the easiest ways to reduce the amount of tax you are to pay on your gross income is to ensure that you deduct any expenses that your incur via working from home.

Initially, you may not think there are any, as you take a lot of the things for granted.  But what about lighting? Heating? Broadband?  Office space?  You are legally allowed to make a reasonable deduction for all of these, should your small business be based from your home.

Unfortunately, it can be a little complicated to work out – but it is definitely worth it.  In essence, it works by you figuring out what percentage of the light / heating / broadband (and any relevant other utilities) is taken up by the business.  You would then take this percentage from your annual bill (or the equivalent of) and this would be the amount that you could use as an expense.

2.  Have a receipt for everything

One of the first things small business owners are told by their colleagues, mentors or friends, is to keep a receipt for everything you buy (and if you didn’t know this, start doing it now).  Unless it is completely irrelevant to your business (such as a birthday cake or Christmas tree for your house), get a receipt for it.  Then, when you get home, divide the receipts up into two sections – one for direct business expenses and one for ‘other’.  Make sure that you record and date all purchases, primarily for ease of looking at everything at a later date.

A lot of people will tell you to not keep receipts for anything that isn’t directly related to your business.  Whilst you cannot claim back the cost of anything personal, a lot of the time what you consider to be personal costs are actually business costs (such as the evening meal you bought when on the overnight training course or the taxi across town to see your client) and should you keep receipts for both types of purchases, you can ensure that you claim the most expenses as possible.

3.  Don’t forget about the car

HMRC allow all self-employed small business owners to deduct any travelling costs incurred by use of a car, assuming that they are solely for business purposes.

Whilst costs such as MOT and repairs can be a little tricky to determine for business purposes, the mileage is much easier and in the 2009-10 tax year, HMRC stated that for anyone driving a car for less than 10,000 miles for business, they can claim 40p for each mile.  For all miles over 10,000, this drops to 25p per mile.

This is one of the most popular aspects that people forget to include on their tax return, as they believe that as they are using the car for a mix of personal and business circumstances, they cannot deduct costs on their tax return.  The only stipulation that HMRC make is that you have to be able to differentiate between personal and business use.  Therefore, if you were driving to your friends from home, this wouldn’t be tax deductible.  However, if you then drove across town to meet with a client before going home, this mileage you could claim for.

4.  Debt isn’t all bad

There’s a good chance that some how, you owe someone money.  We’re not talking cash amongst friends, but credit card debt, bank loans or an account overdraft.  Whilst you might feel a little unsettled at owing money out, there is a silver lining on this cloud, as HMRC will allow you to put down on your tax return any interest charges incurred on almost any type of debt.

Whether you’ve got a credit card that you use for business which has a 16.9% interest rate or a leasing agreement with a 7% rate, you can put down the amount of interest on your form, deducting it from your gross profit and therefore reducing the amount of tax due to be paid.

5.  Buy, buy, buy

Each year, you are allowed to deduct as expenses a certain amount of capital allowances, which are items that are purchased to assist with the growth of the businesses profits.  The goal posts are particularly wide here and generally speaking, if you have purchased an item that will help your business, you can use it as a tax deduction.

In 2009/10, HMRC explained that for capital allowances in the form of an Annual Investment Allowance (AIA), they could be up to the value £50,000.  A respectable figure for most small businesses, what a lot of people don’t realise is that if you have items that you could account for that would push the figure over this mark, you can still claim a percentage of their cost back.

This is done through a Writing Down Allowance (WDA) and basically entitles you to 20% of the cost of the items over the £50,000 threshold.  If this is your first year putting in a self-assessment report, however, double check with HMRC directly, as you may be eligible for up to 40% after an AIA.

Taxes and self-assessments are one of those things that just need to be done, as much as most would like to pretend they didn’t exist.  A lot of people take the wrong view on them, however and with enough time and the right knowledge, your annual self-assessment tax return can be something that you no longer dread coming.

N.B.  I am not a qualified tax advisor and all of the information I have provided in this post is a combination of personal knowledge and resources from HMRC.  The post is not supposed to act as tax advice and I recommend that you contact a qualified tax advisor if you have any questions about your own individual circumstances.

When you first start a small business, there are dozens of different things you have to think about.  From registering and setting up the necessary tax information to ensuring that your prices are at the right level so you are both competitive for your customers but cost-effective for you, setting up a business can be more stressful than actually running it.

On top of all of that, someone mentions “SEO” to you.  Search Engine Optimization.

They tell you how important it is to have your website optimized properly so that it receives the highest number of organic visitors as possible. Perhaps your eyes glaze over. Maybe you understand SEO, but think you can’t possibly do it on your own — not with everything else you already have to manage. You begin to look at your budget, trying to figure out how to work in at least several hundred dollars weekly to hire a professional SEO consultant to manage the task for you.

