Tag Archives: yolander prinzel

advice, blogging, freelance money

Are You Wasting Money on Your Blog?

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By Yolander Prinzel

Almost every freelance writer out there has a blog. Certainly, we can’t all need that much advice, can we?

If you have a blog, every hour you spend on it is unpaid time (I’m assuming Adsense and Clickbank aren’t paying your normal rate) and is time that might better be spent on client work or marketing.

Or not.

Really, it depends on why you are blogging. For some, blogging is an outlet for their frustrations. For others, it is a way to build a community and share their experience. And some lucky folks use it to make money through Adsense, selling their own products and services or using it as a sample for potential clients.

No matter what you do your blogging for, make sure that you have a plan and purpose for your blog and that it is fulfilling that plan and purpose. If it isn’t, decide what you can do to make it worth your while either financially, emotionally or…spiritually.

Yolander Prinzel, ACS is a financial writer as well as a series 7, 66 and 2-15 licensed financial representative with a decade of industry experience. She was the National Director of Marketing and the Director of Operations for The Compass Agency USA and has also been a trader for Raymond James Financial Services. None of her posts are meant to be advisory. Only an advisor with close, personal knowledge of your financial situation can offer advice. You can get her new e-book You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What? Tips and Tricks to Finding and Scoring Clients and Making a Living Writing What You Know here for just $7.95.

advice, freelance money, lifestyle

Get Your Financial House in Order before You Freelance Full Time

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By Yolander Prinzel

This week, Joe did a little tongue-in-cheek (okay, that saying doesn’t even make sense. Where else would your tongue be??) post about quitting your job today and going full time into freelancing. I thought I would piggy back on his post and write one that is tongue-out-of-cheek, which may mean I’m sticking my tongue out at you as I write this, I’m not sure.

Here are some financial things to consider and do before you quit your job to freelance full time:

1. Find out how close you are to your next vesting year. For every year that you are with an employer, you are more and more vested in the corporate contributions to your retirement plans. If you are thinking of quitting now and you are just 5 months away from being 20% more vested, you could lose hundreds of dollars by leaving too soon.

2. Save at least two months worth of expenses. Yeah, no, I know, you have a huge client list and your business is going really well, so it’s all good if you have no savings. Except that no, no it’s not. How are you going to deal with it the first time a gig falls through? The first time you lose a regular gig because the company goes bankrupt? The first time a check gets lost in the mail or sent out late? There are so many variables to worry about that you definitely want an emergency slush fund above and beyond your other savings.

3. Do what it is you think you are going to do. You know how much money you need to earn each day in order to live. If you need to make $200 a day and your regular gigs make up $150, then you need to find another $50 in gigs each day. You really do need to go ahead and do that. It’s very easy to just…not…and sit around reading instead. If you do, you’ll find you start depleting your savings pretty quickly.

4. Keep marketing and networking. Even if you have enough work this month and next, you need to be marketing and networking for your future months. You don’t want to be caught off-guard when your workload starts to slow and then try to scramble to find some real quick-like.

Yolander Prinzel, ACS is a financial writer as well as a series 7, 66 and 2-15 licensed financial representative with a decade of industry experience. She was the National Director of Marketing and the Director of Operations for The Compass Agency USA and has also been a trader for Raymond James Financial Services. None of her posts are meant to be advisory. Only an advisor with close, personal knowledge of your financial situation can offer advice. You can get her new e-book You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What? Tips and Tricks to Finding and Scoring Clients and Making a Living Writing What You Know here for just $7.95.

advice, freelance money

Make Money on Your Tax Money

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By Yolander Prinzel

You know that big, annoying wad of cash you keep reserved for quarterly estimated taxes? Yeah, you know the one–the wad that obnoxiously sits there for months tempting you to spend it on clothes, books, records, vacations, and fancy alcoholic drinks. Well, anyway, instead of letting it sit in your business checking account, why not move it to a money market account and earn some interest on it? Show that wad who’s boss by making a little interest off of its obnoxious little behind.

If you are lazy (like me) you can just open a Paypal money market account. The rates are not as competitive but if you get paid through Paypal often, you can just leave the money there and let it earn some interest.

Either way, it isn’t going to net you a ton of money and you will have to pay taxes on the interest, but hey, maybe the interest will be enough to offset that fancy alcoholic beverage you desperately need after filling out your 941 every quarter.

