Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with business and website

What do you think of "Words Like Notes"?

jlhopes — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:08:32 -0800

I have tentatively given my freelance editing and design business the name Words Like Notes. What do you think of it? I am creating a name and website for my freelance editing and print layout/design business. I would like to have a name that is not just my name, but which covers the different types of work I do (editing, writing, layout, and some translation) and gives a sense of the style I aim for - light and refined, yet professional.

The name I have been going with is Words Like Notes. I like the sound of it, but I realize that it is not a straightforward name, and I'm concerned that it will just confuse people.

What is your reaction to the name? Does it convey anything? Does it turn you off? Do you have any suggestions regarding how to use the name, or modify it, or replace it altogether? Thanks!

Pros & Cons of bringing web development in-house?

MeatLightning — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:33:22 -0800

Pros & Cons of bringing web development in-house? Hi all -
I manage a mid-size e-commerce website. We currently work with an agency to build and maintain our site. We are considering hiring a dev (C# / .NET, SQL) and taking over development... or at least much of it (still may go out of house for UX, front-end dev).

Anyone have any advice, experiences, warnings, etc they can share?

Have you gone down this road? How did it go? What should we watch out for?

thanks in advance!

Where do I find individuals who write short bios for websites?

helios410 — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:30:04 -0800

I would like to hire someone, or a company to write a short bio for my professional website. The end goal is attract potential clients. Are there individuals who specialize in this? Where do I seek them out?

Suggestions for starting a small event photography business?

tkolstee — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:34:01 -0800

Considering freelance event photography as a sideline. The kind where you take the photos, and then sell them later online. Any advice - including talking me out of this - is appreciated. I'm considering doing something in addition to my 9-5 job in order to bring in some extra income, or maybe just have some fun trying. My main concerns are low up-front cost, and nothing that will commit me too heavily in case it doesn't work out or I decide I don't like what I'm doing.

Photography has been a hobby of mine for a while, and although I'm nowhere near professional-quality, I've taken some great shots and learned a lot about exposure and some tricks of the trade.

I'd like to stay away from art or stock photography, and focus on shooting events and the people in attendance. I don't think I can commit to doing this work for hire, like a wedding photographer. Instead I'd like to do what I've seen some others do on the web - show up at an event that's open to the public, shoot the event, and hand out cards telling people where to look for their pictures to order prints or downloads. I might consider taking shots of opportunity for stock or to sell to a news agency, but my main focus would be on individual sales. The nice part about this is that I can be flexible about when, where, and how often I want to work.

How feasible is this, and what do I need to get started? More specific questions and details below, but really I'm trying to keep this open-ended. Any and all advice or warnings would be very helpful.

Occupational Licensing:
I'm in unincorporated Orange County, Florida. IIRC, you can make X amount of dollars per year before it stops becoming a hobby and requires a business license. Can I wait until I hit X before applying? Any problems with going sole proprietorship to keep things simple? I know my personal assets can be subject to business liability this way, but how much am I really exposed to risk? Will I have to charge sales tax, even when it's still a hobby?

Website Hosting / Sales Operation:
My main career is in running UNIX(ish) servers, and I've dabbled in website design and programming enough to know I can take care of that end of things, if I have to. I'm fully willing to design my own website, upload sample watermarked versions of the images, set up PayPal, even have the printing and mailing done myself. However, I know there are services out there that will do much of this for you. Any particular hosts of this type that are good or bad in your experience? How much of this work can I offload, and how cheaply can I do so?

Getting into the events themselves:
How easy is it to get permissions to photograph and market at events? Do I have a chance at getting into children's athletic club events, school-sponsored events, festivals, etc? What's the best way to keep up-to-date about things coming up that I might be interested in shooting?

Practical considerations:
How will I know how to set my rates? How can I protect my gear? Will I encounter problem people while "in the field"? What kinds of legal risks might I encounter?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

ass gas or grass?

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:53:01 -0800

What are some examples of Medium-High Traffic websites that have successfully started to make money and how did they do it? It's been 5 years since This Question and many things have happened on the web. I help to run a pretty high traffic (~150k visitors a month) site in a specific demographic. I have some ideas about how to make money off of it without driving away our users, but some examples of others that went from labor of love to money-making without a lot of fuss or being sold would be helpful, but I can only think of giant ones, or Metafilter, obviously. Unique details would help a lot.

Thanks!

Business card 2.0?

jlowen — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:45:52 -0800

I need new business cards! In addition to my day job, I also am affiliated with several organizations and I am one of those hyper connected social media jerks who twitter, facebook, flickr and all that crap. I have my own domain name which is my full name .com My question is, how can I make one business card that can fill in for ALL of my organizations AND connect people to my social media profiles, perhaps integrating with info on a website, yet still be professional looking enough to hand out at conferences and the like without being self conscious? One possible thought:

a simple business card with just my name, email, phone and website URL

the website url could be something like card.myname.com in which I could list all my current involvements and different websites, social media links etc.