You then realize that it isn’t actually possible and end up going into a decline, thinking that if you can’t afford to hire an SEO professional, you may as well not bother setting up the business as it is never going to get off the ground as there is nothing you could possibly do in regards to SEO yourself. And if you can’t handle SEO, how is anyone in this day and age going to actually find your business online?

Well, that’s not necessarily true.

You must remember that SEO, while being a professional service, is one that doesn’t require anything as advanced as a degree to become competent. It simply requires that you to keep up to date with the latest practices, after you have learned the basics. Most of this information is discussed freely online.

If you are worried about SEO, particularly as you can’t afford a professional company, then take a look at the following five steps as they should be able to provide you with some basic SEO knowledge that you can implement yourself.

1. Keep it simple.

The most important point to keep in mind regarding SEO is that you need to keep everything simple.  From the coding that your website is made up of to the design (remember, aesthetics play a part in SEO, too), you have to keep everything as simple as possible.

Search engines look at how easy it is to load and navigate a website and therefore if you have any unnecessary code, text or images included, look at getting rid of them.  It may not be the difference between being ranked on the front page of the search engines or not, but it will definitely help in general with improving your overall ranking.

2.  Provide for the customer, not the search engine.

This point may come as a bit of a surprise to some, but when you are developing your website and business and are keeping SEO in mind, it is massively important that anything you do is for the customer and not for the search engine.

Several years ago you could fill your website with all of the key terms that you wanted to rank highly for and sooner or later the search engines would realize your website was related heavily to this term and rank it well.  This (both unfortunately and thankfully, depending on which way you look at it) is no longer the case today and search engines have evolved, for all intents and purposes, into using more human-like behavior in determining page relevance.  Therefore, you will generally see greater success in the search engine rankings by developing your website with the end user in mind and not the search engine itself.

3.  Make sure everything works.

Images.  Links.  Contact forms.  RSS feed signups.  Everything.  Remember, search engines are like humans now, so put yourself in the shoes of one of your customers.  If you came to your website and clicked on a link and it was broken, you would rightly be a bit annoyed.  Translate this into search engine terms and you will be penalized.  Maybe only slightly, but if it happens on a regular basis and with several links on your website, you can expect to see a drop in rankings.

4.  Reciprocal linking is not as bad as people make out.

If you were to head to a webmaster forum and ask about reciprocal linking, it is highly likely that you will get a barrage of replies saying that it is the worst thing in the world and if you do it, you may as well take your website offline straight away.  Or words to that effect.

The truth is that if you can get a link from another website but it means that you have to give one in return, go for it.  The search engines are not necessarily going to penalize you for it (as long as you’re linking to high quality and relevant sites) and it will not have a detrimental effect.

That leads us perfectly into the final point.

5.  All links are good.

People will try to tell you that having a link to your website from a directory that also features 100 other links on the same page is a bad thing.  They will also try to tell you that you should only have links from websites that are in the same niche or sector as yours and going against these two points will have a detrimental effect on your website.

The truth is, any link is a good link — or at least they’re unlikely to hurt you.

Links on other websites pointing to yours work by showing the search engine that your website is popular, as other websites are linking to it.  Therefore, the more links you have, the more popular your website is and the greater ranking it receives.

However, not all links are equal – but none are bad, that’s the important bit. Search engines realize that you don’t always control the incoming links to your site. If they penalized your site for an incoming link, they would facilitating sabotage by your competitors. It’s not in their interest to do it.

Imagine it like this.

The search engine is an empty jug and your website, which sells baby clothes, is a plastic ball at the bottom.  Now, website A, which is about clothes for dogs, adds a link on their website to yours, which puts 50 milliliters of water in the jug, raising your website, the plastic ball, by 50 milliliters.

Now, a mother and baby website also links to you, but because the website is in the same baby niche as yours, this time it adds 150 milliliters of water into the jug, making the ball rise more than the link did from the cat and dog website.

The only thing to remember is that each website has its own jug of water that it can distribute amongst all its links, so if a website has 50 links, each will get one fiftieth of the water.  If it only has 10 links, however, then each link will get a tenth.

This may be a basic way of explaining things, but it shows how the process works (and also brings a more physical meaning to the term ‘link juice’).

If you’re a freelancer, it’s likely that you’ll have your own way of working that you’ve used since you began freelancing. You’ll feel comfortable in the way that you approach your projects and to a certain extent, you’ll feel that you’re producing work at a relatively high level. Sure, you could probably increase your productivity if you really tried. Everyone could. But who actually does?

