Today I wanted to shed some light on something that many people want to avoid talking about. It’s the idea of following your passion and what it really means to do that. Unfortunately all too often we see business people promoting a lifestyle of living in Hawaii sipping on coconuts and making millions online. All too often this doesn’t coincide with reality.

If you want me to show you a guy who will withdraw every dollar he has in his bank just to take pictures with it and then deposit it right back in, I could show you that. Or if you want to see somebody talking about living their dreams when they’re really not doing as great. But the harsh reality is that it takes hard work and ethic to make yourself successful.

A lot of times advertisements show systems that they say will only take a few minutes per day in order to make serious money online. But this isn’t reality either. You should really focus more on actually working the hours it takes to become successful and stop worrying about others who say they are doing it much faster.

The honest truth is that you’re going to need to work. There’s no if’s, and’s or but’s about it. If you put in the work, the effort and the time, you can begin to see accomplishments with your business. Signing up to an email marketing service such as Aweber, promoting your opt-in forms and getting your first email leads is a strong start.

Build a good sized list, continue to build that list for years to come, and find yourself new ways to promote and earn sales. You can do great if you put in the work, but don’t expect your passion to fall onto your lap. Don’t expect income to drop out of the sky, or for someone to come “pick you up” and “lend a helping hand” that can make your business overnight.

There’s a lot to be said about cooperation with other businesses, but do not think for a second that you can have your entire business saved or justified by a single person. Asking can make a lot of people do a lot of things, and combining your areas of strength with another businesses area of strength,

I think there is something to be said for making one thing work before moving onto another thing. When it comes to marketing you should do your best to promote on a single platform and get the kind of attention you deserve before moving to another. It’s OK to quit if you feel that it is a total waste of time and money, but at least make sure to work on one thing at a time and not try to make 10 different platforms work for you simultaneously.

You should invest your money and time into trying to perfect a single tactic. You may find that just Facebook alone can be enough to catapult your business forward. But once you’ve got something working for you, do yourself a favor and make another move after that.

Moving forward in your business is all about making the right kinds of moves. If you start seeing some profit from one marketing tactic, then keep it up, and keep perfecting it. The fact is that MARKETING is actually just tons of TESTING.

But how can you do testing if you have ten different tactics all using at the same time and you have no idea which ones work and which ones don’t?

You need to dedicate the time and energy into making a single traffic source profitable before spending tons of money on other ideas which may or may not work. Move gradually, track your results, and scale up.

Today I wanted to talk about tax season as a business owner. It’s not nearly as glorious as a tax season for a non-business owner who works a 9-5, let me tell you. The reason is because not only are there way more things to consider and write off, but also in the end you’re going to be forced to pay taxes instead of collect them.

There are ways to get your tax payment down by writing off certain things, though, and if you’re not profiting then writing off a loss can actually get a payment back through your taxes for the things you wrote off. That’s only the case if your business did not make enough money the previous year, though.

So without further a due, here’s a list of some of the best tax write-offs to take advantage of as a small business owner getting ready to fork up a payment to Uncle Sam.

1. The studio write-off

The first write-off worth mentioning is the studio write off. Whatever area you consider your work area, with all your equipment and paperwork in it, can be written off of your total tax payment. Let’s say you have 15% of your apartment or house dedicated to your work equipment. This would mean that you can write off 15% of your total mortgage or rent for the whole year. To my knowledge the maximum amount of space to write off is 15%, with the exception of if your entire place is used specifically for business and nothing else. This is only the case if you don’t live where you work, for instance if you have a studio you pay separate rent for. This is one of the greatest write-offs you can make for your business.

2. Advertising and business expenses

This comes in at number two, and it’s going to take a lot of effort to get all of this information. Where did you spend? Try to write off every cent, but realize that if you don’t have receipts for such payments made then you might reconsider even writing them off. You don’t want to face an audit or some other kind of tax problem. Having said that, do your best to round up as many payments as possible. If you’ve been investing in yourself all year you will find that you can write off thousands upon thousands of dollars from the year’s work.

3. Vehicle expenses

This one is pretty cool, too. Did you buy a vehicle for use with your business? Even if not, you can still write off all the miles and gas used when driving your vehicle for work. In this case you might be writing off a lot of miles if you’ve been doing a lot of meeting .

4. Food and entertainment

This is one of my favorite things to write off because any business meeting of any kind can be written off completely. So if you met somebody for lunch to discuss business, you get to write off the entire bill from that lunch visit. Entertainment includes other things as well.

5. PayPal fees and other fees

Fees can be written off. You may not think it is a big write off but when you put the numbers together, that 3% that PayPal takes from each payment can end up being a multi thousand dollar write-off. Those 3% tickets add up throughout the year and hundreds of payments later you might be looking at quite the hefty PayPal fee for the year. This is an excellent tax write-off and should not be overlooked.

