SF's road to mortgage freedom!

Knit_Witch

SuperSecretSquirrel wrote: »

Huuuuge congratulations!!! Sorry for being so late to the party, I'm a catch up every few weeks type lurker, not a daily reader!

Also, I'm guilty of reading your blog emails, not the site itself. If there's a lot of us doing the same that might impact your page views? You have at least one regular reader here that reads every new post but isn't a 'site visitor'... If you start to monetize the blog I will change my habits though, any plans on that front? You have hosting fees and domain name costs to cover so some ads at least would be fair!

Likewise - I just read the mails , hmm wonder if you could do what Mortgagefeeinthree does, which is you get a taster in the mail send out and a link click through to the actual post on on the blog?

slowlyfading

SuperSecretSquirrel wrote: »

Huuuuge congratulations!!! Sorry for being so late to the party, I'm a catch up every few weeks type lurker, not a daily reader!

Also, I'm guilty of reading your blog emails, not the site itself. If there's a lot of us doing the same that might impact your page views? You have at least one regular reader here that reads every new post but isn't a 'site visitor'... If you start to monetize the blog I will change my habits though, any plans on that front? You have hosting fees and domain name costs to cover so some ads at least would be fair!

Thank you! And I am pondering whether to add some ads on there that may make a few pennies - got to look at the tax implications for that though!

Knit_Witch wrote: »

Likewise - I just read the mails , hmm wonder if you could do what Mortgagefeeinthree does, which is you get a taster in the mail send out and a link click through to the actual post on on the blog?

I would have to find out how you do that first but thanks for the idea!

ljaneyr

slowlyfading wrote: »

Thank you! And I am pondering whether to add some ads on there that may make a few pennies - got to look at the tax implications for that though!


I would have to find out how you do that first but thanks for the idea!

I've been getting FrugalWoods e-mails since you mentioned them on your blog and they give you the first paragraph only in the e-mail, but then their posts are often very long!

slowlyfading

ljaneyr wrote: »

I've been getting FrugalWoods e-mails since you mentioned them on your blog and they give you the first paragraph only in the e-mail, but then their posts are often very long!

Thanks for letting me know that - I'll have a look

edinburgher

How you feeling SF?

slowlyfading

edinburgher wrote: »

How you feeling SF?

I'm alright thank you, just feeling ridiculously tired. I don't seem to make it past 9pm downstairs these days I suppose I should get used to that feeling

edinburgher

It's said that the first pregnancy is the worst in this regard.

slowlyfading

Only another 25 weeks to go!

edinburgher

Be there before you know it

SuperSecretSquirrel

I see you have managed to alter your emails so they just have a teaser intro now You now have a proper site visit from me so I can read the rest of the mortgage article :cool:

As for tax implications, the likes of adsense etc will literally earn you pennies to start. You only pay tax on profits, and there's a fair chance your hosting fees and domain registration etc will actually cost more than what you earn, so there would be no profit and therefore no tax to pay. You also need to be earning a fair bit from self employment (£5,885 a year) before you have to pay any additional national insurance contributions.

Going by the book you'll need to register as self employed and submit your small earnings national insurance exemption form to hmrc right away. It is all very straightforward. Filling in and submitting your tax return when there are no profits is simple, you can do it all online, but you do have to submit an annual tax return even if the tax due is £0.00 or you'll get fined. I don't suppose you absolutely have to do this stuff up front, you might be able to slap the ads on and register with hmrc retrospectively, and some might argue that if you're running at a loss that maybe you don't need to register at all, but personally I think it's best to be totally honest and upfront with hmrc to avoid any potential bother. The only downside is that it costs you a little time to fill in your tax return each year (maybe half an hour if you keep good records, which I'm sure as a good mfw you do!), the potential upside if your blog really takes off is incalculable. Think Mr Money Moustache! I wouldn't let tax and self assessment put you off. It isn't hard, and you do have the chance of striking gold and making a lot of money, very handy for a mfw

I feel like there should be some kind of "I am not a qualified financial adviser so take my words with a large pinch of salt and do your own research" type disclaimer here, so yeah, that :rotfl: Good luck!