To be fair, though, most self-employed people who are complaining about taxes right now aren't savvy enough to realize that they're paying more than they would have been if they had a job.  Their complaints sound a lot more like the "Ow, ow, OW!" a kid might shout as he accidentally touches a stove burner.  In more adult terms, their complaints sound like, "But I already spent that money!"

My response to this widespread complaint is simple --- pay your estimated taxes once a month.  Although many microbusiness owners aren't required to pay estimated taxes throughout the year, especially if they are still working their day job, the federal goverment certainly doesn't mind.  To pay estimated taxes, just tally up how much tax you think you'll be responsible for next April, divide it by twelve, and log onto the federal goverment's EFTPS system to have the monthly amount removed from your bank account.  You can also pay quarterly, but I advocate paying once a month to minimize the ow factor.

By paying estimated taxes monthly, you're giving the goverment a free loan --- if you overpay like I did this year, you'll sigh a bit over the ten bucks you could have made by putting that money in a savings account.  But the peace of mind you gain from paying estimated taxes makes it all worthwhile.  Unlike my microbusiness peers, I look forward to tax time each year as it gives me a chance to play with arithmetic.  (Yes, I am a geek.)

Not sold on the merits of taxes yet?  Stay tuned for another installment in my anti-gripe series.  Meanwhile, check out Microbusiness Independence, the story of how my husband and I created a microbusiness and became financially independent with less than a thousand bucks in startup costs.

A friend of mine is currently running a series on voluntary simplicity on her blog.  She's a member of a simple living support group and has put some serious time into thinking through the actions that make up simple living.

Her first post debunked a few myths about simple living.  She wrote eloquently that simple living is not necessarily equivalent to impoverished living, turning away from progress, rural living or denial of beauty.  "Voluntary simplicity is both an inner and outer way of being," she writes.  "Most often, it involves removing clutter from your home and also your spirit."

We can all use some pointers on decluttering our souls (though I probably need more work on decluttering my home. )  I hope you'll drop by Brandy's blog and follow along as she gives us some points to ponder.

Meanwhile, check out our ebook about starting a microbusiness that won't suck up your life.

The microbusiness year, like the garden year, follows a sort of annual rhythm.  As March rolls in, I start to notice the signature feature of early spring on microbusiness owners' blogs --- griping about taxes.  Rather than ripping into these complainers on their own blogs, I feel obliged to mention my stance on taxes here...getting my annual anti-griping out of my system.

The anti-tax griping is a bit understandable since, as a self-employed person, you're suddenly responsible for giving more of your hard-earned money to the IRS.  If you've spent your life going in to work in the morning and collecting your paycheck every few weeks, you may not have realized that the taxes being deducted from your check aren't the only payroll taxes the government gets out of you.  You probably noticed that the federal taxes withheld from your paycheck are divided into two categories --- social security/medicare withholding and federal income tax withholding.  While you're working for the man, your employer matches the amount withheld from your paycheck for social security and medicare and sends that matching amount directly to the federal goverment.  When you become self-employed, you're responsible for paying both the part that's normally withheld from your check and the part your employer would pay, with the latter part now being known as your self-employment tax.

Although this "extra" tax feels a bit difficult the first time you pay it, you soon realize that it's only fair.  After all, you're now your own employer as well as your own employee, so you should have to pay both parts of the social security tax.  Despite all the griping, I never hear about microbusiness owners who willingly give back their monthly stipend and healthcare benefits once they retire.  Clearly, the social security safety net has a value we all appreciate, and folks just like to complain.

Want to read more about microbusiness topics?  Check out our microbusiness ebook.

I stumbled across Lionsgrip traction pads in a very surprising manner --- searching for information about chicken feed.  When googling for homemade chicken feed formulas, I kept ending up on a very useful site with several recipes.  Finally, I decided to poke around and see who had compiled all of this information about chicken feed, and I discovered that the information was just a small offshoot of a microbusiness website.

Lionsgrip actually has nothing to do with chickens --- they're a small company that produces mats you slip under your tires when your car gets stuck in the mud.  But the owners decided not to stop building their site after they added all of the obvious information about their product.  They went on to build six separate "guest websites", each chock full of useful information (and with two ads on every page sending you back to their traction pads.)

Lionsgrip's website is a great example of the SEO truism --- if you create good content, people will come.  Granted, Lionsgrip probably would have gotten more specific traffic if the content they built was more closely related to their product, but any useful content will attract potential customers to their site.

For other tips on free or cheap advertising, check out our microbusiness ebook.

