Estimated Tax Payments

If you earn or receive money from a business, investments, alimony or even prizes, you are required to pay taxes on that income throughout the year, not just in April. Failure to pay on time can cost you big money in penalties and interest.

Wage and salary earners are accustomed to having their taxes withheld from their payroll. When your income is not exclusively through payroll, the responsibility falls directly on you to meet your tax obligations.

Does this mean you have to send the IRS a check every week or two? No. The IRS has set up a quarterly payment system where Q1 is due by April 15, just like the previous year's taxes, then following on 6/15, 9/15 and finally on 1/15 of the following year. If any due date falls on the weekend or a holiday, it's extended to the next business day.

The IRS preferred method is that you figure the total estimated tax for the whole year, and send four equal payments, following the previously mentioned schedule.

Have your CPA help you with the worksheet and Form 1040-ES to determine the correct quarterly amount.

You can pay by check along with the Form 1040-ES voucher, or you can file electronically using a credit card by enrolling in the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System, or using the IRS’ Direct Pay option.

Ignoring your estimated tax duties can lead to a tough time at the end of the tax year. It can be difficult enough, just paying the lump sum that you were supposed to pay throughout the year, but when the IRS tacks on penalties and interest, it's like adding insult to injury.

Tanya Higginbotham, a Certified Public Accountant, can help you with your estimated taxes and any other IRS issue you or your business are facing.

High Pressure Water Jetting

This is the second in my series about how my clients make money. I am continuing my discussion of Professional Piping Systems, Inc. This post is about their service in which they use high powered jets of water to scour the inner surface of industrial pipes.

High Pressure Jetting efficiently removes blockages from pipes regardless of pipe size, provided the correct flow and pressure are maintained. Obstructions including roots, sewage, grease, minerals such as lime etc. can be jetted loose & flushed away using a high pressure nozzle.

Routine maintenance with high pressure jetting can prevent expensive, inconvenient downtimes that halt business and close roadways.

High Pressure Jetting is applicable in the sewer mainline, beneath streets, in laterals between buildings & municipal systems as well as drainage pipes under or inside buildings.

Storm drains are also good candidates for high pressure water jet cleaning. They may be blocked by roots, silt and other debris that can all be removed using a high pressure jet.

Any diameter or length of pipe in manufacturing and chemical or food processing plants which carries liquid can be cleared of pipeline blockages. Each blockage can be dealt with individually to choose the best method of cleaning.

A high pressure water pump is at the center of this process, powered by a strong engine and backed by high pressure hoses, delivering the high pressure water from the pump to the specialized jet nozzle.

The right tank is of equal importance. When water is available onsite, it is more economical to use a smaller tank, otherwise, a larger tank can prevent multiple refill trips.

Professional Piping Services, Inc. has the knowledge, experience and equipment to do the job right the first time!

Sherlock Pig

This is the first in a series about how some of my clients make money. I can't give the specifics about how much money they make, but that's okay.

One of the ways my client, Professional Piping Services, Inc. makes money is by helping their clients re-map their piping systems. Often, the actual layout of a piping system varies considerably from what was designed. Whether that's because of unforeseen obstacles to construction, or errors made by the initial builders, it can make maintenance and cleaning difficult.

If you're not familiar with Poly Pigs or Pipe Pigging, keep an eye on this blog as I'll discuss it in another post.

Enter Sherlock Pig, an electronic device embedded in a special poly pig, The device transmits signals while traversing a piping system

Sherlock Pig, the tracking device, can be used to track the location & depth of pipes that are not properly documented. The "as built" drawings turn out to be "as imagined".

The device can also help find "lost" valves and identify those that are malfunctioning while also confirming suspected blockages, identifying size disparities and the leaking this causes.

Like other poly pigs, it is suitable in multidimensional systems of all types and sizes and products. The inline velocity is controlled and requires only one entry port and an exit port. This allows miles of pipe to be inspected in a single run.

PPSI now provides a method to accurately locate underground and subaqueous piping systems.

To learn more about this service, please visit the PPSI website.

Professional Piping Services, Inc. is a Certified Underground Utility Contractor with Florida License Number CU-C055717

Abandoned Blog?

Almost.

I had almost abandoned this blog, but just today thought I could post a bit here about some of my clients and how we (my clients and I) make money.

I think I had originally said "make money online", but it looks like I'll be less specific going forward.

I kind of laughed at myself when re-reading my inaugural post in this blog because I never did anything near what I talked about then. LOL! I still have dreams of being a successful content creator of some kind, but I don't know if I'll ever make it happen.

I'll post more later!

Ebay item selling too low

I have an ebay item up right now, closing in 11 hours. Members Only Leather Jacket. I took a risk and started the bidding at only five dollars! I would really rather not sell it at that price. That'll be an expensive lesson.

Wan't a great deal on a jacket? Save me by bidding on mine.

UPDATE:
It sold for just over $20. With shipping, the buyer will pay just under $40, so it's a REALLY good deal for them, and I think my father-in-law will be happy with the twenty bucks.

Unexpected earnings!

WOW!

I put up a single page (Really, more like a quarter of a page) at tecbrat.com and popped in a Google ad. I got a click!

It paid almost a dollar. Only 999,999 more and I'm set for life!

eBay, of course

No blog about making money on the web should miss out on the opportunity to talk about eBay. Even though I have heard some hinting that eBay has, in the effort to be buyer friendly, become seller unfriendly, I decided to give it a try.

I signed up and was able to get a user name that I like: RiverviewDeals.

