A sole proprietorship is the default form of business in the United States. If you have income from a business that is not registered as an LLC or corporation then you are a sole proprietorship. This structure means that all income is taxed at your personal tax rate on your personal tax return. You can still deduct your expenses on a Schedule C but chances are you will be paying a higher tax rate than you would when using another business structure. Also, the other problem is that you are personally liable for all business matters. You can be sued because of debt or liability and all of your personal assets are exposed to any lawsuits.

For example, what if you hired an employee to help you out and that employee gets injured on the job? You could be sued for millions and your home and other personal assets are exposed. Also, most other businesses assume you are very small because you are a sole proprietorship and you do not get treated with the respect your business deserves.

If you do setup your business as a sole proprietorship you will still need to register with your state as DBA (Doing Business As) so you can open a bank account under the business name. Without this step people will have to write checks out to you personally which usually turns away most business. Most states also require you to obtain a license or registration to conduct business. In states such as Florida you must register at the state, county and local level. For specific information regarding the licensing requirements for a sole propietorship in your state visit the Small Business Association for a list of state licensing offices.

Another point to consider with a sole proprietorship is what happens if you die. In the case of your unexpected death, your business will die and cannot be transferred to a spouse or other heir to continue the business.

Well, sole proprietorships still have a place in which they make sense. In the case where personal liability is not a big worry. Unfortunately there are not many places where there is not much liability. What if you are marketing a product on the internet which suddenly causes a death? Could you be dragged into a law suit? I am not a lawyer but it seems that any business could be the target of a lawsuit especially with all the frivolous suits that are launched today. Even if you win the suit, just getting an attorney to protect your interests could cost you everything. Working alone and from home does not protect you from lawsuits because lawsuits can develop from many types of internet activities including  trademark infringement, violation of copyrights, bad products, bad advice, etc. 

By now you have probably guessed that this is not my favorite business structure. If you do choose to structure your business as a sole proprietorship please make sure you consult an attorney and make sure it is right choice for your business.

DISCLAIMER: I need to give the standard disclaimer that I am not a lawyer or an accountant and I encourage you to consult a business attorney and account for all of your legal and accounting advice. Any information provided in this article is not advice and Merimax, Inc. and InternetBusinessAnswers.com are not liable for any decisions you make based on this information.

Tags: web, entrepreneurship, howto, internet, webdesign

So you may be thinking that you only have a little website and you don't need to worry about registrations and licenses. Well, if you plan on generating income from your "little website" then you must follow your local licensing requirements because as stated early,  you are by default a sole propietorship. If you are a sole propietorship conducting business in your state then you must follow your state's business registration and licensing laws.

There are some benefits to running your business as a sole propietorship but the biggest is that you don't have to do anything special to set it up and you can report your income and expenses to the IRS on a Schedule C with your  personal tax return.

Setting up a sole propietorship is an easy way to get started but be sure you explore all the possibilites as your business grows. You may discover that converting to an S Corporation or LLC would be a wise investment for your small business. This is a matter you should discuss with your attorney and/or accountant so you can discuss your specific circumstances.

DISCLAIMER: I need to give the standard disclaimer that I am not a lawyer or an accountant and I encourage you to consult a business attorney and account for all of your legal and accounting advice. Any information provided in this article is not advice and Merimax, Inc. and InternetBusinessAnswers.com are not liable for any decisions you make based on this information.

Tags: startup, howto, marketing, webdesign, web

Websites are designed with a target audience in mind.  It is the goal of the website owner to attract surfers who are interested in the content their site offers. It is this relationship between the interested surfer and the website owner that makes the search engine such a critical part of the Internet.

Any website can be listed in the search engines, but in order to receive significant amounts of traffic from search engines, a website needs to be in the top of the listings. When somebody searches for a word or phrase on a search engine the search engine returns a list of websites. The websites which appear at the top of the list are usually the most visited websites because surfers tend to not scroll through pages and pages of results.  They can usually find what they are looking for the first few listings.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving a website’s rankings in the search engine listings. SEO has become a huge industry on the Internet as companies compete to develop the most successful SEO strategies.

