Non Clinical Doctors
  • Non-clinical jobs for doctors
    • How to Find a Non-Clinical Job
    • Medical career strategies
    • Transition Toolkit
    • Physician Success Stories
    • Wound Care Physician
  • Where to find non clinical jobs
    • Job Openings
    • Medical Writing and Strategy Agencies
    • Medical Review Companies
    • Medical Writing Job
    • Clinical Research Training
  • Useful Links
  • Careers for Physicians Without Residency
    • Licensing and Programs for International Physicians
  • Resources For Physicians With Disability
  • Re-Entry Into Medicine
  • Tips from your doctor
  • How to Become a Licensed Physician in the USA

Transition Toolkit

The instruction Manual For Doctors Considering Career Change

Creating and Making an Income From Your Website

5/28/2020

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Having an online presence is becoming an important part of building and maintaining a professional reputation. For your customers, clients or patients, visiting your website is one of the most important ways they use to 'screen' you to decide if they want your professional services. Constructing a website can be intimidating, but even if you are not experienced with computers, you can tackle it in a few manageable steps. 

1. Decide why you want a website. Determine whether the priority of your website is to attract customers to your offline business or whether you want a website for the purpose of interacting with your patients.
A simple informational website may have plenty of material, articles, links and pictures without interactive features beyond a simple email/contact feature for your web visitors to ask you questions. An interactive website allows visitors to create their own profiles or to order items. If you want an interactive website, the process of building the website is much more involved than if you want a website that provides information.

2. Search for a web host. A web host is a service that is already designed to help you build and publish your website. A web host is to a website as PowerPoint or Prezi or keynote is to a presentation. Popular and easy to use web hosts include weebly.com, wix.com, wordpress.com, go daddy.com, bluehost.com, and squarespace.com among others.
All of these web hosts have easy to understand tutorials for do-it-yourself web builders. The web hosts typically offer a free web building package as well as additional add-ons that you can pay for, such as a domain name or a dedicated email. As you navigate the do-it-yourself instructions, you will get an idea of which web host is more in line with your goals for your website and whether you want to move forward with building your website yourself of hiring someone to do it for you. 
 
3. Decide if you are going to move forward by building and managing your own website or by hiring someone to do it for you. There are an abundance of web designers who you can hire. You might choose someone who is local, or you might even find a web designer by searching online. Often, your web host can provide this service for you at a cost determined by how complex and interactive you want your website to be. 
 
4. If you are going to proceed with the do-it-yourself path of building and managing your website, you need to choose a web host. Typically you can 'buy' different packages from the web host, and most web hosts have a free basic package that includes easy to follow instructions. You can usually upgrade if you want additional features at a future time.

5. The next step is choosing a domain name. This would be ‘yourwebsitename.com.’ Your domain name is going to be on your business cards and on your social media links, so think about this carefully. It should be easy to remember, but also specific enough that it describes the feel and purpose of your website accurately. Thinking through this step may take you longer than any other step. If you change your domain name at some time—whether it is 3 months or 3 years from when you publish your website, old links using your previous domain name will not work anymore, and that could have a significant impact on your website traffic and on your credibly if people try to search an old link and reach a page that says, 'this page no longer exists.' As an alternative, you can redirect your old page to a new one, and this requires learning some coding.
Registering a domain name requires a fee that must be renewed every year, and you should be able to find simple instructions for registering a domain name through your web host
 
6. Build your home page using the web host’s template for a home page.  A home page features your website title and a description of the website. Your home page is the page that people reach using your web address, so this will be your most visited page. Your website visitors will use your home page to decide whether they want to learn more and whether your business is right for them.
While templates are available, you do not have to use them—you can be more creative and build pages from scratch or even code your own pages if you want to.
 
7. Additional pages can follow a web host template. And each page has its own title that is part of the web address for that particular page. For example, an additional page web address would be 'yourwebsitename/ournewfeatures.com.' Additional pages may follow a simple page format with information and pictures or may follow a blog format, which features articles and pictures. As with the home page, you can opt out of pre-designed templates and create your own set-up or program codes for special features if you are skilled at coding.
 
8. Graphics should follow a similar theme and color scheme throughout the whole site. Graphics are extremely important to website visitors, as they relay a powerful message about you and your business. You can usually use graphics provided by the web host or you can upload your own photos.

9. Marketing your website may be important if you want your website to be a highly ranked destination. If your site is primarily playing the role of serving existing customers, then you probably do not need to focus on marketing your site. But if your website is one of your marketing tools for bringing in new patients or customers, then you need to have a marketing strategy. Sharing your site or sharing articles from your site in special interest groups or on your social media channels are some of the ways to build traffic. Collaborating with other websites that are similar or complementary to yours by guest posting can also help build cross-traffic. For example, if your site is relevant to the content on nonclinicaldoctors.com 'medical career strategies' or 'tips from your doctor,' submitting an article can help drive traffic to your own site. 
 