I actually like that eBay username so much that I decided to by the domain name too: RiverviewDeals.com

I just pointed it to a blogspot blog riverviewdeals.blogspot.com

As I write this, I only have one item offered. It is a Members Only brand jacket from around the '70s or 80's. Take a look if it's still there: Members Only Leather Jacket


I'll keep this blog updated on my progress on eBay.

Page 1 of Google!

WOW!

It may seem small, but my blog about mTurk is on page1 for a Google search of "mturk experience".
I don't know yet if it will pay off, but that got me excited.

SEO is the foundation for success on the web. When writing code for the web hosting company, that was always paramount in our minds. If the search engines don't like you, or more specifically if Google doesn't like you, then you might as well not even exist.

Praise God for signs of progress!

UPDATE:

---

When I posted about being on page 1, I was number 10 and it was a link to the page "Some Real mTurk Experience" Today, New Years Eve 2012, I searched for mTurk Experience and found the main page of My mTurk Experience at number 8.

Update on SwagBucks

I am considering a seperate blog just for SwagBucks, so I can blog more about it without it overtaking this one. In the meantime, I'll use this space.

So far I have 71SB. That translates to $0.71 in Wal-mart cards. I've put forth very little effort for most of those. I clicked on videos, one at a time, until I had let 10 of them play while I was doing other things. All that effort gave me just 3SB or $0.03. Not too bad for just clicking the video links and letting them play while I turk. Since my soundcard is out, I don't even have to worry about the noise. :-)

SwagBucks, again

I mentioned that my daughter had started using swagbucks, so I had her send me a referral so that she can earn SBs off my searches. I was over there and got a chance to get 20 SBs for signing up for Kellogs Family Rewards. It went pretty smoothly. Certainly no harder than earning $0.20 at mTurk.

I still need to see how easy it is to actually convert these points to Wal-Mart cards. I think I'll do my first as soon as I get 500 points.

Adding Product Advertisements to my Blog

FAIL

Either I'm an idiot, or both Amazon Affiliates ads and Google Affiliatess ads are unintuitive to get started. I think my own history has shown that I'm not an idiot.

I got the feeling that maybe the instruction from Amazon were out-dated, so i went back to Google.

The instructions there seemed easy enough. I got far enough along to have it ask me to search for a product. When I clicked on a product link, image or full ad, I'd see a flash of some small message, and then nothing. There's no "okay" button or similar. Until I find the solution, this is a complete waste of time.

mTurk is paying off, and thinking about SwagBucks

mTurk is paying off, at least a little bit.

I did some mTurk tasks, called "HITs", but only made about $2.40/hr at best. Consider that this is independant contractor work, and I'll have to pay employment tax on top of income tax and it doesn't leave much for me.

That being said, I'm going to continue because I read that once you have 1k or 5k HITs, better opportunites open up. I hope to get to where I can make $100/day and still have time to blog.

Keep an eye on My MTurk Experience to see how it goes.

My daughter started using SwagBucks. I won't link to them yet, because I have not vetted them yet to know if they are legit. One of the ways you can accept "rewards" from them is by Wal-Mart gift card. Since they can be used for Groceries, Gas, Household items and just about everything else, that makes them almost cash to me. I just don't know what kind of $/hr to expect there. I will, of course, post our experiences here.

Never Give Up!

As I mentioned in a couple of posts here already, I am still FAR from even thinking about 100 blogs, but I have a renewed interest in posting here and there, so let's see if I can stay at it and actually do something this time.

In addition to blogging, I am considering Amazon's Mturk program.
Follow my progress on it here;

Slow Going

So far I have 7 blogs with a total of about 68 posts. I'll never get to a full living off them at this rate. Life is so time consuming that I find it difficult to get back to blogging. I have had a few more clicks here and there over the years, but still have not reached the payout level. I blame my own inactivity, not the adsense system.

Still at it

I haven't done the 100 blogs that I talked about, but I still have a couple running. I barely use them though, so adwords aren't doing much. I find that when I am active on tech support forums, helping people out, I get a couple of clicks at my main personal website that shows up in my signature.

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to actually blogging about something.

:-)

Adsense

I think TOS prevents me from being precise, but I got another click today at tecbrat.com so Maybe I'll actually get a check one of these days.

LOL.

100 blogs update

I haven't done those 100 blogs I mentoined, and I haven't done the SEO that needs to be done, so I am not yet monetizeing on my blogs. I will keep trying.

No personal Information?

I usually avoid online ads, but this stupid thing came up in my pandora player today that had the "General", a Patton characature, sitting on the dash of a car. (General Auto Insurance) Mousing over it you could swerve the car to dodge clowns in oncoming cars. It was an odd diversion for a moment. Well, as I was about to mouse out, I accidentally clicked and went to their website. I saw that they said they'd give an insurance quote with no personal information. So, I bit. I began the form and the second page of the form asks for name and birthday info for all drivers. HOW IS THIS "NO PERSONAL INFORMATION"!?

I certainly won't be doing business with anyone who flat out lies to you in an attempt to get your business. /rant.

Inaugural Post

I'll have to study Google's terms and conditions to see how much I can share, but it is my goal to create and maintatin 100 blogs, each containing adsense banners, and monetize off of them. If I can get to the point that each blog makes $1.00 a day I will be doing well. I could live off that. Put that on top of my 9-5 and my wife can quit her job. double that and we won't have to work.

I know $73000.00/yr isn't HUGH money, but if it is passive or nearly passive then it's great. I can blog while on vaction. I can blog from anywhere.

I am not expecting "get rich quick", but curious how well this will work out.

If you see my first blog, tecbrat.blogspot.com, you'll see that I do a little SEO work, so I understand that it takes a while before anyone even knows you exist. I have seen 2 clients pulling in about a dollar a day on adsense. That's what got me started.