As search engines have evolved over the years many search engines have implemented a paid advertising mechanism.  Obviously, paid listings, increase revenue for the search engines and allow website owners to pay for top listings.  Today, the most popular example of Pay Per Click (PPC) would be Google Adwords. When a user performs a search on Google the results that appear highlighted at the top and to the right are usually paid for by the advertiser.  When a user clicks on these ads, the advertiser pays, Google profits, and the user is directed to relevant content.

The remainder of listings on the search engine results page (SERPs) are considered organic results (not PPC). The search engines find pages for the organic searches by using robots/spiders (software programs) to gather information about the content of pages on the internet.  The goal of SEO is to modify a website in such a way that it scores high for a particular keyword or phrase in the eyes of the visiting search engine.

What makes things tricky is that each search engine views pages differently. The SEO tactics that work well for Google may not have the same impact on Yahoo or MSN. SEO experts must stay on top of the latest search engine strategies for all of the major search engines in order to gain top placements.

The search engines play a very important role in a website's traffic but SEO is just one of the tools today’s website owners must use to generate targeted traffic. Traffic building is a gradual process that involves SEO, paid advertising, link building, etc but SEO is a tool that should be a part of every website owner’s traffic building arsenal.

Affiliate programs are about earning money for selling somebody else's product. The one with the product for sale benefits by making more sales, and they will pay their affiliates every time that is accomplished. Your benefit is that you keep the commission from each sale. The more sales you make, the more money you have coming in. And that’s how simple it is.

ClickBank offers a marketplace full of items that are available to affiliates. As a bonus, they will keep track of all sales made, take care of the accounting tasks, and issue all of the commission checks as quickly as possible.

The best thing about this system is that ClickBank affiliates find it easy, the person whose items you sell finds it easy, and everyone makes money.

There are plenty of websites with items to sell, but the majority of sites aren’t able to sell very much. Why is that the case? Because, the products they want to sell are not interesting to the customers they want to them to. In other words, the audience and products are not a practical match for each other.

Affiliate programs are all about serving your niche market, which is the audience you must serve if you want to make money through ClickBank. You don’t want to try to get an audience made up of people over 65 to buy an ebook on pregnancy, do you? Because this is so important, the niche should be identified before you decide which items will be the right ones to sell.

But, the great thing about using ClickBank is that it’s easy to find products to fit any niche by choosing from the thousands of affiliate programs available. And if you can match products form affiliate programs to your niche audience, you will be already be ahead of most of those people selling items on their websites.

To find affiliate programs that will be the best fit for your website, open an affiliate account at Clickbank.com and give it a try. It is free to become an affiliate.

These are free, and cheap, internet marketing strategies that will help promote online businesses:

1. Offer a free item- any website with any type of business can benefit from giving customers something free. Creating useful information that will be given away can consist of a short report, and e-book, articles, or software. Creating the item by yourself makes this a free marketing strategy. This marketing tactic can still be inexpensive if you have to hire a writer or a software developer. These giveaways are great incentives to get your site’s visitors to agree to receive a newsletter.

2. Offer a newsletter- An opt-in newsletter sent by email is a marketing devise that can be free if it is handles independently, or it can be run for cheap by an email management company that can also track the results. To have a successful campaign through email marketing, focus your attention on the customer’s needs rather than your own. Offer an e-book or other incentive in exchange for signing up for the newsletter and keep the customer coming back for more useful information.

3. Offer customers an incentive to come back- Customers who come back again to provide repeat business are preferable to one-time visitors who never return. A tip for online business marketing is to give a discount on any future orders, or notices about new products, or exclusive access to a forum or other area of the website that is open only to repeat customers, or to forum members who have posted a high number of posts.

4. Offer a newsworthy item- Keep your company always on the mind of the customers and site visitors. To accomplish this inexpensively, share significant news about your business by releasing a press release. To get an effective press release, it isn’t necessary to spend a lot, even if you have to hire a professional public relations writer, as the release will bring in much more than the release cost. An effective distribution of a press release doesn’t have to cost hundreds of dollars or more. Press release sites handle the distribution of releases to search engines, journalists, and bloggers, all for free or an inexpensive price.

