Tips for Starting an Online Business
As always – Mat and Dave are not lawyers. Unlike Ruth who is one (but you still need to hire her to get your questions answered). We are also not your accountant. So when you are starting a business or digging into some of these questions, seek out experts on tax law, business law and everything in between to help you.
What we do know and can help you with – setting up your digital presence!
- Get Legal & Protected – Talk to a lawyer and account – get legal and get things set up correctly the first time. From tax benefits to writes offs to make it easier to sell, there are a number of reasons to make this your first step.
- Stake Your Claim – Before you fill out final paperwork around a name and logo, claim your domain and social profiles. Go out and control your brand but also before you pay for a logo and file paperwork make sure you can get a domain and social profiles. For those that don’t think they need a domain because you have social networks, Etsy/Ebay or some store setup – still go and get that domain!
- Branding – Websites can range from simple to crazy custom. If you know or have a designer, awesome. For those that don’t – you don’t have to freak out as there are ways to “cheaply” get a site together and live. While we don’t love solutions like Squarespace and Wix, but they can help you get your site live quickly and pretty cheaply.
- Marketing – start letting your friends, family and anyone you talk to know about your new business.
We didn’t get to talk about hosting too much but we did recommend that you DO NOT use free hosting type sites. There are many hosting providers for even small (wb) projects that won’t break the bank each month. We HIGHLY suggest you go with a real solution and not host it free as a subdomain on a service that doesn’t let you control anything.
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