If you think like this and believe that their could be a chance of you possibly raising your productivity levels, it’s strongly recommended to sit down and determine exactly how productive you are at the minute. Whilst you may think you’re working 40 hours a week, how many hours of that is actual work? How many of it is checking e-mails? Tweeting? Updating your Facebook status? Reading blogs? Forum posting? They may all only take minutes individually, but added up they could turn into several hours.

There are various different ways to work and increase your productivity levels as a freelancer. If you’re unsure which way to go, take a look at these popular options and you may be surprised just how unproductive you currently are.

The Corporate Lifestyle

Strangely, a lot of freelancers actually enjoy working in a more formal and corporate way. They’ll set their alarm clock for 7:00am, shower and get dressed before making a coffee and heading to work in their home office. They’ll have a coffee break mid-morning, take an hour for lunch, break in the afternoon and then leave the office, close the door, get changed into their non-work clothes and continue their life as normal.

It’s an odd concept for many non-freelancers to get their head around, as the traditional view of a freelancer is one where their work is not particularly structured, allowing them to work whenever they wish. Although this is definitely an option, it’s also seen as the primary reason why productivity falters. Humans are creatures or habit and routine and without at least some stability, we can be easily distracted from what we should really be doing.

Breaking The Day Up

What a lot of freelancers struggle to come to terms with, especially those who have left the corporate world to freelance, is the amount of freedom that they have in respect of their own working hours. As they don’t have a boss standing over them, telling them to start work at a certain time and finish at another, a lot of new freelancers take the opportunity to check the e-mails more regularly than normal or read the latest news on their favorite websites whenever the feel like it.

As great as this can be, unless something is put in place to monitor your non-work usage, a day can easily go by without getting even a full hours work done and because of this, many freelancers set themselves a working schedule and factor in regular breaks or treats.

For example, a popular method is for every hour that is worked, spend ten minutes reading the news, checking your e-mail or catching up with friends on Twitter or Facebook. Once these ten minutes are up, return to work for another hour and then break for ten minutes again after these 60 minutes have passed.

Door Closed, Head Down

This method isn’t one that is generally recommended for a lot of people, as it can require a lot of concentration and willpower – but it does work for some.

The idea is to schedule several hours of work for the following day and have everything you need to complete that work to hand in one place. You would then go to your office and work solidly for however many hours it takes to complete the scheduled work.

Of course, there has to be some leeway when looking at toilet breaks and any business telephone calls, but generally speaking, most people won’t deviate from their work unless it is absolutely necessary, until it has all been complete.

If you head down this route, it’s important to be aware of the signs of burnout. Working continually for hours on end may be needed for certain projects on a short term basis, but used regularly, it can have the opposite intended effect and actually decrease productivity.

Time Management

If you think that your productivity is down, but you feel most comfortable with how your current schedule is going (in terms of the way you work), then it is recommended to utilize any of the many tools that have been created to help freelancers increase their actual work productivity.

One of these tools comes in the form of putting a block on certain websites that you ask it to, for a specific period of time. So, if you had a big project to work on and you wanted to get four hours work carried out on it without any distractions, as much as you can say to yourself you won’t check your e-mails, Twitter or LinkedIn profile, for example, the temptation is always there. These programs, however, can block these types of websites (or any specific ones that you tell it to), until the allotted time is up.

In addition to this, there are several tools that allow you to actually ‘clock on’ when you begin work (as well as ‘clocking off’ for breaks, etc) and that will calculate how much money you are earning on an hourly basis. These are great tools as although you might think that you’re earning $240 a day as you’re working a full 8 hours at $30, if this tool is used truthfully, it can determine your real hourly rate, taking into account any unnecessary breaks that you pause for.

This tool in particular is one that can prompt a lot of people to do something about their productivity, as it shows in black and white just how much money they are earning, which can be a big difference to what they thought they were taking home.

As a freelancer, you have the opportunity to work as and when you wish. Although this works for some freelancers, the amount of distractions that are apparent and so easily available as you don’t have a boss breathing over your shoulder can be too much to resist for some and they need to take a good luck at their productivity levels, ensuring that it is as high as it should be.

Summary: As a freelancer, you’ll probably want to increase your rates someday, if not already. How can do this without alienating your existing clients though? These tips will help you increase your freelance writing rates without potentially losing current clients who can’t account for the change in their budgets.

If you’re a freelance writer, it’s highly likely that you will have been faced with the difficult decision at some point in your career of wondering how to increase your freelance rates. One of the most difficult aspects of being a freelance writer is that there are so many possible effects of even suggesting that you are going to increase your rates that most writers spend years producing work for clients for the same rate that they did when they very first started working with them. It comes down to fear.

One of the most prominent reasons why writers do not increase their rates is that they are worried that not only will they be unable to find new clients who are willing to pay their new rate, but that their existing clients will abandon them completely, leaving them with no income whatsoever.

