Rachel P
Strategist #13441
Joined 2/2/2016
4 Star Rating
708 Projects
Rachel is an indie game developer, writer, consultant, and HubSpot Inbound certified content strategist. An experienced entrepreneurship and general business writer, her consulting business is tailored to professional development for indie developers and other creative professionals. In addition to serving clients in need of professional development and work-life balance, Rachel also works with companies who wish to do business with game developers and professional sector workers who need assistance in acquiring and retaining game developer clients. She has helped tax offices, attorneys, and insurance brokers sell several thousand dollars worth of services through both her sales and writing skills.

Having formed the business curriculum at Playcrafting NYC, the tristate area's hub for education and business development for interactive entertainment professionals, Rachel teaches courses on general business, taxation, crowdfunding, and fanbase growth. Her Basics of Business course sold out on its first run, breaking 2014 sales records. Her game studio also Kickstarted six figures for an indie adventure game, so she is a frequently sought-out speaker on crowdfunding and a registered expert witness for Thomson Reuters in the fields of crowdfunding liability and tax law for game developers.

Rachel has written content for gaming industry rags, user acquisition firms, companies trying to do business with game developers, tax offices, lifestyle blogs, and much more. In addition to her work teaching at and writing content for Playcrafting as well as her own blog and newsletter plus private clients, she has the distinction of making the front page of noted industry rag Gamasutra virtually every time she submitted content.

Rachel is also a licensed tax professional (Enrolled Agent) and has a decade of tax practice experience ranging from retail tax preparation to white-shoe firm, and solo practice. She worked with Prometric and high-ranking IRS directors in developing the Enrolled Agent exam for three years running, determining minimum competency requirements for Enrolled Agents along with creating and editing exam content. She also worked with Pearson to develop educational tax law content for use in online adult education programs.

Upon leaving the tax associate track behind and wanting to help other game makers, she wrote the very first taxation guide tailored just for indie developers with full citations for tax and legal professional use, The Definitive Guide to Taxes For Indie Game Developers.

Her classes, writing, and books have received strong praise for explaining high-level tax and financial concepts in an accessible and often humorous matter that the audience relates to.

Rachel's primary expertise in content strategy is helping game developers, professional services, and solopreneurs figure out exactly what their readerships are looking for. For game developers, content strategy can be an overall part of world-building and Rachel strives to help indie developers find new fans without compromising their vision.
Humor
eBook
Blog Post
Newsletter Content
Career
Gaming
Article
Self Help
Finance
Business
2 More

Interests

Rachel loves watching really terrible movies like The Room and Dangerous Men, and analyzing their place in culture and the stories behind the films themselves. She loves toads, frogs, and lizards and is a crazy toad lady who has trained amphibians in being both companion and therapy animals. She can be found at game jams, punk and hardcore shows, and is also fascinated with vaporware and vegan/egg-free baking. Rachel is also practically a walking Zagat guide to hidden culinary gems throughout the Bronx and Manhattan.

Education

CUNY Lehman College

CUNY Hunter College

Tax

86 Projects Completed

Rachel is an Enrolled Agent holding two accounting degrees and worked in the tax field for about a decade, and is capable of making complex tax law topics easy to understand or even fun and humorous.

She contributed to Tax Pro Journal and has written several blog posts, e-books, articles, and web pages for tax offices and tax information services of all sizes. Rachel writes about tax law analysis, law changes and tax administration, and she has performed tax research with authoritative citations. Rachel has written WriterAccess' guide on how to create content that both tax professionals and their clients care about, and she can write both for other tax professionals and audiences who have little or no understanding of taxation issues.

Her most proficient tax law practice areas are in non-resident aliens and ITIN issues, small business and freelancer taxation, R&D, and worker classification issues and the sharing economy. Rachel wrote her master's thesis on worker misclassification suits and stakeholder theory.

Marketing

72 Projects Completed

Rachel has worked on a variety of marketing projects ranging from crowdfunding campaign management to email marketing copy. She is best-suited to content marketing, blogging, email copy and campaigns, and press releases. She also enjoys writing blogs and articles about traditional and digital marketing, particularly grassroots and guerrilla forms of marketing. Rachel's marketing expertise helped a client grow his email list by 150%, and helped another client raise six figures on Kickstarter.

Rachel frequently writes about social media, gamification and the VR revolution as part of marketing strategy, SEO best practices, content strategy, and email marketing.

Finance

65 Projects Completed

Rachel is a licensed tax law specialist (Enrolled Agent) with two accounting degrees, she has written about personal finance topics for private clients. These topics include IRAs, taxes, investments, real estate, and insurance.

She focuses on financial issues concerning Millennials, prospective small business owners, the underbanked and retirees. Rachel is passionate about writing about finance from a public policy point of view in addition to helping people achieve their savings objectives.

