Part 2 of 5 On The Home Business Set-Up Guide – Tax Deduction
Part 2 of 5 On The Home Business Set-Up Guide
Alvin N
Dear Reader,
These articles will provide a step by step guide on how to start and run a home based business based on my experiences and other home business owners. This is part 2 in a series of 5 articles. They are written in a basic format and where possible main points are summarised in an attempt to be understood by all. I have tried to minimise the technical jargon as much as possible.
So lets jump right in and see what we need to know about starting and running a home based business.
Regards,
Alvin
http://www.parttimeincome.org
Legal Structures
The legal structure of your business is very important as it is a function of liabilities and tax deduction. The most common structures are:
Sole trader
Partnership
Company
Trust
Sole Trader
When you are a sole trader you are personally responsible and liable for the business and its activities. Commonly you may start out as a sole trader, and as you expand, you will need to seek out partners or investors. Your accountant is the best person to advise you if this is the best structure for your business.
Partnership
This arrangement is where you and your partner are liable for anything related to your business. It is a very good idea to get a solicitor to write up a partnership agreement to avoid disputes down the track.
Company
This is a legal entity liable for the debts it incurs and paying tax on income. Your accountant can help you set a company up, or you can buy one off the shelf, which may be more cost effective.
Trust
Depending on your personal circumstances, and the country you live in, trusts can be useful in business and estate planning. They can be quite complex, and again, your accountant is the best person to speak too.
Registering Your Business Name
You can operate a business under your own name or register a business name. Registration of a business name allows you to operate under that name.
Select a name for your business that describes to your customer what you do. A descriptive name promotes and advertises your business more effectively.
Licences And Permits
Depending on your municipality, you may need licences and permits. Do the right thing and check with your local council. Doing the right things now will save you a lot of unnecessary leg work later.
Insurance
Often overlooked, insurance is an important part of your risk management plan. There are two types of insurance: general insurance for loss/damage of assets and risk insurance which is your personal insurance cover.
Ensure your business insurance is separate to your personal insurance.
To establish the type and amount of insurance you need for your home based business, check with an insurance broker.
Managing Risk
You must have a risk management strategy for your business. Your SWOT Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats analysis from article one, will show what could expose your business to loss and what actions to take to reduce that loss.
Marketing
As a home business entrepreneur, you must understand what your customers want and give it to them. You must strive to have a service or product that meets and excels your customers needs and expectations. This is what makes them come back to buy from you, and this is how you grow your profit. Try and think like your customers and you will find they want:
Satisfaction
Value for money
Performance
Reliability
Presentation
Don
Getting The Big Picture Series: Part 3-"Be Good To You" – Diet
Getting The Big Picture Series: Part 3-"Be Good To You"
Treci Cauthen
Im from New York "the city that never sleeps" where things move at a fast pace, and things can get pretty hectic here. Sometimes you just have to say, hold everything, and take time out to regroup. Just like many of you who already have busy schedules, work, children, and after school activities to name a few.
You have to learn to organize your time to get the most out of every day and in the same instance you have to "Be Good To You". The majority of our time is caught up in daily rituals. Get up, get the children off to school, go to work, come home and prepare dinner, get the children to bed then we get up and do it over and over again.
The thing is now you want to start your own business so that means your going to have to find a few extra hours in your week, besides the fact that we all need to unwind sometimes. So along with your regular schedule keep a few things in mind.
"Be Good To You"
Exercise - Its really pertinent that we learn to incorporate 20-30 minutes of exercise into our day atleast 3 times a week. Your metabolism will increase, energy level will rise and you will begin to feel like a brand new person. Walking, jogging, gardening and for some of us who just werent born with that exercise gene daily house cleaning will do the job.
Eat Healthy - Our eating habits can really make or break us. At this point in time I think all of us know what eating healthy means. When we begin to cut out the sugar and the fat we begin to see a significant change, but consult a physician because im not too big on the word "diet". So what ever healthy means to you "just do it".
Plan Your Business Hours - All I want to say is follow a schedule. Do you have an extra 20 hours a week How about 15 or 10 spare hours that you can set aside and devote to your home internet business You will need to be consistent to stay in the game. I dont want you to get lazy on me. Treat your work like a flourishing business and it will become just that.
Hang Around Positive People - None of us can afford to waste time with negative influences. People that always have a problem or look at life through a pair of dark shaded glasses. Whether we believe it or not negative people leach off our energy when they dont have enough of there own. Im not saying totally avoid these people but keep in mind you cant spend lots of time with these people. So for those of you who have friends or relatives who cant seem to get their lives together, cant seem to find the positive in their situations, or always try to turn your smile into a frown I say "run dont walk". They can and probably will hinder your progress. These people do need some positivity in their lives but just try to cut back on time spent with this type of character.
Getting The Big Picture
About The Author
Treci Cauthen is a Writer/Internet Marketing Coach. To read more articles and find Home Internet Business:: Opportunities, Articles and Resources! go to: http://www.homeinternetbusiness.bravehost.com.