10. Revenue tools include automated ads or collaborations. If you want to earn revenue from your website, you can negotiate with individual businesses to advertise on your site or sign up for automated advertisements with programs such as such as Google AdSense or Amazon.com, among others.
Automated Advertisements
If you want to use advertising with a company like Google or Amazon.com, you need to apply to become an affiliate before they accept your site for their targeted advertisements.
If your website is accepted as an affiliate, you will receive your own code that you can place on your website so that you can feature targeted advertisements on your website. Your own web host will have a special tool that looks like something this < > for you to put into your web pages in order to place your designated codes for your ads. Then, depending on your traffic, you will earn revenue that can range from pennies per day to thousands of dollars per day if many visitors come to your site and stay on the site.

Commission and Partner Advertisements
If you want to place individual affiliate advertisements or links, you can negotiate an upfront fee or a commission with individual clients. These fees can be based on sales that the client obtains from your site referrals. With individual affiliate arrangements, your website and your posts serve as sales tools for your clients.

11. When it comes to earning income from your website, good content is the key.  This means that if your site is not useful, or if you have a title that promises more than it delivers, visitors will only stay on your site for seconds and will not return or recommend it to others. So of you want to earn revenue from your website, the number one method of doing that is by having good content that is relevant for your readers.
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Finances of Business vs. Hobby

2/8/2020

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By Dave Denniston, CFA
Have you ever wondered… is my business a hobby?
You may have heard that having a small business is one of the best tax deductions out there.
But… when is a business a business and when is my ‘business’ a hobby?

I have many folks that I work with who are passionate about some cool stuff- toy trains and art and music. Heck, my wife is one of those amazing artists. Some of these businesses are actually quite profitable.
They have revenue.
They have expenses.
They have a profit.
The IRS loves those businesses because they can TAX those juicy profits. The gray line becomes when there is NOT a profit.
Maybe there isn’t revenue and there are only expenses. Or the revenue is minimal. What if it’s the latter of those two scenarios? What if this business doesn’t have a profit?
Can I still write it off?
Just because a business doesn’t have a profit YET doesn’t mean that you should toss it away and not take the write-off.
As a matter of fact, there are some cases where you should take a tax loss and it’s perfectly acceptable.
Heck, I even encourage you to pursue having a business as one of my 5 Smart Strategies To Slash Your Taxes in 2017.
Before we carve into the meat of the article, let’s figure out what the IRS says about this.
There are 9 specific questions that the IRS poses to determine whether or not your business is a hobby:
  • Does the time and effort put into the activity indicate an intention to make a profit?
  • Do you depend on income from the activity?
  • If there are losses, are they due to circumstances beyond your control or did they occur in the start-up phase of the business?
  • Have you changed methods of operation to improve profitability?
  • Do you have the knowledge needed to carry on the activity as a successful business?
  • Have you made a profit in similar activities in the past?
  • Does the activity make a profit in some years?
  • Do you expect to make a profit in the future from the appreciation of assets used in the activity?
So, let’s break this down a little bit.
Question# 1. Does the time and effort put into the activity indicate an intention to make a profit? The key word here is INTENTION.
You need to have documentation that you have INTENTION.
For example, do you have a 1 page business plan? What have you invested into your business? Do you have a website? A Facebook page with active postings? A Twitter account posting your content?
Do you have any products or services? Have you tried to market them?
If you’ve never put any money into marketing the business- for example, you don’t have a website and you’ve never tried advertising and you’ve never tried guest blogging or podcasts- you may have a very difficult time to prove that you intended to make a profit.
Are you just writing off a portion of your house bills or your cell phone or your new computer, but don’t have any activities to point to show that you are INTENDING to make a profit?
Make sure you have documented evidence!
Here’s more from the IRS on this issue…
“An activity is presumed for profit if it makes a profit in at least three of the last five tax years, including the current year (or at least two of the last seven years for activities that consist primarily of breeding, showing, training or racing horses).”
So, unless you are into horse breeding and raising, you could write off at least 2 years of business losses- but once you get into year three… you really have to think long and hard about your intention to make a profit.
The second question can be a key one for continuing the write-offs…
Question# 2: Do you depend on income from the activity?
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.
One physician I work with is an expert witness. He does this ‘on the side’. He makes substantial income- 100k+ a year from this activity in addition to his work at an academic hospital.
He depends on this activity to help save for retirement, pay off his mortgage, etc. So, in this case, he is dependent on the income.
He could take a year off and only make $10k from this business and still do some write-offs.
Definitely a business and not a hobby. There’s a history of profits here.
Another client I work with is the spouse of a high-earning client. The primary bread winner makes $300k to $500k a year. His spouse has an incredible heart. She takes old ties and turns them into pieces of art. She sells them at craft show and often donates half the proceeds to charitable causes.
In this case, there’s still a cost of supplies- quite often the business produces a loss.
She doesn’t advertise. She does it on the side and doesn’t really care whether or not she makes a profit. Some years she makes $2k or $5k. Other years she might lose a few hundred dollars.
This is a case that’s right on the edge.
There is revenue. There are expenses.
However, it’s not their main source of income. Heck, it’s so relatively small, it’s really unnecessary. 
Some CPAs would call this a ‘hobby’. Others might call it a write-off.
If you have a similar side-hustle to this case, it could depend on how aggressive you want to be with your taxes. You do stand a good chance that the write-off could be disallowed if you get audited. However, it might be okay too.
Just remember… you have two years! So, there’s some runway to get your business to lift off.
Question# 3: If there are losses, are they due to circumstances beyond your control or did they occur in the start-up phase of the business?
This gives you some grace in a really bad year or if you are just getting started.
There is NOTHING wrong with taking a write-off when you are launching a business. You may not yet have revenues or they may be very meager.
There is also NOTHING wrong with having a bad year and taking a fat write-off in the process.
The problem is when you never ever, never ever make a profit and it doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the horizon after 2 years.
You can always launch and try a new business after those 2 years and take another write-off.
=-)
Although, after a while… you might wonder if your money was better invested elsewhere.
Question# 4: Have you changed methods of operation to improve profitability?
The IRS is also willing to give you a pass if you are trying to do something different.
For example, let’s say that you had a podcast and it wasn’t generating any revenue after 1 year. You would be perfectly in your right to write off the losses.
Let’s say you generated a little bit of revenue, but had losses in year 2. You’re making progress, but you aren’t there yet. That should be fine to write-off too.
Then, in year 3, you change the way you do things. You start sending e-mails to prospective advertisers and you try to find some affiliate deals. You even make some arrangements and put advertisements in your podcast. You write a new book and try to sell the book on your podcast.
In this case, you have documentation in the forms of e-mails, podcasts, and other ways to demonstrate that in fact you changed your operations to improve profitability.
Remember how important documentation is in everything related to the IRS.
Final Thoughts
There are so many amazing opportunities in the world today. You can sell courses on everything from podcasting to land flipping to painting toy trains to underwater basketweaving.
You can seek plenty opportunities outside of clinical medicine.
Pursue them! Go after them!
You can even write them off for a couple of years and who knows, maybe that side-hustle income can skyrocket and even go way beyond the salary of your clinical career.
More Advice by Dave Denniston- The New Retirement and Does Stuff Own You?
For some more tax-saving ideas, make sure to check out 3 Answers to The Tax Questions Physicians Have Been Asking and The Little Tax Secret for Physicians.

