There are so many reasons why people go into self-employment. But can a blogger too be self-employed? How can one become a successful self-employed blogger?
The Coronavirus pandemic has opened windows of opportunity for people to work from home. And, if you are a blogger, this is probably the best time to be more serious.
The fact is that people staying at home to keep safe from the Coronavirus could mean more traffic for bloggers. It is because more people will be searching for stuff online.
The more people search for something online, the better for you to get traffic. However, working from home could be uncomfortably boring, especially, if you are not used to it.
Even if you have the right work-from-home tools to help you, the office environment will always be the best option. The good thing is that bloggers can work anywhere. However, it takes a lot to run blogging as a business.
Being a self-employed blogger
There is a need for you to become self-employed if you’re thinking of turning your blogging into your full-time job. You will need to register your business with HMRC if you are self-employed or a sole trader.
So, it means you must register as self-employed with HMRC if you want to make money or generate income from your blog. It doesn’t matter how much you earn – it must be declared whether you earn £10 or £10,000. If you are in the UK, registering as a self-employed blogger is actually easy and straightforward.
All you need is your National Insurance number, and then, you will be required to submit your earnings every year. You can do this via a self-assessment tax return and then pay any required tax and national insurance contribution.
Taxes and National Insurance
Being self-employed means that you are responsible for paying your own taxes and National Insurance contributions (NICs). Assuming you have no other sources of income, your first £12,500 blogging earning is tax-free.
National insurance is usually £3.05 per week say you earn between £6475 and £9501 per year. However, if you earn more than that, you’ll pay 9% on profits between £9,501 and £50,000, and 2% on profits over £50,000.
If you receive Universal or Tax Credits, you’ll need to let them know immediately. This means you will need to notify them of a change in circumstances.
Records and Bookkeeping
Record-keeping is very important, especially when you are in self-employment. This is because you will need to account for every penny you generated as income as well as your expense. Businesses are required to keep financial records, especially for HMRC and this also includes self-employed too.
For a UK-based self-employed, keeping records of your business dealings is required. You need to do this for at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year.
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Using a great business tool like Quickbooks could really help when it comes to keeping your business financial records. Also, you can keep track of your earnings with a simple income and expenditure spreadsheet.
Failure to keep records means you could face a fine of thousands of pounds from HMRC. However, keeping records will make it easy for you to file your tax return.
Successful self-employed bloggers
Nowadays, blogging is no longer a hobby, it’s a business! In fact, anyone can start a profitable blogging business and it won’t cost you a fortune.
So, do you want to become a professional blogger? Have you got the tools that can help you become a successful self-employed blogger?
If you are passionate about writing, you can start blogging. You can blog about anything you are passionate about. You can blog about relationships, food, fashion, animal.
It’s all about finding the right niche markets and then monetize your blog to generate income to sustain yourself.
Making money as a blogger
Blogging is all about passion and dedication, however, you can monetize this passion to generate some kind of income. Blogging requires a lot of effort to make money from it. As a matter of fact, successful bloggers don’t just post content and forget about it.
They also get involved in marketing their content across social media platforms to drive traffic. There are various ways people make money from their blogs. If you want to make money from your blog, below are some of the best ways to do it:
#1]. Make money via advertisements
Bloggers are making money by placing relevant brands or companies’ adverts on their blogs. For instance, if you are blogging about money or business finance, you can get local banks to place adverts on your blog.
However, adverts can only be a great source of revenue if you are running a high-traffic blog. Otherwise, no brand will be interested in wasting their resources advertising on a blog with poor or low traffic.
#2]. Make money via affiliates
Affiliate marketing is probably the most popular means of generating revenue as a blogger. What is affiliate marketing and how does it work? Can you make enough money through affiliates? Affiliate marketing simply means you are marketing or promoting certain products or services.
You will get the affiliate links from an affiliate network or platform which tracks any sales generated through the links. Then you’ll place the affiliate links on your blog and gets commissions when people click the link and buy the products.
What you earn largely depends on your traffic as well as the brand and product you are promoting. However, you can expect to earn anywhere between 1-10% commission on most sales tracked via affiliate links.
You can join ShareASale and Flexoffers if you are looking for affiliate networks with good products to promote. is another great affiliate network platform you can join; it offers one of the best native banner ads.
#3]. Sponsored posts
Do you know you can also make money through sponsored posts? Sometimes called advertorial or promotional content, sponsored posts offer a great way to make money as a blogger.
It works like guest posting but you will get paid for posting the article on your blog. So, how do you get sponsored articles for your blog?
First of all, you have to build an audience for your blog in order to make money from it. Then, you can join influencer platforms like ValuedVoice to get paid opportunities. We have been using this platform to get sponsored posts for some years now. You too can join them to grow your blog income!
However, you should be vigilant and very careful when it comes to sponsored articles. Always make sure that the links in the article are from credible and friendly websites. Don’t go for just any link and kill your blog because of money.
#4]. Social media promotion
Social media promotion could be a good option if you have a good number of social media followers or fans. This is an influencer marketing strategy that brands and marketers are using to promote or market a product.
It means you get paid for featuring certain products and services on your social media channels. However, how much you get paid largely depends on such factors as followers, likes, retweets, or reposting.
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