For those of you who don't read our homesteading blog, I wanted to point you to the series I ran over there last week reviewing Your Money or Your Life.  This book is a great starting point for people who would like to quit their jobs but need a little push to help reach beyond the typical 9 to 5.  The entire program can also be downloaded for free from the Financial Integrity website, so you have no excuse not to check it out.

I'm not going to rehash the highlights I posted over at Walden Effect, but I did want to add another tidbit of information that I forgot to mention there --- ganzingus pins.  When I read Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin's description of this fictional object, it really resonated with me, and I suspect it will with you as well.  The authors argued that everyone has a simple-living achilles heel, some type of product we feel compelled to buy whenever we see it for sale.  The most obvious example of a gazingus pin is a fashionable lady's shoes --- I've read stories of people who have 3,000 pairs, clearly more than they can ever wear.

But don't think that the gazingus pin is an affliction that only strikes the shopaholic.  I'm a certified skinflint and I had my own gazingus pin until a few years ago --- field guides.  When I graduated from college and suddenly had a bit of spending money, I started treating myself to a new field guide every month.  The first couple of field guides gave me pure joy.  They were books that I'd longed to buy for a decade, and I pored over them, soaking up the new information.  But by the end of the year, I was reaching a bit to find field guides that appealed to me, and I was no longer having time to learn all of the information in each one before buying another.  Eventually, I stopped buying field guides and laid my gazingus pin to rest.

Being self-aware is essential when dealing with gazingus pins.  If you follow the steps to calculate your real hourly wage and then determine how much of your time each gazingus pin costs, you will probably quickly overcome the afflication and be well on your way to Microbusiness Independence!

After reading my post last week about simple living housing options, Andy wrote in to say:

Several other people have asked me the healthcare question, so I thought I'd run through some of the tricks we've come up with.  I'd love hear from other folks who might have solved the healthcare problem in another way as well.

• If you're eligible for a government program, take advantage of it.  There are a surprising number of free or reduced cost healthcare options out there which you may be eligible for.  When you're in the government system, you'll have to spend a bit more time advocating for your own needs, but not nearly as much time as you would otherwise be spending at that desk job!  Here are a few options to get you started:
  
• Mark served in the Navy for a few years, so it was a breeze to get him into the Veteran's Affairs healthcare system.  They pay for nearly everything (including most of your medicine costs) for ex-military employees who make less than around $30,000 per year, and still pay for a lot when your income is higher.
  
• If you're age 65 or older, you should clearly be in the Medicare system.
  
• Regardless of your age, if your health is very bad, you should check into the disability system, which will pay for most of your healthcare needs.
• Your local health department offers a lot of free or cheap services such as immunizations and women's health checkups, and most areas have clinics that will provide other kinds of health care on a sliding scale if your income is low enough.
  

• Sign up for a high deductible, catastrophic health insurance policy.  If you're not eligible for coverage through any of the government programs, you should sign up for a private health insurance policy.  I'm assuming your health is good --- if it's not, you should be looking into one of the government programs listed above (especially disability.)  Since you're pretty healthy, your primary needs for healthcare are twofold: relatively low cost preventative care and the unlikely but very possible chance of getting hit by a car or suddenly developing cancer.  With a high deductible health insurance policy, you cover the former category out of your own pocket, but are secure in the knowledge that you won't be bankrupted by the latter possibility.  Of course, you need to have at least a few thousand dollars in savings so that you can pay up to the deductible.  This type of policy is relatively inexpensive, although the cost will, of course, depend on your age, gender, and health.  You may spend somewhere between $100 and $200 per month.

• Consider alternatives to the doctor's office.  Many people who are used to being covered by health insurance rush to the doctor when they stub their toe or come down with a cold.  Your doctor really can't do much about problems like that, and you'd be better off staying home and putting your feet up for a day instead.  You may also discover that your recurring maladies can be solved through yoga or talking your problems out with a friend.  If you do have an ailment that needs the input of Western medicine, a nurse should be your first line of defense rather than a doctor.  Many grocery stores and pharmacies now have a nurse on staff who can help you with minor to moderate ailments, often for $50 or less.  I've had really good luck with these nurses, and have often found that they listened better than the overworked doctors I spent top dollar to visit.
  

• Barter with a doctor (or, better, a nurse.)  Chances are that you have a doctor or nurse in your circle of friends and family.  Remember that they are overworked and are probably sick of being stopped by sick people in the grocery store who want to show them their stubbed toes.  That said, these friends will often be willing to barter their services for your skills.  Can you trade a good meal or some plumbing work in exchange for that second opinion you'd like but can't afford?
  