5. Offer personal opinions- There are many webmasters who don’t yet understand how powerful a personal review can be. No matter the type of business or industry, there is always an item or person that is in need of a review.  Any site that is not directly in competition, such as podcasts, industry products, books, sites, or blogs are all good items to be reviewed.  Reviews can be completely free, except for small charges for a product or book that is to be reviewed. To get the best marketing benefits from your review: Don’t leave the review on the site where no attention will be paid to it. To get the review noticed, send a link to it to the site that was reviewed, or to the public relations person handling the reviewed product. If you need to, you can respectfully suggest that your review be added to the press section of their website. PR workers love to get reviews, and high-quality backlinks may come from it, assisting in the SEO efforts. There are many sites that can bring in lots of exposure due to the review, especially if it is chosen in a series such as “top picks, or in the yearly or monthly site rankings.

Each of these internet marketing tips is begun with the word “offer.” This is because by offering items to the customer you are focusing your attention on the target market’s needs instead of your own. Customers and visitors to the site will appreciate the valuable items given to them and will keep the business in mind. Give your customers just a little and get a lot.

Here are some tips for effectively using SEO keyword optimization for a new site or for a business with a presence on the Web:

1. Search for effective keyword phrases that relate to the website’s topic with a keyword suggestion tool.

2. Don’t make general or one-word phrases the exclusive focus of the search, as they are much more difficult to get a good placement for in the search engines. However, the focus should not be on phrases that are not being searched for at all. Being a big fish in a smaller pond is a much better position for climbing to the top than to be a little fish in a big pond.

3. Use the keyword phrases in the titles and subheadings, as well as in the first part of every area of text and throughout the rest of the page.

Another important SEO task is building links to the online business or website, allowing a higher search engine ranking. This is necessary because each link functions similar to a “vote” that other websites have made for the site or one of its pages, based on its quality. Link building is often manipulated when webmasters purchase links on another site or banner ads that will link back to their site, neither of which are legitimate votes. Because this is common, there are incoming links that are counted as being worth more than other links. Remember these tips while link building in order to get the high-quality links:

1. Instead of trading for reciprocal links, try to get one-way links that will be counted more like a real “vote.”

2. Get links that are coming from sites relevant to the niche or industry topic instead of generic links that are irrelevant.

3. If possible, obtain links from high quality websites and those most popular with visitors.

4. Look for the opportunity to get one-page links, which seem much more natural, than purchasing site-wide advertisements.

It's time for a little tough love here. Please stop the insanity! You see, it wasn't long ago I was exactly like you.  I spent more money than I care to count on e-books and other packages that promised to make me rich.  I spent tons of money on seminars, tips, secrets, and any other piece of information I could get my hands on.

I am going to give you the secret to succeeding on the Internet and I am going to give it to you for free.  The secret is to do something.  Anything.  If you continue to purchase package after package and do absolutely nothing with it, you will continue to make absolutely nothing.  I'm not exactly sure where I read this, but it is a sentence worth remembering. If you keep thinking what you are thinking and doing what you are doing, you will keep getting what you are getting.

You want to know what is the best information to buy, because you have the passion and the willingness to succeed and you want more out of life. You are ready to work hard and begin an Internet business that can free you from a boring job, money worries, or just a limited lifestyle. The problem is that for some reason you don't feel you have the knowledge to get things going so you continue to search for the secrets to wealth, but the point I am trying to make is that you already do have the knowledge.

There is no magic secret to succeeding on the Internet.  The point of this website is to provide you with ideas to get you started.  When I first got into this business, I tried many different things from selling physical products to multilevel marketing and everything in between.  Guess what?  They all work.  You can make money doing any of these things.  The point is pick one and do it.  As I mentioned before, if you keep doing what you're doing, you will keep getting what you are getting.  So if you don't like what you're getting right now do something different.

