Yesterday, I mentioned that it is possible to run your home business from anywhere with the help of a PDA. Now your smart phone is about to get, well, smarter. Skype has announced that it will be providing applications for iPhone and for BlackBerry. This will allow callers to use a wi-fi network to place VoIP calls. This could be helpful for those making international calls — or for those who are approaching the limit on their minutes.

Personally, I find Skype exceptionally helpful for my home business: I can make international phone calls at a mere fraction of what I am charged by the landline or my wireless carrier. I love Skype, and this move makes the service even more lovable. The release of the iPhone app is imminent, while it will be May before Skype is available on BlackBerry.

Okay, so your PDA probably can’t run your home business. But you can run your home business using a PDA. Jean Murray over at Home Biz Notes has written an excellent post about the pros and cons of having your PDA as your primary mode of doing business. And it can be rather helpful, for the following reasons:

* You can keep all the information you need in one place that’s easy for you to access.

* You can easily address work-related issues while you are away.

* Your PDA can be outfitted with mobile versions of different software programs that you use for your business.

Of course, there are drawbacks: What happens when you lose your PDA? It has everything on it. I figure that I’d sync it up to a laptop, and keep the main stuff on the laptop. If my home business stuff was really involved, I’d also use an online data backup service — just to be sure.

At any rate, right now the only thing I use a PDA for is to check my email while I’m traveling. But I have dream of having my own laptop (not using my husband’s for emergencies) and my own PDA at some point, and when that happens, I’ll truly be mobile.

Explaining the financial crisis, and the way opaque and complex financial instruments work. It’s really quite funny. These Brits are hilarious geniuses.

Happy Friday!

One of the important considerations to make when you have a home business — or even when you are working a more traditional job — is income diversity. It is important to understand where your money is coming from, and to work on make sure that it is coming from more than one source. (As unemployment continues to show discouraging numbers, this is especially important for those with 9-5 jobs.)

In my work from home situation, I look for income diversity in a number of ways. While a great deal of money comes from my blogging, I am careful to make sure that no one client has an overwhelming amount of my work. I also try to diversify the kinds of things I write. In addition to blogs, I write for a science Web site as a reporter, provide non-blog Web content, and write for my local newspaper. Sometimes I even do some editing. And, just in case, I have accounts at Associated Content, eHow and Text Broker. This way, if I need to, I can write for immediate payment. I also have Google AdSense and arrangements for residual income on some of my blog posts.

But income diversity isn’t just about diversifying the types of business you do. It is also about finding other sources of income. You can do this by making money through sales on eBay, getting another job, investing in dividend paying stocks or participating in P2P lending. The income streams you have, the more secure you are. And if you can earn more through passive income options, that’s even better.

That $400 (single), $800 (joint) tax credit promised in the recent economic stimulus package is about ready to start appearing. This tax credit will be spread out over 9 months, so it won’t be a huge improvement. But it is something. If you work for someone else, you will automatically see an adjustment. You won’t have to do anything — not even submit a new W-4. Your employer should adjust your withholding.

What to do if you are self-employed

If you have a home business, the story changes. You have two options:

1. Have your estimated taxes amount adjusted. You can learn how to do this by looking at IRS Publication 15-T.

2. Wait and claim it as a credit on your taxes next year. You can simply wait and claim it next year on your taxes. This is what I will do, since I’m already on track to make more this year, and without the credit my estimated tax payments are not likely to be sufficient.

It’s a down economy, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t generate sales for your home business. Miller Heiman offers this helpful advice on how you can maintain your sales — even when the economy is down:

* Avoid cutbacks on your sales resources. It may seem counter-intuitive, but research shows that down times are a good time to increase your sales resources. Now is not the time to stop advertising. You need to bring in more income.

* Prioritize. Figure out where your priorities are. Hint: your existing customers should be priorities. Try to hold on to them with superior service and competitive pricing. Then focus on accounts that left, and new customers.

* Discipline. Be disciplined with your management, and with your resources — including some of your expenses. There are places to cut.

Can you think of additional ways to increase sales in a down economy?

Getting a small business loan has been difficult for some months now, but things are likely to get even worse. Four of the biggest small business lenders, Capital One Bank, Bank of America, Temecula Valley Bancorp and Small Business Loan Source, all slowed — or stopped altogether — their acceptance of new applications.

CNN Money reports on the lost small business loans:

Their sudden absence from the lending scene has left a hole that the banks continuing to participate in the program have not filled in. If current lending trends continue, only two of the top 30 lenders are projected to increase their loan volume this year, according to Bob Coleman, the head of Coleman Publishing.

The sharp drop-off was apparent in the SBA’s loan data for the last three months of 2008: The number of loans funded through the agency’s 7(a) program fell from more than 20,000 a year earlier to fewer than 9,000. The total dollar value of all the loans funded fell 40%, from $3.2 billion at the end of 2007 to $1.9 billion last quarter.

Many home business operations are also likely to be affected by this. Are you finding it difficult to keep running your home business without financing?

People are still wondering what a Ponzi scheme is all about. Sesame Street is here to help!

Happy Friday!

One of the more interesting quandries that I encountered this year as the accountant was doing my taxes was this: Left over from my days as a sole proprietorship were some 1099s that still had my Social Security Number on them. Some of clients hadn’t been using the new tax ID number I’d sent when I became a LLC!

It is important to note that in these cases, your income has to be divided up according to tax ID number/Social Security Number. This means that any income that is listed on the 1099 under your Social Security Number has to be considered Schedule C income. It didn’t really change my taxes, but it made things a little more complicated for my accountant. As a result, I’m sending a W-9 to my clients to make sure they have the tax ID number associated with my LLC. It’s something you should double check as well during the course of your tax preparation.

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I recently came across an interesting article on Freelance Parent at Sparkplugging. This article talked about setting freelancing rates. And I realized that this is an agonizing decision that all freelancers go through — whether you are writing, designing or consulting. You have to decide how to set your rates.

Ways to set your freelancing rates

There are a couple of ways to set your freelancing rates:

1. Per hour: You can figure out how much you are worth per hour. You can estimate how long it might take you to complete a project and go from there.
2. Per word/page: If you are a writer, you might set your rates according to word count or page count. Depending on the difficulty of the work involved, you might charge more for some types of work.
3. Per project: Some just look at the project in terms of difficulty, specifications and time it is likely to take to complete and then set their freelancing rates on this basis.

When you do set freelancing rates, though, keep in mind that not everyone will pay what you charge. I’m happily to a point where, for the most part, if someone doesn’t like my rate, they can move on. There are plenty of others that know my worth. However, I did have to start out taking lower paying jobs until I got some experience. That’s just the way it is.

Do you have a method for setting your freelancing rates?

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