• Be healthy.  Okay, I know you're sneering at me here, but there are so many things we can each do in our own lives to make sure we don't get sick.  Chances are that the flu you came down with is due to stress from dealing with your annoying boss, or  from trying to juggle Christmas visits to four family members.  When you follow our plan in Microbusiness Independence, chances are that you'll become much healthier simply due to being happy and to having more time to eat right and exercise.  Taking time to relax and finding a good balance between working your mind and your body will go a long way toward keeping you healthy, as will eating lots of fruits and vegetables.  You might be surprised by how seldom you feel the need to visit a doctor after you quit your job!
  

Our microbusiness ebook is premised on the notion that you can make a living in just a few hours a week, but that only works if you don't need to own a McMansion and a new car every year.  Housing is one of the biggest hurdles for many people who want to cut their expenses so that they can quit their job.  The average American family spends 20% of their income on housing, with the average price tag for rent or mortgage being over $16,000 per year.  Yikes!

Except for living in the dorms at college, I've never spent a penny on rent or a mortgage.  No, my parents didn't give me a house at birth, and everything I did can be repeated.  Here are a few options:

• Barter services for room and board --- I spent several years performing biological inventories on people's private properties.  Since I needed a place to live and wanted to be able to easily hit the woods at all hours, I asked for a room as part of my recompense.  I wasn't paying for utilities, rent, or food, so I saved up a few thousand dollars very quickly despite a low income.  You don't have to be a scientist to barter for room and board --- I had someone approach me asking if I'd keep an eye on his elderly mother in exchange for a place to stay.  I'll bet you have several skills you could barter.

• Acquire some roommates --- While I was bartering for a place to stay, my husband-to-be was renting out a whole building and then subletting rooms to housemates.  The rent he took in was often the same as or greater then the rent he sent to his own landlord, although he admits that he constantly had to be on the lookout for new roommates as people came and went.
  

• Live in your car --- A friend of mine got into debt and needed to save up some money fast.  He was living in the city and paying and arm and a leg for rent, so he decided to spend a few months living in his car.  Before he knew it, he was paying off his credit card bills and getting out of debt.  I know that this sounds too extreme for many people, but it's good to have a fall-back plan!

• Buy an elderly mobile home --- After hopping from home to home for several years, I wanted to settle down, so I used the money I'd saved while bartering for room and board to buy some land.  The land didn't have a livable structure on it, though, and I refused to go into debt to build or buy a house.  Luckily, my husband-to-be came up with a great plan --- find a free trailer to move onto our land.  Old mobile homes can often be bought for next to nothing (or actually for nothing) if you commit to hauling them away.  To find one, drive around trailer parks as close to your land as possible and look for decrepit mobile homes missing windows or doors.  Stop and talk to the owner of the trailer park, and chances are he'll be glad to be rid of the eyesore.  Hauling will be your biggest expense --- it cost us $2,000 to get our trailer moved in, but that's mostly because we needed them to bulldoze a road and haul it half a mile through the woods in the process.
  

For the last three and a half years, our housing expenses have consisted of property taxes (very low when your only building is a "worthless" mobile home) and utilities.  We've saved up yet more money, and are now building a small, well-insulated addition to our trailer to expand our living space (and lower our utilities.)  By keeping our housing expenses within our means, we've managed to stay out of debt while barely working.

Do you have a simple living housing tip?  I'd love to hear it!

By E. Sizemore

There are entire sections in most book stores these days dedicated to the “How to make money online” genre. I plan on writing a book about this topic myself within the next couple of years. Needless to say, we’re not going to cover the topic in any great detail from a single blog entry or article. But for those of you who just want an overview, what we are going for here is an introduction to the different ways you can make a living online.

Some people focus completely on one “way”. For instance, some people open up an eCommerce store and sell products. They don’t sell ads or do anything else. Some people have content websites that sell banner ads. They don’t join affiliate programs or sell their own products. Others, such as myself, mix and match the different monetization models depending on what is most appropriate for a particular website or topic. I will provide a link to one of my websites for each type of monetization model as an example.


#1 – eCommerce Store ( http://www.gaiam.com Where I work)

The first and most well-known online business is the “store”. eCommerce as a monetization model is one I’m sure everyone has heard of. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that the profit margin on most eCommerce products, once things like warehouse space, customer service, shipping… have been taken into account is often not much greater than the cut an affiliate marketer gets for doing a fraction of the work. We’ll get more into that later.

