work

Help with starting your blog.

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https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=132158&c=ib&aff=219310Some people write for love. Others write for money. I say it’s possible to do both, by starting a blog and monetizing it.

Although I dislike that neologism, I do embrace its underpinnings, i.e., that the laborer is worthy of his hire.

This week’s giveaway, an e-book called “How I Make Money Blogging: The Beginner’s Guide to Building a Money-Making Blog,” can kick-start your own efforts to be rewarded for your thoughts.

Some people make a little money blogging. Some make a lot. The book’s author, Crystal Stemberger, is in the latter camp. She really works it, running a handful of sites and also acting as ad-sales goddess, mentor, consultant and freelancer. Apparently she is allergic to sleep, because she recently added yet another specialty: pet-sitting.

Not everybody wants to work 24-7. But if you want to start a blog or if you’ve got a site and want it to start paying its way, this e-book can help. A lot.

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Help with living ‘a life of passion.’

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1491708069_bHaving trouble getting started with your goals? Can’t seem to get it in gear to build the business, create the service, learn the skill or write the book you know will make a difference? Motivational speaker and accountant Onyx Jones can help.

She knows a little something about change and growth. Once a homeless single mother, Jones now has a master’s degree in accounting and is a motivational speaker.

She’s turned the latter into a book called “The Unofficial Guide to Achieving Your Goals,” which is this week’s giveaway.

“(After) committing to following all seven steps, you will see improvement in your quality of life in just 30 to 90 days,” says Jones.

This slim paperback (66 pages) is designed to “motivate, inspire and provide you with tools for achieving your goals and living a life of passion.” And those seven steps mentioned above? If you’re not the kind of person who likes to follow directions, maybe this book isn’t for you.

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Giveaway: “The Economy of You.”

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qThe personal finance publishing industry has recently seen a run on books about entrepreneurism. That’s probably because the side hustle has become a reality to so many people — up to 25 percent of U.S. residents currently freelance or work second jobs.

And those are just the ones surveyed. My guess is that the numbers are higher.

Among the best of the books I’ve seen “The Economy of You: Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur and Recession-Proof Your Life.” The author, Kimberly Palmer, is a full-time writer and mom of two who started her own side gig, an Etsy store called Palmer’s Planners.

It wasn’t about getting rich, but rather to earn enough “to be in control of my life,” says Palmer, senior money editor for U.S. News & World Report.

Want a piece of that yourself? Enter to win the book.

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Pay your taxes like the rich.

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51PYxmmqqGL._AA300_In a recent post called “How to be a side-gigger” I noted that the four books mentioned in the article would eventually go up as giveaways.

Here’s the first one: “Outsmarting the System: Lower Your Taxes, Control Your Future and Reach Financial Freedom.”  

Written by former IRS auditor Anthony Campidonica, the slim volume explains several ways that ordinary people can use a group of tax benefits, i.e., those for the self-employed. You could be an entrepreneur (full- or part-time), a landlord or an investor.

What if you don’t have the wherewithal to open a store, buy a rental property or invest like the pros? Start small, the author advises. Sell your expertise or a product on the side vs. quitting your day job and diving in. Or save up for that foreclosure or repo and go the renovation-and-rental route in your off hours.

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I want to vanish.

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thI sort of already have: DF dropped me at the Anchorage airport at 10 p.m. Tuesday and I hit Tarpon Springs, Fla., at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. For the next five days I’ll be visiting my dad and my sister.

Timing-wise, not great: When I made the reservation a couple of months ago I’d planned it as a barely-any-work vacation. But recently an unexpected magazine assignment came in and an established deadline got moved up a week.

So the time I thought I’d spend hanging with family, doing a bit of sightseeing, and taking long walks and longer baths has turned into a “how to balance interviews with vacation.”

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How to be a side-gigger.