The only money you should ever spend on information packages is for information that tells you how to do something specific from somebody that already knows how to do it. You should make yourself a plan and set goals and if the information you are considering purchasing helps you reach those goals then it is worth considering. If you can't clearly define what you are going to get from the purchase then don't buy it. For example, if you want to write your own e-book, but you're not sure how to get started it would be wise to purchase a tutorial on how to write e-books. When you get done with the material you will have the knowledge you need to complete a step in your plan. Or maybe you want to learn how to run a Google Adwords campaign. Well, spending $25 to get a quick and dirty summary on the basics of Google Adwords would be money well invested. But please believe me when I tell you that spending $49.95 or even $995 to learn the secrets that made somebody else a millionaire is a waste of your money. You can't clearly define what you will get when someone is trying to sell you their "secrets". Know exactly what you are paying for and whether or not that information is going to give you something you need to reach your goal.

Decide what you are going to begin with. Maybe it is selling someone else’s product through affiliate programs or you might want to create an online store selling physical products. You may even want to write your own ebooks and sell them online. Just pick SOMETHING and do it. Even if you don’t make millions on your first endeavor, you will learn the skills you need to make even more money on your next project.

The secret to success is DOING. If you look at all of the multi-gazillionaires they all say the same thing — They learned as they went along and stuck with what worked and tossed out with what didn’t. You can’t stick with what works if you don’t DO.

With a Content Management System, you simply load the software onto your server or use a hosting service that provides the software for you. You can then quickly generate a website with little technical knowledge. Don't get me wrong, any software has a learning curve, but if you are comfortable working on the internet you can get a website driven by a CMS up and running much faster than you could with an HTML editor. In fact, I find that my development time is decreased by an average of 60% over typical HTML development when using a CMS.

You will be able to login to your CMS and then add pages using an editor which has functionality similar to a text editor. You can easily add text, tables, images, etc by clicking on the appropriate tool.

Content Management Systems can be broken down into two types — Standard and Blog Format. Obviously the more you are willing to pay the more features you will get, and several of the free Content Management Systems are loaded with features that will allow you to display your content in virtually limitless fashion. A list of the different Content Management Systems can be found on WikiPedia.

One CMS that is not on the above mentioned WikiPedia list is WordPress. WordPress is free blog software but it is also a CMS. You can create a complete website with WordPress and there are even plug-ins available to create an online store with WordPress. I recommend WordPress when a website owner wants to frequently update a website with new content. For example, this website, InternetBusinessAnswers.com is built with WordPress.

If you don't want to use the blogging features WordPress has available, another great free CMS is Joomla. Joomla is easy to install and manage. It is also very reliable.

If you are not comfortable with installing CMS software you can simply find a hosting provider that makes it easy to install Joomla or Wordpress. Simply visit Google and type in searches such as "Joomla Hosting", "Wordpress Hosting", or "Fantastico Hosting". Fantastico is a tool that automates the installation process of many popular Content Management Systems.

A CMS is a great way to get a website online quickly and it also makes maintaining the website much easier. Since many good Content Management Systems are free, consider a CMS to bring your timely content to the waiting world.

There are many very good solutions out there for somebody getting started selling online. Since you don't have a lot of technical knowledge you are going to want to choose a shopping cart that offers ease of use but also offers the feature set your store will require. The first thing you need to do is write down a list of features that your store must have. Perhaps you need to be able to import a large product line from a file that your vendor gives you. You might want to run an affiliate program or maybe offer discounts with coupon codes. Before you choose a shopping cart you must be very clear on your requirements.

I usually recommend that people new to selling online get started with what I refer to as a Store-In-A-Box solution. These services make it easy to get up and running quickly with little technical knowledge. Here are some examples:

• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions - http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/
• ProStores - http://www.prostores.com/
• Monster Commerce - http://www.monstercommerce.com
• Volusion - http://www.volusion.com/
• 1 Automation Wiz - http://1automationwiz.com
• Finest Shops - http://www.finestshops.com

You should visit each of the above mentioned sites and see which one meets your needs and budget. I can tell you that my first site was a Yahoo Store and I still send clients, friends, and relatives new to the internet to Yahoo for their first website. They offer 24 hour support and there are different levels of service to meet your needs.