There are three ways to do eCommerce, generally speaking. First is to keep product in stock; second is to make the product on demand; and third is to have the manufacturer or distributor drop ship. They all have their pros and cons. The obvious downside of keeping products in stock is that you’re stuck with the bill if they don’t sell and it requires an upfront investment. If you run a microbusiness where you’ve created your own invention, like a chicken waterer, option two could be the way to go. The third option, drop shipping, is when you don’t keep the product in stock yourself. When an order comes in from your website you send the manufacturer or distributor the order and they ship it straight to your customer. Sometimes you can even get them to use your own shipping labels and packing slips with your logo. This is a good way to get started selling other people’s goods with minimal investment, but beware of the MANY drop shipping scams out there. We won’t get into that here, but let’s just say the best way to find drop shippers isn’t to Google “drop shippers” but rather to find a product you want to sell and call up the manufacturer or distributer on the phone and ask if they drop ship.

Any way you go about it, operating an eCommerce store is going to take a lot of time. You’ll be dealing with customers and vendors constantly. Imagine how many items get lost in the mail or arrive broken and need to be returned. Expect to spend a LOT of time on the phone talking to other people if you run an eCommerce business.


#2 – Affiliate Marketing (http://www.comparethebrands.com My affiliate site)

What if you could make money selling products online without having to deal with people? Personally, I don’t want to worry about customer service issues. I don’t want to deal with warehousing space, inventory management or logistics either. Let ALL of those eCommerce headaches be someone else’s problem and let me focus on what I do best, which is – sell stuff online. If this kind of situation sounds appealing to you then affiliate marketing might be the way to go. In this monetization model you get usually between 5% and 10% of the price for anything you sell by sending someone from your website to a merchant’s eCommerce website. Again, there are many great books about affiliate marketing and I’m not going to be able to teach you how to do this for a living in one post. But I can tell you where to start, which is A: signing up as an Associate on Amazon.com, and checking out major affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Share-a-Sale, Linkshare and Google’s affiliate network. Also, read as many affiliate marketing blogs as you can. Just don’t pay for any eBooks or programs. All of the information you’ll need is free if you know how to use Google. Here are a few posts I did on one of my websites (which is an affiliate and PPC website) a few years back:
http://www.firstpagefitness.com/make-money-with-these-fitness-affiliate-programs/
http://www.firstpagefitness.com/top-health-and-fitness-affiliate-marketing-programs/
http://www.firstpagefitness.com/water-for-life-affiliate-program-gets-even-better/


#3 – Lead Generation (http://www.usrecallnews.com My lead gen site for personal injury attorneys)

This is a more advanced form of affiliate marketing. Both traditional affiliate marketing and lead generation (lead gen) are what’s known as “pay-per-acquisition” or “performance based” marketing in which the business doesn’t have to pay you unless someone buys something, or signs up for something. In this case they are paying whenever someone signs up to be contacted, such as signing up for a newsletter or opening an account. Most lead gen. programs tend to be affiliated with topics like phone ringtones, real estate, online gambling, mortgages, pay-day loans and online education. In other words, competition is fierce. This is why I say it is a more advanced form of affiliate marketing. But the pay-outs are also higher and sometimes you can find a good niche for yourself.


#4 – Banner Advertising (http://www.livingoffgrid.org My content website with banner ads)

Unlike performance based marketing, publishers get paid for their banner ads even when they don’t make money for the advertiser. Whether or not someone clicks on the banner; whether or not someone buys something after clicking on the banner… it doesn’t matter. They are usually sold on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis, which means you have to have a LOT of traffic to make money with most banner advertising networks. However, you can privately approach merchants in your industry and offer banner ads for a monthly or annual cost regardless of impression count. They’ll usually want to see how much traffic your website gets.


#5 – Pay Per Click (ALL OF THE ABOVE websites also incorporate Google Adsense PPC ads)

There are two sides to the pay-per-click (PPC) coin. The first is that of the advertiser, in which they bid through programs like Google’s AdWords on keywords that trigger their ad to show up. They don’t pay unless someone clicks on the ad so they can get all of the “impressions” they want without the risks involved in banner advertising. At the same time, since they pay for the click and not the “conversion” or purchase, there is more of a risk here for merchants than with performance based affiliate advertising. Publishers (that’s you) use programs like Google’s AdSense to offer up advertising space on their websites. They only get paid when someone clicks on one of the ads, which could be in the form of links, banners and even video. One of the best things about this system is also one of the worst things: You don’t control which ads show up. This is good in a way because you don’t have to worry about finding advertisers. The system does it all for you based on the content (keywords) they find on your page. The downside is that sometimes ads will show up on your site that you don’t like. You can always log in to Google’s system and choose to block a certain advertiser, but sometimes it takes months before you notice. Generally speaking, however, I don’t find this to be a problem.