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qDoing well on your current salary? If so, you’re lucky. According to a MetLife survey, anywhere from 12 to 25 percent of U.S. citizens are either freelancing or working a second job.

A handful of work-related books have come my way lately, offering help for the current or wannabe “solopreneur.” The best of the bunch is Kimberly Palmer’s “The Economy of You: Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur and Recession-Proof Your Life.” The senior money editor for U.S. News & World Report, Palmer isn’t immune to financial fears.

That’s because although she and her husband both have traditional jobs, they also have two kids and are staring at the same fears a lot of us face: Life is getting more expensive and no one is immune to layoffs. (Ask me how I know.)

So she started her own Etsy store, Palmer’s Planners, in the hopes of being able eventually to work for herself, at her own pace. “It was really about so much more than money. I wanted to be in control of my life,” she writes.

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The loneliest drugstore in the world.

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thAnother Thanksgiving and I’ve fulfilled my stated intention: to eat until I can’t walk. Four guests for dinner (including my niece and her boys) and I still had all I wanted of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, coleslaw, peas, rolls – all of it homemade and all of it irresistible.

Dessert was a tough choice between the pumpkin pie that I made and the pumpkin cheesecake my niece made. Since my doctor told me to reduce stress, I decided to have some of each. After all, they both have beta carotene.

The meal started at 1 p.m. My friend Linda B. left for work at 4:15 p.m., and my niece and the kids were gone an hour later. Now I’m sitting in front of a wonderful fire and unlikely to move far from it, especially since the temperature is dropping: It’s 11 and breezy now, predicted to drop to 2 degrees overnight; tomorrow’s high is predicted to be 8 degrees and the low will be minus 8. At least it isn’t Fairbanks.

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Sick? Please stay home.

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thBack in 1980 I was a single mom and “permanent part-time” employee at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Like many working parents I feared illness because it meant using up sick days – which God had clearly intended to be used when your kid got sick.

Plenty of people still feel the same way – and quite a few workers come to work when they’re sick because they feel the place would collapse without them.  A new study from Kimberly-Clark says 59% of employees come in sick, either because they’re too “essential” to stay home or because they’ve got too much work to do to miss a day.

Trouble is, their co-workers may wind up missing days if they catch whatever cooties Typhoid Mary/Marty is spewing into their shared breathing space.

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Time is something we can’t do over.

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thThe 2013 Financial Blogger Conference was the best yet, and also the most exhausting. We got up at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15 to fly to St. Louis and, coincidentally, walked back through our front door at about 2 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24.

In between: a long plane trip, most of a day spent “frugalizing” a family with MP Dunleavey (for her Woman’s Day column), the conference itself and then a few days hanging out with my daughter, who also attended.

The conference days were a blur of activity, four days of leaving the room at 7:30 or 8 a.m. and falling back into bed at 1:30 or 2 a.m. Yet it was delightful to attend sessions, reconnect with others who’ve attended for three years running, to win prizes, and to discuss some very interesting work-related propositions (nothing I can noise around just yet, though).

Right now DF is on furlough (grrr), so we had Thursday and today to recover from the trip. It’s been tough for me to get my head back into the game; instead, I want to spend my days talking about writing and having other people cook for me.

Scratch that: I want to spend my days working only when I feel like it. I expect I’m not alone.

As I noted in “Termination dust,” being kicked to the virtual curb by MSN Money has caused me to reconsider the kind of life I want to lead. That’s why an e-mail I received today really resonated.

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Writers: Stop undervaluing your work.

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thLast spring I turned down a writing job that would have paid $450. The piece would have been long but not particularly hard to do, as I’d covered the topic before. In fact, I did a pretty good outline in several back-and-forth e-mails with the editor.

(Note to self: Don’t do that again. Ask what the job pays before you do anything else – and especially before you spend half an hour of your day e-mailing back and forth.)

Some of you are probably thinking, “Is she nuts? She turned down an easy $450?”

But that’s not really what I turned down.

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