Any other ideas or ways to improve on the concept? Anybody seen a similar concept executed well?

My whole idea is to try to have one meta card instead of printing 6 different cards for each of my projects. And yes, I am overextended.

Blogging and Money and Taxes - Oh My!

catcatwomanman — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:47:35 -0800

blogging as a business and taxes - it can't be so difficult! Or can it? The Plan - spouse and I want to start a travel blog (we love to travel and are *good* at it!) as a business. You know, run some google ads, make a little money. Actually, if we make enough to cover our travel, we'll be happy (until the eventual greed kicks in). Soooo... if we're going to make more than $600 here in America, the IRS is going to want it's share. But two can play at that game! We want to take all the deductions we can (home office, website costs and, of course, our travel). It will just be the two of us, no employees. But therein lies the confusion... As this will be a partnership (rather than a Corp or LLC), can we carry losses over to our personal incomes (initial research says yes, hivemind says... ?)

Any advice from anyone who has a blog making money?

Any advice from anyone running a web-only based business?

Any advice from anyone who doesn't meet the above criteria but is 99% sure they know what they're talking about?

Do you recommend a business tax id number? A business bank account? A business anything else?

Do we pay estimated quarterly taxes? Even if we're losing money?

What about employee tax of 15%? Pay that too? Quarterly? Even if we're losing money?

Any online references you recommend?

Super duper thanks in advance!

What is an editorial plan?

divabat — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:35:38 -0800

What's an editorial plan? Do topic-focused weblogs (like the Gawker Media ones) have one? How do they work out what sort of content goes on their blog? I revisited my past question on magazines because I've got the beginnings of a web magazine but need some help on focusing my content. The comments there mention editorial plans, but I can't seem to find concrete examples of such.

I have a stronger idea of whom my webzine is targeted towards, and some ideas of what content I want in there. However, my idea can easily devolve into tangents, and I'm looking for ways to better structure the content of my webzine. (What categories? What can go in and what can't? Who contributes? What are the guiding principles?)

I tend to work best by example, so any examples or suggestions for this would be greatly appreciated. I'm also working on the more business-y side of things, but I feel I need to get this aspect down pat before I work on the rest. Or should I just start up the site, do a few entries, and run with it?

A modest proposal

Sophie1 — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:22:37 -0800

I designed a couple of websites just because I know how and now someone wants to pay me to do exactly what I did for free. She wants a proposal and I have no idea what to ask, how to write up a proposal or even a one sheet invoice. Anyone out here have experience with this? I could use sample invoices etc. if anyone knows where to find these. I searched but couldn't find anything to meet my needs.

Thanks!

What look for a creative small business website?

Marzipan — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:47:41 -0800

What look to give a website for a creative but commercial/professional small business? Six months ago I left a large consultancy to set up on my own as a freelance business consultant. I've begun thinking about expanding next year, and I want to build a website beyond the single information page I've got at the moment (I was thinking maybe 5 pages, nothing complicated). A friend who is a dreamweaver whizz will be helping me build the site.

I use trends to help companies with their strategy, so the business has to clearly be professional and slightly 'corporate' but also display a creative edge.
I want the site to suggest a 'company' - technically I am a registered company - rather than just me in the second bedroom, but I don't want to lie.

I would really appreciate any tips and suggestions on how this might be achieved in terms of the look/feel/content of the site, and any particular websites which you feel might be good inspiration.

How can I treat my website as a real business?

quibx — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:40:41 -0800

My website is starting to turn into an actual business. How do I go about treating it like one? I've been running this toy website for about 5 years now. In the last year it's grown exponentially, and we've published a book and became a youtube partner. I've got people who do work for me, and we go out and cover events.. Basically, it feels like a business, but I want to start acting like a business. Where do I start? Do I incorporate? How do I get investors interested in something like this that is experiencing growth but not on a scale like a large company?

Keep in mind I am more of an idea guy, and know nothing about running a business, business plans, or anything like that. But I have seen the writing on the wall, and I could very well do this for a living if i had the proper capital to get some ideas off the ground.

Are there any case studies about websites that took off and became a full fledged business?

Help Me Liven Up Financial Information Design

thinkpiece — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:55:25 -0800

Help me find a well-designed financial services site that is not stuffy! I'm looking to resolve the marketing challenge of communicating executive compensation account information and updates via a dedicated site and also email and epostcards in an innovative, un-stuffy way for a very senior group! Any un-boring financial services bells&whistles that you recommend, much appreciated.

