I will bet there are plenty of folks who don’t know why I mean by this title. Working 1099? What’s that? Have you truly lost it this time Cindy? We’ve heard of working 9 to 5, heck they even wrote a song about that.
For those of you who don’t already know, when you get a job at a business and you want to become an employee of that company, you fill out a W4. At the end of the year, they give you a W2, all filled out with your social, your employee ID number and your wages for the year. You then file that form with your 1040 and you either pay taxes or get money back.
However, that’s not the only way to get paid for performing tasks for a company. You can also be a 1099 contract employee. Which means you fill out a W9 form when you begin your gig, and they in turn issue you a 1099 at the close of the year. While you may actually be doing working at the company, you will not be working for said company as an employee.
Which makes you an independent contractor. As a 1099 contractor, you negotiate a pay per project or an hourly rate with a company, you complete the work, the company pays you the agreed upon funds.
That’s what we do at Social Cindy. My husband and son build websites for all types of businesses, I work on the Social Media and Blogging aspect of the business, and we don’t actually have any W2 Employees ourselves,.We only currently have 1099 contractors.
The people who work with us usually work in their own homes or offices, they aren’t required to work any particular hours, rather, they just need to deliver us a certain amount of work within certain time frames. They can sleep all day and work all night, or, what is most likely the situation, they can work for several different companies and devote a certain number of hours to each.
If you are at a crossroads in your current W2 job situation, you want to do something new, or perhaps even what you are doing now, just not for the same company, why not become an independent contractor? Take those skills your current employer takes for granted and make a bigger impression in the world. Share your talents with other companies and perhaps find new ways to use those talents.
Make sure you update your skills on your resume and post it out on LinkedIn, make a business Facebook Page for yourself and follow the various pages in your community where businesses make postings looking for certain skill sets. And, clean up your personal Facebook page. No photos of you dressed in raggedy clothes, no beer or wine bottles and no boasting about how drunk you got the other night. People will check you out.
Social Cindy,
over and out.
#socialmedia,#websitedesign,#verobeach1099
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