TurboTax Self-Employed

An image of a Black man using a laptop, using TurboTax Self-Employed software to do his taxes.

Last updated on April 21st, 2021 at 11:53 pm

Many of us dream of owning our own businesses, being able to call the shots and feel like we’re working by our own priorities instead of anybody else’s. The idea’s appealing—there’s little in life like getting rewards that measure up to the amount of effort you put in—but you’re sorely mistaken if you expect it to be a cakewalk. You soon discover that owning a business comes with a lot of responsibility—keeping track of expenses. Paying wages. And it all comes to a head around this time each year when we have to account for it all and pay our self-employed taxes. But TurboTax Live Full-Service Self-Employed will help to guide you along the way and give your business the little lift it deserves this tax season.

Taxes Aren’t SUPPOSED to be Fun, but They Don’t Have to be HARD. Enter TurboTax Self-Employed.

Owning a business can seem overwhelming—you suddenly have to do all this stuff on your own that other people or entire departments would do for you if you were an employee. Paying employment insurance and Canada Pension Plan contributions for your employees. Keeping track of your business expenses and knowing which ones apply to your claims and deductions. It really challenges you to be as organised as possible so that tax time’s a smooth transition when you need to make sense of it all.

That said, my tax approach isn’t always the best it could be, but I’ve learned some things from it that I want to help you avoid when preparing your return.

CONTINUE READING to find out more about how TurboTax Self-Employed Can help you take command of your taxes! “TurboTax Self-Employed”

The SEO Struggle: Search Engine Optimization, Part 3

A Black man's hands typing away on a MacBook Pro: The featuring image for The SEO Struggle, Part 3: Making SEO Work For You
Source: https://nappy.co/photo/331/computer

Last updated on March 8th, 2021 at 04:32 pm

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

And finally, we hit the good part—making SEO work for you. Using everything we learned from the previous parts and applying them to the content you create. It’s taken a while to put all of the content together, but without further ado, here’s The SEO Struggle, Part Three: Making SEO Work for You!

Good SEO Doesn’t Have to Cost MONEY—It Just Takes a Whole Lotta WORK.

So let me tell you the good news—putting great SEO together for your site doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. But what it is going to take is a whole lot of time.

I’d picked this series back up from the unfinished pile after unexpectedly giving a talk on my SEO journey to my Black blogging peers and realising that I’d learned more than I’d really considered.

What some of the best tools are for SEO and where to find them. Effective ways to boost both your on-page SEO—or rather, the SEO affected by the way your webpages are put together—and your off-page SEO, or all the things outside of your webpages that affect their rankings.

In part one of The SEO Struggle, we talked about what SEO is and why it’s important. In part two, the focus was on all the things Google uses to rank your site and how they work. Now that you know all that, let’s work on getting you the search engine presence that you deserve.

CONTINUE READING ABOUT MAKING SEO WORK FOR YOU IN THE THIRD PART OF THE SEO STRUGGLE! “The SEO Struggle: Search Engine Optimization, Part 3”

The SEO Struggle: Search Engine Optimization, Part 2

The SEO Struggle | Search Engine Optimization | Part 2 | Understanding SEO | A magnifying glass on a MacBook keyboard implying a search.

Last updated on February 22nd, 2021 at 12:47 am

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

If you’ve read the first post in The SEO Struggle, you’ll know why you need an SEO strategy and what it can do for your brand—but how good are you at actually understanding SEO?

My unexpected dive into the world of search engine optimization taught me that while SEO is a tangible and measurable thing, there’s a lot you need to do to take full advantage of it.

Many creators think they already have a handle on SEO because they use Yoast and strive to get as many green circles as possible, but really understanding SEO asks for so much more.

Let me tell you all about it!

Search engine optimization: some short-term pain for a VERY long-term gain!

A word cloud about SEO and many of the things associated with it. Money. Execute. Creative. Success.
There’s a lot that goes into search engine optimization, and this word cloud discusses many of the concepts that go alongside it.

The first thing you need to understand about SEO is that you’re not going to see results overnight. For one, when Google crawls your site is out of your control, so there’ll always be a delay between when you update your site and when Google ranks it in its results. This isn’t like the good ol’ days of Google Reader where someone could subscribe to your RSS feed and have updates ready at their fingertips when they wanted them. While you can get people to sign up for email updates when you post or even for a newsletter, most people who come across your site will do so in one of three ways.

CONTINUE READING about understanding SEO and what you need to know to use it on your site! “The SEO Struggle: Search Engine Optimization, Part 2”

The SEO Struggle: Search Engine Optimization, Part 1

A photo of an open planner with ideas written in it and the text overlaid reads: "The SEO Struggle | Search Engine Optimization, Part 1 | Why You Need an SEO Strategy"
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

Last updated on February 25th, 2021 at 10:07 pm

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

I always thought I understood the SEO struggle, but it turns out that there was so much more to learn about it than I’d ever imagined.

The SEO Struggle: 6500 words (and counting) on why we need to do EVERYTHING NECESSARY for the world to see us the way we want to be seen.

It was October 2020, where after more than twenty years of creating content in the digital space, I finally understood why I wasn’t reaching my potential with my work. It was well-written, sure, and I was doing well on social media, but what I didn’t realise is that the world wasn’t seeing in my content the things I saw in it myself.

A family portrait from the Palmer family's Fall 2020 photoshoot with Meaghan from Olive & Ivy Photography.
Photo courtesy of Olive and Ivy Photography

Where I saw a Black man writing about his life spent juggling fatherhood, marriage, and a full-time job, the internet saw a guy who plays Candy Crush. And where I saw a blog that talked about life in Toronto and the stories that went along with it, the internet saw me talk about Whippet Sticks and that one time Emma Stone lip-synched on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Everything I stood for wasn’t shining through, and I didn’t even realise I was doing something wrong.

I didn’t understand that this was all under my control, and I could learn how to communicate better to search engines what my content’s about. There were repeatable steps I could follow to make sure my content had the best shot at getting favourable positions in search results instead of just putting it out there and hoping for the best. It helped me understand that I needed to do a better job using something I’d always assumed I understood already.

It was time to dive deeper into SEO than I’d ever gone before.

CONTINUE READING to find out more about SEO strategies and how they’ll help your content! “The SEO Struggle: Search Engine Optimization, Part 1”

Clubhouse: Changing How We Pandemic If You LET It.

A photo of Clubhouse on my iPad Pro and my MacBook Pro with a draft of my blog post about Clubhouse on my desk with a Philips Hue light bar on either side. The text "Clubhouse: Changing How We Pandemic... If We LET It" is placed over the image.

Last updated on April 22nd, 2021 at 12:28 am

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

I was expecting to spend yet another night with my new friends on Clubhouse, getting into all sorts of mischief as we stayed up chatting well past our bedtimes. We’d talk about everything going on in our lives and all the things on our hearts we couldn’t seem to share with the people around us. Or, on this particular evening, to join a talent show that some of them had put together to deepen the relationship beyond what the rooms we help moderate filled with hundreds of users usually allow us to.

But when I went to load the app on my iPad Pro, all I got was this:

A Clubhouse screenshot with an error code reading "Our servers are struggling and your request failed. Please give it a sec and try again? Thank you!"
CONTINUE READING to find out more about Clubhouse and why I’m on it so much! “Clubhouse: Changing How We Pandemic If You LET It.”