About the Author
Dave Denniston, Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), is an author and authority for physicians providing a voice and an advocate for all of the financial issues that doctors deal with. He also has 1 wife, 2 kids, and a bunny named Black Snow (which is a lot better of a name than Yellow Snow).
More Advice by Dave Denniston- Does Stuff Own You? and The New Retirement
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    Categories

    All
    How To Find A Non Clinical Job
    Is A Non Clinical Job Right For Me?
    Medical Entrepreneurs
    Medical Writing
    Residents And Medical Students

    Contents

    • There is more than one way to be a doctor
    • Additional income sources for doctors
    • The path to a non-clinical physician job
    • Teaching jobs for physicians
    • Managing your finances as an independent contractor
    • Is a non-clinical job right for you?
    • Becoming qualified for a non-clinical job
    • Other options for healthcare providers
    • Regulations know-how
    • Job search mistakes to avoid
    • Creating a website
    • Physician career continuum
    • Feeling trapped in medicine
    • Read this before you drop out if residency
    • Should you take the USMLE if you don't want patient care?
    • A health writing career
    • Health article guidelines
    • How to self publish a book
    • Burning bridges
    • I don't want to be pre-med anymore
    • Writing a book​
    • What are your priorities?
    • Solutions to medical career frustration
    • Quiz-do you want to leave medicine?
    • Solutions for physician mothers
    • Top 10 signs that you need to find a non-clinical job
    • I Know a doctor who seems miserable
    • Career management for the modern physician
    • 7 tips for marketing your book

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Stay Connected

  • Non-clinical jobs for doctors
    • How to Find a Non-Clinical Job
    • Medical career strategies
    • Transition Toolkit
    • Physician Success Stories
    • Wound Care Physician
  • Where to find non clinical jobs
    • Job Openings
    • Medical Writing and Strategy Agencies
    • Medical Review Companies
    • Medical Writing Job
    • Clinical Research Training
  • Useful Links
  • Careers for Physicians Without Residency
    • Licensing and Programs for International Physicians
  • Resources For Physicians With Disability
  • Re-Entry Into Medicine
  • Tips from your doctor
  • How to Become a Licensed Physician in the USA