6. 401k retirement plan

This is a really good way to keep money in your pocket while also writing off as much as possible. If you set up a 401k retirement plan for yourself (since you’re your own employee), you get to write it off. So if you want to convert some of your savings into a 401k retirement plan, you can write off the full amount you put into that retirement plan. This is pretty awesome considering the money stays in your pocket and yet you don’t have to pay taxes on it.

7. Cell phone bill

In most cases you can write off your cell phone bill as long as it is primarily used for marketing and business. Try to avoid long phone calls to mom on this phone if you expect to write it off. Sometimes it’s a better idea to have a second prepaid phone just for family, and to keep your main business line open only for business so you can write the bill off entirely without worrying about audit or issue.

8. Other write-offs

While we didn’t cover every single write-off you can make, there are a couple more worth mentioning. If you worked a 9-5 over the course of the year, you get a little bit taken off of your tax payment. If you worked and made more money from your 9-5 than your business, you might find you actually receive a tax return instead of having to pay into business taxes. Writing off any W9 form from work is a good idea and practice. Aside from that other practices include writing off the interest paid on mortgage. For me this is going to be a massive $8,000 write-off for myself, but being that a lot of people reading this aren’t home owners, we’ll not go into detail. You can also write off repairs done to your work vehicle, medical expenses for your family (which are personal write-offs, not business write-offs) and education. Writing off these things can easily bring you a better tax payment in the end.

If you enjoyed this article, visit the sidebar on this site (or scroll down if you’re on a mobile device) and support us by purchasing a course and further increase your knowledge.

Note: This is not to be considered as financial advice.

Today I just wanted to announce that we are actively recording and preparing a new VIDEO COURSE for how to market yourself in 2014 using the absolute best strategies for today’s market place.

New Course: Beat Selling Monster

Hitting our online store 8-15-2014.

This course is coming out NEXT FRIDAY, only 9 days away, and there’s a few things I want you to know about it before we get started.

First of all, Beat Selling Monster will only be around for 9 days. The price will rise every 3 days until it finally reaches an all time high, so don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. It’s limited time for a reason, in fact we even have plans on REMOVING this course completely from the market after 9 days if we feel the information has become too wide spread.

This course may come off the market 9 days after launch!

Having said that, here’s a little brief run down on what’s going to be inside:

The latest tactics and strategies for:

1. Facebook marketing
Ever wonder how people get so many likes so quickly? What kinds of posts do you need to be writing? Are you one of those people who posts up link after link for little or no response? How do you change that? How about groups? Their Ads system? Etc. All of this is covered and more!

2. Twitter marketing revamped
Change the way you look at Twitter marketing. Never before released tactics for how to triple or quadruple your Twitter marketing efforts overnight. Do this without using spam methods, hundreds of accounts, or even ten’s of accounts.

3. Soundcloud marketing
How do you make money off of Soundcloud? Gain followers? What are the easiest ways? How do you get extra promotion to your beats using Soundcloud even if you have no followers? What’s the trick for getting a follower base?

4. Outsourcing for big bucks
This is one of my secret weapons. Learn how I’ve spent thousands of dollars on outsourcing and the kinds of crazy things it can help you achieve. Previously this knowledge has been kept under wraps, but it’s time we shared the truth about how we are able to get so much work done so quickly and at such a low budget.

5. Reverb Nation Marketing
Rank on Reverb Nation for the charts of local area after local area. There’s no reason you can’t pull in some serious extra promotion with this free tool, it’s as easy as pie ranking in these charts and it’s even scale-able. Not only that, but learn how to utilize Reverb Nation to it’s fullest marketing potential.

6. Soundclick Marketing Revamped
It’s been a long time since this giant has been on the market. Discover how people are ranking in today’s market using strategies unknown to everybody. Revealed inside is a service only costing pennies per day which can rank you on Soundclick, and we reveal their link inside this course!

7. YouTube Marketing
It’s still as easy as ever to rank YouTube videos in the top of the charts for smaller keywords using simple SEO strategies as well as working backlinking campaigns that are worth doing. Gain hundreds of charts positions with YouTube and search engines to drive additional traffic to your website.

8. CPC Marketing
Sorry, is this course already seeming like it’s going over the top or what? In this module I’m giving up my most advanced CPC tactics, using new age techniques that work right now for the lowest possible cost. I even reveal my true secret weapon for advertising using CPC for high yield and results. Nobody wants to talk about the best CPC network on the planet right now, or how to use the biggest ones available.

9. Blog Marketing
Learn how we’ve been using blogs to drive massive sales and traffic every single week with ease. Learn about why this works, what most people do terribly wrong and the right steps to take to make sure your blog posts actually get seen, not just written.

Buy this course on first day of launch to guarantee lowest price!

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