Fortunately, with the right preparation and proper implementation, this does not need to be the case. By abiding by the following four points you should be able to find new clients while continuing to work with your current clients at your increased rate.

1. Ensure your increase is justified

The first thing to keep in mind is that you should have a fully justifiable reason for increasing your freelance writing rates. Simply stating that it is a “sign of the times” or “because of the economic climate” will very rarely ensure that your existing clients remain with you and you should make sure that your clients will see, or have recently seen, some distinct benefits of working with you.

Although these benefits are varied, the most popular is that the quality of the work that is produced for the client is far greater than it was when you first started writing for them. This may be because of courses or workshops that you have attended or simply that you have gained a lot of experience in writing in recent years and this shows in the work that is now being produced.

2. Be truthful with your clients

Assuming that you can fully justify your increase, when you begin discussing the increase with your clients, you must remember to always be completely truthful. As tempting as it can be to add, for example, a heart-warming story to your reasoning for increasing your rates, it is generally considered that the vast majority of clients will be much more appreciative if you were to explain to them directly that your rates are increasing because, for example, the quality of your work has, and the rate increase is a direct reflection of this.

3. Be flexible

Put yourself in the position of your clients. They’re hiring a freelance writer for $0.50 per word and have been doing so for the past three years without any problems. Then, all of a sudden, the writer says that from next month their rates are going to be increasing to $1.00 per word. Whilst the writer’s reasoning is more than justifiable and the increase was, to a certain extent, expected, it’s not easy to find within a budget twice as much money to continue paying the writer, regardless of how much they are needed.

This is the point where a lot of freelance writers fall down when trying to retain their current clients after a rate increase, as they set their new rate and believe that they must stick to it rigidly. Whilst this may be the case when taking on new clients, it should not be for older clients and you must be willing to have some leeway, such as by having a staggered increase over a set amount of months or taking a new reduced rate if the volume of work was to increase.

4. Be appreciative

Whether they’re a pleasant client or not, if you want to keep them when you increase your rates you must be fully appreciative of them and put into perspective just how much work you complete for them. The old saying that you shouldn’t keep all of your eggs in one basket should be thought of regularly by freelance writers, but some are simply not fortunate enough to have ten or more individual clients who provide them with an income and they may rely heavily on only two or three.

If this is the case, it is important that you understand the implications for you personally if you were to lose a client as you did not appreciate the amount of work produced for them and were not flexible with them when increasing your rates, meaning that they decided not to continue working with you at your higher rate, which in turn substantially affects your turnover.

It may seem a simple procedure increasing your freelance writing rates, and for any new clients you begin working with after the increase, it is not a problem. However, for those that you have worked with for some time, it is important that your increase be justified, you are honest and flexible, and you are appreciative of the work that they offer to ensure that you can implement a rate increase without losing any of your existing clients.

Summary: Is it better to have a street address for your small business, or will a PO Box suffice? What about for entrepreneurs who work from home? What option is best for a small business business? What option is best for its customers?

The decision becomes even more complicated for home-based business owners, where the physical business address is also the entrepreneur’s home.

Here are some of the options available, and the pros and cons of each:

Physical Address

If customers actually frequent the business (such as a retail store), an actual physical address is a must. Those customers need to be able to look up the location for directions.

Using a physical address also offers added credibility, even in businesses where customers don’t traditionally visit the premises. Basically, it’s easier to trust a brick and mortar business than one with no real location (meaning it’s more likely the business might vanish from one day to the next).

The downside really comes when the entrepreneur doesn’t want the physical location known, possibly for security reasons. For example, a home-based business owner may not want potential clients showing up at their home, especially if they have children or are there alone.

PO Boxes

The primary benefit of a PO box is the privacy it affords. The business owner simply goes to the post office to pick up the company mail, and no one with the mailing address automatically knows the physical location of the business. They are also a good solution for businesses needing to sort certain types of mail. For example, they may have a PO box setup to specifically collect incoming bill payments, so those can be processed quickly and separately without being mixed in with regular daily mail.

The downside is that, if a PO Box is the business’ primary address, some customers may not immediately trust the business.

The Best of Both Worlds?

There is a third option, fortunately. Businesses can rent mailboxes with services such as the UPS store. They get a private box just like with a PO box, but that box has a physical address, which may appear more reputable to customers.

The key is thinking about the needs of your customers. Remember, if they need to be able to find your physical location in order to do business with you, a mailbox service with a physical address isn’t a substitute for your actual location.

Personally, I’m not a fan of mailbox services, but then again my business is run pretty much entirely virtually, meaning it would be a hassle to run out and get the mail on the rare occasion I’m dealing with physical documents or paper checks. What do you prefer for your business, and why?