Be sure to check out other sites by this Author:
http://www.homeinternetbusiness.bravehost.com
http://www.webvillage.bravehost.com http://naturalcures.bravehost.com
http://www.telecomusa.bravehost.com
Copyright © 2004
tcauthen5@aol.com
Marketing Tourism Online, Part Two: Attracting Visitors to your Website – Marketing
Marketing Tourism Online, Part Two: Attracting Visitors to your Website
Bryan Wilson
This is part two of an article series which will introduce some basic strategies, considerations, elements, and techniques for marketing tourism products online. We plan to update and refine these articles as situations change and when we have new knowledge to present. If you have comments or questions, or you are interested in Leave Homes travel marketing consulting services, please visit www.leave-home.com or contact the author directly. You can also request to be notified when a new article in the series is available.
GETTING THE WORD OUT
Your site does no good if nobody visits. Put your website address on everything you produce that goes in the hands and in front of the eyes of your customers, distributors, and other audiences: in your email messages; on your brochures; on your letterhead; on handouts at presentations; on company vehicles; etc. Mention the address when you are speaking with potential customers and in audio communications.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
Optimize your website for indexing by search engines, and above all, get other sites to link to yours. Most of the popular search engines, including Google, base their rankings on key word and phrase relatedness to the search and the popularity of your site as measured by the number and popularity of the sites that link to it. Youll usually need to be in the top 20-30 results for the most important related search terms to really benefit.
The other major determinant in search engine ranking is the amount of content on the site that matches or approximates the search terms...so, a site with more content is likely to be ranked higher.
Make sure search engine "spiders" or "robots" can crawl through your pages follow links to all the pages on your site. If your site is built entirely in Flash or another multimedia plug-in offfer a plain HTML version!, or generates most pages dynamically, you will need to take special steps to ensure that your site can be indexed.
Get your site listed and linked in portal websites covering tourism sectors, destinations, and lifestyles related to your offerings--generally, for free. Trade links with related sites. These activities not only help with search engine rankings, but will be a source of visitors by themselves.
There are many factors that affect rankings, and they are weighted differently by each engine. Despite these differences, you will be on the right path if your site has plenty of content that contains the search words or phrases your customers will use, if you include key search words and phrases in the page text and in the TITLE tags in your HTML pages, and if you can get a few dozen pages on related sites to link to your site. It can help to bold or italicize some of the main key phrases in the text of your web page and to put them in heading tags , etc.
Generally, you do not need to bother resubmitting your site to the major search engines once you have done this for the first time. They will continue indexing changes to your site as they are made. Check your site access logs--youll see that their robots keep returning to your site! It may not be worth your time or resources to keep returning to some of the minor engines that are slower to update without your involvement, unless they are important to a target market! The major ones are used worldwide and have multiple language versions.
Consider buying pay-per-click advertisements in popular search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Youll never pay more than you specify per click and per day, and these can be very effective while you are still working to build a search engine ranking that puts your website on the first page!
BEYOND SEARCH ENGINES
Include tools on your site for visitors to tell others about your website, products and destinations! Consider using electronic postcard tools or offering subscriptions to free email newsletters which should, of course, contain links to your site!. The topics of email newsletters and multimedia tools will be covered in subsequent articles in this series.
Consider writing articles for submission to Web article banks, sites which offer free articles for use in websites, email newsletters, and other communications You may be reading this article via an article bank submission!. In return for use of your article, you receive a listing of your name and company and a link to your website. This can also be a good way to establish yourself or your organization as an "expert" in your field or tourism domain.
Also consider frequenting relevant Usenet discussion lists e.g., rec.travel.japan and Web-based bulletin boards, or joining email discussion groups, to offer advice in your area of expertise or about your destinations. Dont spam and do follow their rules of "netiquette", or online behavior. Do include your Web address and a short business description with your "signature" at the bottom of your responses. Not only will you attract visitors to your site, but youll learn about the concerns and interests of potential customers. You can incorporate questions paraphrase or attribute and your answers into an FAQ Frequently Asked Questions section on your website!
Paid Web banner advertising can be cost-effective if properly targeted and timed, and if the message is right. The same holds true for ads in print and other media but these are outside the scope of this article.
IN CONCLUSION
There are many techniques for attracting visitors to your website. Make sure you cover the technical basics like search engine optimization, but dont focus on technical tricks or spam methods--you may be removed from search engines and turn away potential customers. Offer quality content, find online partners to share links, and be a bold online networker!
The next article in this series presents guidelines for the creation and use of websites.
Seattle, USA; August 2004
About The Author
Bryan Wilson is a travel marketing consultant and partner in Leave Home Productions. Leave Home Productions provides marketing services and tools to tourism-related businesses and organizations. Our clients benefit from strategies, tools, and creative concepts developed to clarify their needs, make use of their resources, and help them achieve their goals. We specialize in promotions, online communication, distribution and the creation of multimedia and Internet tools. Leave Home also supports marketing with traditional media formats and personal communication. We work to develop solutions that support healthy growth for our clients business and sustainable tourism for the host communities and environments.
Leave Home, tourism marketing consultants
http://www.leave-home.com
bryan@leave-home.com