Prairie Oak Media

The most important part of starting a new business is to clear the decks and get after it! Of course it helps if you have some help when choosing a name and taking the necessary steps to setup your business right, but you can figure all of that out as you go along. Just GET AFTER IT. However, steps 1, 2, and 5 are essential, IMHO.

Mistakes are inevitable… the key is to get used to making “non-fatal” errors, learn your lesson, and move on.

Anyway, here’s Starting A Business  – in a  Nutshell.

1.) Choose a name

You want to make sure your name is availalble, preferrably as a non-hyphenated “.com”. Don’t get too fancy. Combine common words into uncommon combinations. As of today, Google reports:

No results found for “prairie oak media”. There’s nothing magical about those three words, they just happened to get combined into a new way.  Oh, and “prairieoakmedia.com” was available.

2.) Get a EIN

You want to keep your business and personal books separate. Use a separate checkings account, paypal account, email address, and affiliate accounts (including adwords) for your new enterprise. When you start signing up for affiliate programs, you’ll want to sign up in your business name and deposit all affiliate checks into your “business account”. This will greatly simplify tax time. The EIN will allow you to sign up for separate accounts outside of your other business or personal SS#.

3.) Consider forming a LLC

If you’re serious about making money online, you’ll want to hold your properties in a business entity that’s easy to administer, and still has all of the benefits of incorporation. Learn why the LLC is the “ruby on rails” of the business world.

4.) Consider “IRS Form 2553″

This allows your LLC to be treated as a Sub-S for tax purposes. With this filing in place, you still need to pay yourself a reasonable salary, but at least part of your residiual income can be passed through without self-employment tax, which is a 15% whammie on top of ordinary income taxes.

5.) Use Quickbooks

Keep your books straight from the beginning. Balance all of your accounts monthly. Get professional account from a CPA at the beginning if you need it, just make sure you’re keeping track of everything! Trust me… it’s much easier to keep track of everything from the beginning that it is to rebuild your books at the end of the year.

Of course there are a lot of other considerations. I’m assuming you’ll be working from home, but you may need to consider a seprate mailing address for your new business, especially if you are already running one business from home.

When starting a business, it’s important to have concrete goals for you and your business. One of the goals of this website is to help others who have similar goals to see what it takes to start and operate an internet business.

How long would it take to build a new business into a $40K annual income?

In 1999, I started building websites, and built a successful internet company that specializes in “niche webhosting”.

By the first quarter of 2008, the business was providing a nice full-time income for me, my business partner, and our one full-time employee. By late 2008, however, cracks were appearing…

You see, our entire business is built around providing services to distributors of one MLM company. All of our eggs are in one basket. Furthermore, my wife and I would love to relocate to the sun belt, where the cost of living is higher than it is here in rural Kansas.

January 2009 found me reflecting on the past 10 years, and wishing I’d spent a little more time outside of our primary business – and building a backup plan. April finds me contemplating going back to a “J-O-B”. So here I am, with nothing but my Dell Dimension 9200, an internet connection, and approximately $456.14 in “seed money” to start a new business.

My goal is to build a network of money-making websites that generate approximately $40K per year. Why $40,000? It’s around the “average household income” for this region of the country, and a hair more than I’d be making if I was teaching full-time, which is what my first “real job” was.

Besides, I think it’s an attainable goal, at least in two to three years.

$40k = $3,333.33 per month or $109.59 per day.

Therefore, I need to strive to build 10 websites that each earn, on average, $11 per day. I think that’s definitely “doable”. Especially since I already have a regular paycheck from my first company, and 10 years of experience to fall back on.

Wish me luck.