Business

65 Projects Completed

Rachel frequently writes about general business for private clients as well as her own blog, and has written content for several different business projects ranging from site copy and formal business correspondence to articles and blog posts about small business, entrepreneurship, management practices, taxes, and funding.

Gaming

46 Projects Completed

Rachel is an indie game developer, a co-owner of a small studio with a cult following. She is a well-known speaker, business educator, and contributor to game development blogs and industry rags on both artistic and business aspects of making games for a living as an indie developer. She writes about general business, taxation issues specific to indie developers, public policy issues that concern game developers, and lifestyle for game devs.

Rachel has written for mobile acquisition firms, game developer collectives, and gaming websites among frequently receiving front-page features on noted industry rag Gamasutra. She can write for other game developers, the people wishing to do business with them, and gamers themselves.

Career

32 Projects Completed

Rachel has written about career moves primarily in the gaming and financial industries for private clients, her own blog, and sponsored content. She focuses on freelancers, flex work, abrupt career changes, and finding alternative sources of income.

Humor

12 Projects Completed

Rachel has worked on short humor writing projects including nostalgia pieces, listicles, photo commentaries, and personal essays. She has written for clickbait sites, entertainment and gaming publications, and her own works. She loves to make people laugh and put them at ease.

Self Help

6 Projects Completed

Rachel has written self-help and lifestyle blog posts and e-books primarily for entrepreneurs, game developers, creative professionals, career women, and people trying to start their lives over again. Her writing has been praised by both clients and readers for providing clarity and inspiration. In addition to her own blog, she has ghost-written self-help books and lifestyle articles for prominent game development publications.

Blog Post

225 Projects Completed

Rachel's primary asset on Writer Access and other platforms is quality blog posts meant to inform and entertain while they sell. She has written blog posts in story, listicle, and informational formats in a number of different voices ranging from humorous and approachable to professional and authoritative.

Rachel has written business blog posts for a variety of industries but has predominantly written about game development, technology, business, marketing, tax, law, food, and lifestyle topics. In addition to Writer Access, she has also written blog posts for Playcrafting, FlexJobs, and her own blog, drawing upon experience running an indie game studio and seeking funding. She has both written and taught classes for indie developers about funding for games, business models for game sales, crowdfunding, taxation, technology management, and other professional development aspects for indie developers and has over 200 ghost-written blog posts in games industry and business topics.

Article

55 Projects Completed

Rachel has written articles for Gamasutra and frequently made it as a front-page feature, where she writes about business and lifestyle issues for indie game developers, people looking to transition into games careers, and other interactive entertainment professionals. Rachel's by-lined work has also appeared in Tax Pro Journal where she wrote about ethics concerns for tax professionals and industry issues that pertain to Millennial financial professionals.

Rachel has also ghost-written many digital marketing, leadership, technology, and business articles for thought leaders that have appeared in Inc, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and other prestigious publications.

Newsletter Content

29 Projects Completed

Rachel knows what makes for engaging quality newsletter content. Prior to ghost-writing newsletter and email marketing content, she was in charge of writing the firm newsletter and quarterly mailings when she worked at a white-shoe tax law firm and drastically increased their open and click-through rates. Rachel has also achieved an impressive 40% average open rate with her own mailing list so she knows what subject lines and headers you need to make people want to open up your emails.

Rachel can write targeted and segmented email content, blast emails, customized email and newsletter mailouts aligned for a specific product, and assist you with a monthly newsletter strategy. Rachel has also helped clients build solid email lists and is available for customer journey consulting on this matter.

eBook

15 Projects Completed

Rachel has ghost-written business, technology, and marketing e-books ranging from 3,000 to 25,000 words and knows how to provide both value to the reader and marketing your services using an e-book. Whether you plan to sell your e-book or use it for lead generation, Rachel knows how to get readers engaged.

She also self-published a 130-page Kindle book (~90,000 words) that is the very first taxation guide strictly for indie game developers: The Definitive Guide to Taxes for Indie Game Developers. This book delves into both the business environment and lifestyle of the average American game developer and goes beyond income tax fundamentals and deep dives into how funding methods for games are taxed, having international development team members, structuring companies, tax planning based on the typical development cycle of an indie developer, R&D incentives, and much more. It is the first book of its kind and contains over 10 pages of authoritative citations from the Internal Revenue Code, Revenue Rulings and Procedures, Treasury Regulations, Tax Court cases, and Supreme Court cases to benefit three different audiences: indie developers in need of audit defense material if they go the self-prepared route, indie developers sharing the book with their tax professional who may not understand the games industry, and tax professionals who would like to capitalize on the fast-growing game developer client base as many have not grasped the lifestyle and business environment of the average indie developer.

Fully utilizing the Kindle system from the publisher's perspective is a whole other skill in itself she may be able to assist you or your client with and is available for consulting on this matter.

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