Hot answers tagged money
11
There are a wide range of options available for you when starting out:
Bootstrap. Have a day job that pays your bills, have the night job which is your start up. Get some clients, use the money from them to reinvest in more marketing and advertising, keep going until you don't need the day job.
Going through job boards and online job sites like odesk and ...
9
It's not necessary that they are currently profitable to have received investment.
The reasoning behind the funding goes that, if a service is popular and has gained traction, a business model can be implemented later. This is particularly common amongst internet services with a strong network effect.
For this type of business, the purpose of the ...
9
I am deciding on leaving university to carry on with a business idea
if it is as successful as I believe.
Consider staying in school. Many startups fail, and while money may not be a primary consideration, the glorified version of a successful startup only taking 12 months of your time is a mirage.
7
Stop trying to justify the costs, and focus on the added value. For example what it's going to save, or by how much it will improve business. Then ensure that the delta between that and the cost is sufficient to make it a "no brainer".
"Feature X will enable the company to save 3 million in labour costs, per year", is an easy way to sell a deal that will ...
6
How should I handle putting my own money into the business account so I can avoid double taxation?
You are mixing two unrelated topics. Double taxation has nothing to do with your bank accounts.
Double taxation refers to the fact that income is taxed twice. This occurs when a corporation's profits are taxed at the corporate level, and then a second ...
6
Bit.ly makes money through its enterprise service, offering custom shortened URLs (using its technology to manage shortened URLs through a branded domain, like pep.si) and advanced analytics.
Other sites are making money simply through advertising on their main site. TinyURL gets ~3,000,000 monthly unique visitors, which translates into an even higher ...
6
In the agreements that I work on, the typical approach is that the payee has the right to audit the payer's accounting records. If an underpayment is discovered, the payer pays the underpayment amount plus interest. If the underpayment exceeds X% of the amount due, the payer also reimburses the payee for the cost of the audit.
I don't know whether this ...
4
In the US, you can refer to the FTC guide on pre-sales warranties for insight. Clearly spelling out what defines the start of service is key.
Example: with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee - is start of service defined as:
at the start of the "Free trial"
after trial / start of payment cycle
at the start of the initial payment cycle
at the start of each ...
4
You don't need money to start a startup. I started out with the exact same resources, only I didn't have a Mac, nor Windows. Crappy old PC and Linux worked just as fine. :)
What you do need though, is a good team. Work on that, if you don't have one yet. It might be challenging. Took me almost two years and two restarts to find the right people.
If you got ...
4
In terms of time, this is no different than starting a business while employed full-time. Many founders choose to maintain their day jobs while working on their startup, so I believe you can do the same with school.
However, there are differences between the two:
You will learn a lot of valuable skills while in college. Those of us that went through ...
3
The tricky thing about software is that if you've never written it, it seems like magic. Many people view writing software as a talent, a quality you possess. They can't write software, but you can. It's like being tall, or having curly black hair. It's not a skill that has to be developed over years of learning and practice; it's something you're born with.
...
3
Am I eligible to start a Kickstarter project?
To be eligible to start a Kickstarter project, you need to satisfy the requirements of Amazon Payments:
Be a permanent US resident and at least 18 years of age with a Social Security Number (or EIN), a US bank account, US address, US state-issued ID (driver's license), and major US credit or debit ...
3
I have a cousin who is quite bright (PhD in Mathematics, etc.) and when I read your posting I thought of something he often says:
"Compared to what?"
It's a great question in certain situations because it causes people to pause, think more deeply and broadly, and have an intelligent conversation. In your situation you would have to be careful not to sound ...
3
It's very difficult to answer your question, but...
You will need a website. You can use a free Moodle or find a freelancer to make what you want. A simple website would cost you about $300.
You need a hosting account. If you are only going to publish short films, a standard hostmonster account should be enough. This costs $6 a month.
If you're not going ...
3
Before discussing your specific numbers, it is important to note that in the US anyway, there is no requirement that losses be split the same way as profits. In fact it is often desirable that they be split according to some other formula due to the various participants being in quite different tax situations. In fact the at risk provisions of the income tax ...
2
I'm not familiar with Indiegogo, but I've answered a bunch of questions about Kickstarter, and I'll reiterate here these answers (I know its too much to expect from people to look whether the questions have been asked before).
Do I need company registered to be able to get money through pages
like those?
To the best of my knowledge - no. You can ...
2
I don't understand the connection between you taking a salary and the QuickBooks bookkeeping. Those are two separate issues; I must be missing something.
But, to answer your actual question:
But since all the money is helping pay for my expenses while I am not working, how does this get handled both tax wise for the company and for me when I use it to ...
2
There are 3 different things here:
The details of the guarantee - each company has it's own idea about what a "30 days money back guarantee" is, usually it's buried in some terms of service document and vary a lot between companies, for example, a lot of companies only offer the guarantee for the first payment.
Chargeback conditions - Its very possible ...
1
In the US, Federal Law allows the consumer 60 days from the date of their billing statement date to contest the charges. When you bill them is not relevant, except in extending the time.
So if the customer starts their subscription on the 1st, and you bill on that date (which means that the charge clears on the 2nd), and the credit card company issues their ...
1
Get a job and write open source in your prime time at Github. When you have something cool, others open source guys might be attracted. After all you can then try to join a Foundation like the Apache Software Foundation to get even more attraction.
After all nobody is giving you a cent for a dream. At least when the dream is of an open source project ...
1
Double what you're currently earning as a permie and you won't be far off a reasonable approximation of a contractor income.
My last permie salary was approximately 80K a year, for which I got £4300 a month after tax. I don't count bonus because you really can't count on this as it is discretionary.
My first contractor role was paid at £500 a day. I ...
1
I would say it depends on how hard you are willing to work - are you open to learn anything and everything and only hire others for services when you absolutely must? How much time do you have - can you work on this full time or just on weekends? Your main expense could be content creation (since content IS your product), but if that's your strength you have ...
1
I think you should report this to the actual person if it's possible if not then report it to the bank issuing the card if you know what bank it is. Their security departments would be very interested in this. If not then to Visa or MasterCard.
One thing that I would keep is the record of this transaction as this might be needed for evidence later.
...
1
When you sell something you set the price of that item or service. If someone wants to pay you in a way that incurs fees, they should pay those fees. But you need to specify that to your customer up front.
Both the sending and receiving banks will usually charge a fee to process a wire transfer. In addition, they may also be a currency conversion fee ...
1
If your site is not a gambling site but it's getting rejected from advertising vendors because it is a gambling site, then you just need to write to them and hope to get the decision overturned. I wouldn't give up because their automated system knocked you back.
As for some other ways to get more traffic:
Work hard on SEO. Organic search visitors is the ...
1
I am a passionate Open Source user. I even build software myself, if necessary.
I never use software which labels itself "shareware". I used shareware approx 2 times the past two years. With the term "shareware" I always feel it is something weird, probably installing trojans on my system.
Better I like the term "Demo". I am not sure why, but I have ...
1
Your mileage will vary. You will be competing with very low cost labor from developing countries, including heavy hitters from the Ukraine with very impressive portfolios.
Programmers and designers on those sites are a dime a dozen.
You are also starting on there with no Odesk reputation (many of the offshore consultants have agencies with many ratings).
...
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