The other reason I send people to Yahoo is that there is a great step by step guide to selling products on Yahoo called Online Store Profits. This program basically shows you the ropes and eliminates the pitfalls you may run into with your Yahoo Store. Of course, before you spend any money on tutorials or information packages first sign up for a shopping cart service and test drive it. If you do decide Yahoo meets your needs then Online Store Profits will get you to your goal of making a profit much quicker and will pay for itself many times over.

You have several different options…

• Free hosting
• Shared Hosting
• Virtual Server
• Dedicated Hosting
• Co-Location

Free Hosting - If you just want to put up a website for the family to view your personal photos and you don't mind having ads pop up at your visitors, then this may be an option for you. If you have any intention of producing revenue from your website, you can scratch this option from your list.

Shared Hosting - Shared hosting means that you have your website on a machine with many other websites. You get to share the resources of that machine with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other website owners. Most new websites begin their life on a shared server. When the website grows beyond the limits of this service it can be moved to a hosting plan that offers more room for growth.

Virtual Servers - Virtual servers allow each user to feel as though they are running on a dedicated server but they are in fact sharing a server with many others. There are usually fewer virtual servers on a machine than with a shared hosting package and virtual servers may offer more features and give the user more control.

Dedicated Servers - This service allows the user to rent a machine for their own personal use. They do not have to share the resources with any other website. Unless you are experienced with managing a web server you should opt for what is called a Managed Dedicated Server so that the hosting company can update your machine and provide other necessary maintenance services for you.

Co-location - This service allows for you to own your own machine and the hosting company will provide you with space in their computer room. In most cases, the co-location provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server.

Most likely you will get started with either a Shared Server or a Virtual Server. You would only need a dedicated server if you know your website is going to require large amounts of disk space, bandwidth, and other system resources.

When choosing a web hosting company here are some questions to consider:

1. Do you expect to be using heavy amounts of bandwidth, such as by hosting a lot of audio and video files? If so, consider a dedicated server when choosing a Web host, or at least a Web host offering plenty of bandwidth.

2. Do you need to be able to host more than one website on the same Web hosting account? If so, look for Web hosts offering unlimited add-on domains. If you also need subdomains, look for Web hosts offering the ability to set up unlimited subdomains as well.

3. Do you need to be able to set up multiple email accounts? If running multiple sites, or with staff members, you will likely also need multiple email addresses. When choosing a Web host, look for one that doesn’t charge extra for you to set up email addresses, and make sure the host allows for enough email addresses.

4. Do you need to run a variety of scripts, either within a website, or as the backend of a website (such as a content management system, e-commerce system, or blogging platform)? If so, when choosing a Web host for an online business, be certain the host supports the various scripts that the website will need.

5. How much downtime are you willing to tolerate? When choosing a Web host, look for guarantees on server uptime.

6. Do you want to have to commit to a long-term Web hosting contract?  If a long-term commitment isn’t a problem, then saving money by going with a pre-paid yearly plan with a Web host may be an option. If the freedom to change hosts more quickly without the risk of losing as much money is important, go with a month-to-month Web hosting plan. Either way, find out ahead of time if the hosting company offers a money back guarantee during the initial phase of the Web hosting contract.

7. How many databases will you likely use? When choosing a Web host for an online business, especially if it involves running multiple websites, look for hosting companies that allow unlimited (or at least enough) MySQL databases to be set up on each Web hosting account.

8. How often do you expect a technical support representative to be available from your Web hosting company? Some offer support only via email or only during business hours, whereas others offer 24/7 technical support via phone, email, and even online chats.

By answering the above questions, you’re essentially creating a mental checklist to use when comparing and choosing a Web host for your online business needs. Evaluating needs before choosing a Web host will make the decision, and business relationship, much easier.

One of my favorite hosting companies is Superb.net. As of the writing of this post they offer hosting plans starting a $2.50/month and that plan comes with a dedicated IP address. Make sure that the hosting company you choose offers a dedicated IP address for reasons mentioned in the post titled, "Do I need a Dedicated IP address?"