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – What ALL Of These Methods Reqire

SEO is the process of working on code, content, links and other factors in order to achieve a better placement on search engines like Google, Bing and yahoo!. You can buy your way into the sponsored ads on search engines (usually the ones that show up on the side) but the main results are referred to as “organic” and you have to work to get shown there. I am an SEO Consultant. It is what I do for a living so I have a big advantage in this regard. But anyone can learn the basics of SEO. It isn’t rocket science. It all boils down to basic elements like:

• Make sure your website is crawlable (eg no flash navigation or flash content, text should be text, not text embedded inside images, no fancy javascript navigations…)
• Make sure your content matches what you want to be found for (eg don’t write about blue widgets if you’re hoping for people to find you on Google for green thingamobobs)
• Make sure your meta title and meta description match what you want to be found for, which also matches the content on the page.
• Make sure good, quality websites link into your website. When possible, the link should be on a topically-related website and the hyperlink text should match what your title, meta description and page content says your website should be ranked for.
• Make sure you have unique, quality content that was written for your website and not shared with a bunch of other websites.

In other words: ALL YOUR DUCKS SHOULD BE IN A ROW. If your website is about green thingamabobs and that’s what you hope people will find you for on Google, you should have “Green Thingamabobs” in your Meta Title, in your meta description, in your page content, and in links that come into your website from other websites about “thingamabobs”. Again, entire books have been written about SEO. Entire books have been written about specific pieces of the SEO process, such as search-friendly copywriting. There are week-long conferences in cities across the nation dedicated to this topic. I have devoted the last five years of my life to perfecting the art and science of ranking highly on search engines like Google. You will not learn it overnight, nor can I tell you all about it in an article. But now you know enough to get started on your own research. Here are few resources to take you a step further:

• Find out what people are searching for: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Learn more about SEO: http://www.seomoz.org/blog
• Join an SEO forum: http://www.seobook.com/ (just sit back and read for awhile before joining discussions or asking question. You’ll find most of your questions have already been asked and answered by previous visitors.)
• Read lots of SEO blogs: http://www.toprankblog.com/search-marketing-blogs/

Everett Sizemore has been involved in SEO as an e-commerce business owner, marketing agency employee, independent SEO consultant and as an in-house SEO manager. Of these situations, Everett finds his in-house position as the SEO manager for an e-commerce brand to be the most challenging and rewarding. Everett works for Gaiam, Inc. and blogs about e-commerce SEO on his website http://www.esizemore.com. He speaks about in-house SEO at direct marketing conferences and has guest lectured at the University of Denver on Internet marketing topics, including SEO.

We do spend money advertising our chicken waterers, but whenever possible we snap up chances of getting free exposure.  As we discuss in our microbusiness ebook, probably the best method of free advertising is writing a press release for a national magazine.  Our microbusiness really took off after we were the subject of a writeup in Backyard Poultry Magazine --- nearly a year later, orders still trickle in from magazine readers who stumble across the article.

Another great option is to be interviewed for a podcast or radio show.  A friend of ours, Everett Sizemore, makes a large chunk of his income from ad revenue on his websites.  He was recently interviewed by American Freedom Radio, and the show went out over the internet and aired on 18 AM stations across the U.S.  His show is worth a listen for those of you who might want to follow in his footsteps.  Notice how he clearly went into the interview with the mission of sending folks back to his website, so he made sure that the radio personality got his URLs right and repeated them a few times.

If you're stressed out by the idea of having your voice broadcast on national radio, take a few minutes to write down your main talking points.  Then consider the kinds of questions the interviewer may ask and write up some potential answers.  Practice on your spouse or your dog so that your talking points feel natural on your tongue.  Then go for it!  The great thing about free advertising is that you have nothing to lose.

Still stuck on what your microbusiness product should be?  I checked Handy farm and home devices and how to make them out of the library last week, flipped through the book for an hour, and saw at least half a dozen ideas that could be turned into great microbusines products.

Many people seem to get derailed at the inventing stage of their microbusiness career, but I sincerely believe that you don't need to be an inventor to start a microbusiness.  During our current economic downturn, many people are striving to return to a simpler way of life, which opens a whole world of opportunities for the entrepreneur.  Why not look through your grandparents' attic for outdated devices from a previous era?  The world might just be ready for them again!

For other tips on starting your microbusiness and quitting your job, check out our ebook.