For example I once saw a site that looked like a bunch of notebook pages and you could click and turn the page, or stick it in a old-school manila type file folder ... I would like to adapt that kind of jazzy presentation ...

Apologies if this is too tedious!!

Help me not die of boredom

mateuslee — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:28:55 -0800

Is there a resource that shows permutations of flights to/from a set of cities? Employees in the company I work for often send employees two/from four different cities, often arranging flights in which an employee will visit offices in multiple cities within the same day.

Recently my boss asked for a list of all permutations of flights to/from those cities. Short of doing the work manually (which would take days!) is there any resource out there? Please say yes.

Thanks!

The cities in question are:
Amsterdam
Madrid
Milan
Edinburgh

Help me tackle my website hosting dilemma

anthropomorphic — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:19:41 -0800

What sort of hosting should I look for for a website for an independent (one man) lawsuit mediation business? I've got registered domain names, and now i need hosting. I need email, a calendar application (lets clients pick dates subject to manual confirmation by the mediator), an application that will generate pdfs from client-input information, and a payment application. He's also going to automatically generate some sort of economic analysis graph from info the client puts in. The script is not written yet and I have no idea what language it will use. He doesn't either. As for me ... I've got a firm hand on html and css, several computer science classes (C++, Javascript, some lisp), but no direct knowledge of php. And I'm stumped. Help me, hive mind!

Why should(n't) I officially start a business?

cortex — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:24:40 -0800

What are the advantages, disadvantages, and Important Things To Know about officially starting a business? I am doing a thing on the web right now. I have made a very, very small amount of money off of it, but I'm seeing the possibility of making more.

I know nothing about the mechanics of officially establishing a business. Incorporating may be the word I'm looking for—taking Cortex Doing Some Stuff and turning it into Cortex Productions, Inc..

I'm in the United States. I'm a one-man operation working out of my kitchen in my spare time. Check the profile if you need to see the site for context.

I have minimal costs, but I am spending a little money—web hosting, musical equipment and software, (tiny, experimental) advertising expenses.

I have minimal revenue (very modest Adsense revenue from modest daily traffic) but hope to improve that—through merch sales; site donations; I'm talking to someone about licensing music from the site, too.

So should I jump through hoops and create, say, Cortex Productions Inc? Why should I? Why not? When should I? Are there distinct tax benefits to be had at this point? Deductions for business expenses, capital, etc? Incentive to have any income going to a business rather than my personal checking account?

Enlighten me!

website ad revenue

mono blanco — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 05:46:37 -0800

Is the ‘revenue-from-ads’ website business model viable for a small tightly focused company, or not? I’ve invested in a small company that provides fee-based training and a couple hundred pages of free web content much appreciated by specialists in the field. Can it generate revenue by selling ads, or not? I’d love to hear of any success stories. I’d also like to understand how the market works. What are the ad rates? How are they determined? Are there agents? Where do I go to learn more? etc.

Where should I advertise my new tech service site?

Mwongozi — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 11:30:14 -0800

I am the "neighbourhood geek" where I live, and so end up giving away a lot of free tech support. I am perfectly happy to do so, and now plan to start up my own web site where I dispense knowledge I have recently been asked for to the world. Kinda like "SlashDot... for dummies".
If the site gets sufficiently popular I may place some Google ads on it, but first I need to get my site "out there" and so I need to advertise, which I am willing to spend a few currency units on. I was going to use Google AdWords, but I'm really useless at picking keywords.
Are there better places to advertise, based on the target audience (non-geeks and wannabe-geeks) of my site?

We-based Advertising Rates

cup — Tue, 11 May 2004 09:49:51 -0800

Are there 'standard' rates for text and banner advertisements? Are there any generally accepted pricing guidelines? Is there a formula a webmaster can use to determine how much they should charge for banners or text ads? What about exclusivity? (More Inside) One of my websites (a relatively new one) is starting to take off. Although the traffic is low, it is being linked to from popular sites, traffic is steadily increasing and search engine position is improving. It is highly focused.

A company (which makes a product much desired by my highly focused audience) has contacted me for advertising rates and they want exclusive banners (i.e. I would no longer be able to accept any banner advertising from other companies in the same line of business).

I have no idea what to charge them and Google didn't turn anything up. Does anyone know of any pricing standards, guidelines or general rules regarding banner advertising or text ads? Anyone have any experience in this area? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

P.S. I would prefer to charge per month rather than per impression or click-through. Is that generally accepted or will that be a problem?

P.P.S. Sorry but I will not provide a link to the website in this thread, my profile or via e-mail out of respect for the community policy regarding self-linking. Thank you for understanding. :)