Taxes and Licenses

When I started thinking about the lessons that I learned for this week, I remembered a prevalent line from the movie “Robin Hood”. It just kept going over and over in my head and I had to share:

Prince John: Taxes! Taxes! Beautiful, lovely taxes! Ah-hah! Ah-hah!

Hiss: Sire, you have an absolute skill for encouraging contributions from the poor.

Prince John: To coin a phrase, my dear counselor, rob the poor to feed the rich.

Anyways on a lighter note, I’ve learned much about starting up a business as a sole proprietor. Overall, the actual process to set up shop isn’t very complicated assuming you don’t make much in sales. What is complicated though is trying to find all of the information and understanding what it all means. So far I have determined that as an artist, working with no employees, I won’t need to have a Employer Identification Number, but I will need to get a business license and a sales tax license. Those two processes are rather simple and can be done for the state of Iowa at https://tax.iowa.gov/starting-business. As for federal tax, I will simply have to declare what I owe on my regular annual tax form, unless I make over $400. For the time being I don’t plan on making much money from my first website, but for the future I will need to fill out additional paperwork.

Credit Cards and all that Jazz

This week I’ve been thinking on what would be the best way to charge for my products on my website. The process seems like it would be a whole lot easier in person with a simple exchange of cash or even a check, but those methods are just not practical for the online world. People want their products as soon as possible and the payment option must be quick and efficient to enable that. Specifically I’ve looked into two different companies that provide the credit card handling service. Weebly, the site builder I’ve chosen to build and host my website, offers Stripe or Paypal. Stripe is a free service until someone makes a purchase. Then they charge .$30 a transaction and Weebly charges 3% of the total purchase. Otherwise, Paypal only charges 3% off the total purchase, but to use Paypal, I would have to upgrade my Weebly account which, at a minimum, would be $8 a month. For now since I don’t think that my website will get many visitors, I plan on sticking with Stripe.

Site Builder and Host

This week I’ve been searching around the web for the place to build my website and who to have host its content. The three site builders that I’ve searched in depth included Weebly, Squarespace, and Dreamweaver. I would love to create a website with Dreamweaver. I had to buy the adobe program for some classes and have not had a chance to play around with it yet. I’m not going to use it for my first website though because it is a very complicated and in depth  program that would require a substantial amount of time to learn how to use. Later on when I am more experienced with designing websites, I will use this program because I will be able to control all aspects of the designing process. For the time being, I am going to use the site builder Weebly. One, because of its cost and two because of it’s flexibility in template styles. And third, because it is also willing to host the content I build on its site builder. By having one place that hosts and builds content, the website making process will be more streamlined and less confusing to create.

Choosing A Supplier

This week I’ve been thinking over what make a good drop ship supplier good? I’ve come up with a short list.

-the product must be high quality

-their choice of shipper must be reliable and fast

-products must have a manufacture warranty

-the company easily accept refunds and returns

I really like the drop ship method. When just starting out in a business, you might lack the space and time to fuss over storing and shipping products. The wondering thing about drop ship companies is that they will do all of that for you. Another benefit is that the shipping time will be greatly reduced because they will send off the product directly to the customer. Overall I think that if you take the time to research your drop shop options and ask the right questions, you can find a great company for your product and have much success.