Yolander Prinzel, ACS is a financial writer as well as a series 7, 66 and 2-15 licensed financial representative with a decade of industry experience. She was the National Director of Marketing and the Director of Operations for The Compass Agency USA and has also been a trader for Raymond James Financial Services. None of her posts are meant to be advisory. Only an advisor with close, personal knowledge of your financial situation can offer advice. You can get her new e-book You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What? Tips and Tricks to Finding and Scoring Clients and Making a Living Writing What You Know here for just $7.95.

editorial, reading, resources

E-book Review: You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What?

book-cover1-217x300by Catherine L. Tully

Those of you who follow Freelance-Zone already know that I am a fan of Yolander Prinzel, but what you don’t know is that she is a networking and marketing genius. Frankly, her ability to market is one of her strongest qualities.

Now, I don’t normally endorse e-books. Many of them do not give writers enough concrete information. That said, I think that “You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What?” is an investment that is worth making–especially if you are a new writer. It can be difficult to network and market yourself strategically, and many new writers spend too much time on forums and social media sites without scoring any real results for their efforts. Prinzel gives pointers that can streamline that process, and does so without being a drag to read… Continue reading E-book Review: You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What? →

freelance money

I Know You’re Losing $50-$200 a Day

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By Yolander Prinzel

How do I know you are? Well, because I am and although this might cause you to break out into the cold sweat of denial, I’m pretty sure you and I aren’t that different.

I waste at least 2 hours every day sitting in front of my computer doing…well…absolutely nothing.

Yeah, no, I know, it’s terrible, right? But–surely–you aren’t that bad. You don’t spend time looking through pictures on Facebook of people you don’t even know. You don’t start conversations with strangers on Twitter. You don’t do housework off and on throughout the day. You don’t do anything but write and market yourself all day…right?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. So here is my challenge to you web writers next month. Let’s all try to take on 2 additional hours worth of work each workday and earn 2 more hours worth of pay. Whether 2 hours means 1 article for you or two, do it. Then take that money, which you normally wouldn’t have had because you would have been busy picking your split ends during those two hours, and put it in your savings account.

Let’s say you average (based on your writing speed and prices) $35 an hour. You will have banked an extra $350 in your savings account the first week. Do that for a month and you’ll have about $1,400. A year? $18,200–and that isn’t counting interest.

So put your hair down, log out of Facebook, sign off from Twitter and leave your laundry unfolded–it’s not like you have to leave the house anyway.

Print writers–you aren’t out of the challenge. I’m betting you could send out a couple extra queries during the week. The pay from any of those queries that get accepted should go straight to savings too.

Yolander Prinzel, ACS is a financial writer as well as a series 7, 66 and 2-15 licensed financial representative with a decade of industry experience. She was the National Director of Marketing and the Director of Operations for The Compass Agency USA and has also been a trader for Raymond James Financial Services. None of her posts are meant to be advisory. Only an advisor with close, personal knowledge of your financial situation can offer advice. You can get her new e-book You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What? Tips and Tricks to Finding and Scoring Clients and Making a Living Writing What You Know here for just $7.95.

advice, freelance money, resources

It’s Important to Track Your Income

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By Yolander Prinzel

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to track all of my outstanding invoices for a couple of reasons:

1. I like to know when, and if, a client has paid me.

2. I like to know whether, and how well, I’ll be able to eat next month.

I send all of my emailable invoices through Paypal. I do this because I’ve found that it makes people pay me faster. It’s easy, they get an emailed invoice with a button that says something like, “Pay Your Awesome Writer Now!” They click the button and I go get donuts. Oh, wait, is Catherine reading this? Crap…did I say donuts? Um…I meant carrots. Yeah…I buy carrots. Anyway, I like Paypal because the system also lets me know if an invoice is outstanding–but that’s not exactly enough for this OCD chick.

I also keep a simple Excel spreadsheet, which you can download here: Payment Tracker. It’s a simple sheet, nothing fancy. It does help me to see what money I’m making this month and whether or not I need to amp up my game to pay for my addiction to surf and turf as well as whether or not all my outstanding invoices have been paid.

Yolander Prinzel, ACS is a financial writer as well as a series 7, 66 and 2-15 licensed financial representative with a decade of industry experience. She was the National Director of Marketing and the Director of Operations for The Compass Agency USA and has also been a trader for Raymond James Financial Services. None of her posts are meant to be advisory. Only an advisor with close, personal knowledge of your financial situation can offer advice. You can get her new e-book You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What? Tips and Tricks to Finding and Scoring Clients and Making a Living Writing What You Know here for just $7.95.