Zoning may also be an issue. Municipal ordinances can be very restrictive about what types of businesses are allowed in a residential district. This also applies if you plan on placing a sign outside of your home. Again, check with your local government municipalities to find out what requirements are for where you live.

In addition, depending on how your home business is structured--as a sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation--there may be forms to file with state. The legal structure affects taxes and liability of owner and home business, so it's important to follow appropriate procedures. Contact your state's Department of Revenue for filing fees and information.

If you plan to operate your home business under a name other than your own, you will have to register a fictitious name with county--usually referred to as a DBA filing (Doing Business As). The exceptions to this regulation are corporations and partnerships doing business under umbrella of corporate or partnership name.

As a home business owner, you may be required to file estimated tax returns and pay estimated taxes quarterly. If you have employees, you also have to submit taxes withheld from employee paychecks. Here are some of taxes you may be responsible for:

Employment taxes -- Federal income taxes, Social Security and Medicare, federal unemployment and state income taxes.

Federal self-employment tax--Required by those who work for themselves to cover Social Security and Medicare contributions.

Selling With Your Own Web Site

By Stephen Bucaro

Many people have their own product, a book, a CD, a craft, or other product that they would like to sell with their own Web site, but they can't find simple instructions on how to get started. In this article, I'm going to explain how to sell your product with your own Web site. It boils down to four steps.

1. Find a Web server

You need to put your Web site on a computer that is running a Web server program and is connected to Internet. There are three choices:

a. Your own server. This requires you to be, or to hire, a system administrator responsible for system maintenance, software updates, backups, and security. This also requires a high-speed communications link to Internet. This is practical only for large organizations.

b. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider). Along with a broadband or dial-up connection to Internet, many ISPs also provide you with a small amount of personal Web space. There are several problems with using this Web space, even for a small business Web site. The storage space and monthly transfer allowance is too small, and if you decide to change ISP, you lose your email address and you need to move your Web site.

c. A Web host provider. There are many companies that sell Web site space on their servers. These companies offer three grades of service:

- Free hosting. The hosting service makes money from banner ads that they display on your Web site. Sometimes storage space is too small and monthly transfer allowance is usually limited. - Shared hosting. Your Web site shares a server with many other Web sites. Some hosting providers put too many Web sites on each server, or someone else's Web site monopolizes servers processor or bandwidth. This slows down your Web site. - Dedicated hosting. The hosting provider sets up a separate server for your Web site alone. Whereas shared hosting can be acquired for as little as $5 per month, dedicated hosting cost hundreds of dollars per month.

Recommendation:

Most small businesses can't afford a dedicated server. You can use your ISP's webspace or a free host for learning purposes, but usually only shared or dedicated hosting lets you use your own domain name. You will want to register and promote your own domain name, not put a lot of effort into promoting a domain name provided by a free host.

There are many Web host directories that let users rate web host providers. Visit several of these directories and choose a web host provider with a good rating. The most important specification to look for in a Web host provider is "up time". They should have a 99.9% up time guarantee.

2.Design and Build your Web site

A Web site is nothing more than a collection of webpages. Webpages are very similar to documents that you would create in a word processor. A word processor, like Microsoft Word for example, uses invisible "tags" to layout page. Whereas Word uses "Rich Text File (RTF) tags, a webpage uses Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags. But concept is same.

You never actually see or deal with tags in a word processor document. Many people use a web page design application that lets them avoid dealing with html tags on a webpage. But most serious webpage design requires you to deal with html code directly. There are three reasons why you would need to deal with html code directly.

1. Your web page design application refuses to format webpage exactly way you want it. 2. There is an error on your webpage. 3. Most word processor documents are static. A webpage usually contains powerful little programs called "scripts" that work with html tags on page.

Recommendation: Before venturing into creating your own Web site, spend a few weeks experimenting with html tags to create webpages by hand. You don't need a Web server to test your webpages. You can load them directly into your Web browser. In your learning, focus on linking pages together that reside in different folders. This is where most beginners have a problem.

The first step in building your Web site is to create or choose a template. As I mentioned earlier, a Web site is nothing more than a collection of webpages. But all webpages for a Web site should have same basic layout, color scheme, and navigation elements.

There are thousands of free and pay templates available on Web. Actually, every Web site is a template that you can explore by selecting View | Source in your Web browser's menu. The most import thing about selecting a template is that you are comfortable with it. If template uses complex code, chances of getting an error occurring are high, and you may not be able to fix it.

Recommendation: Select a template you like, but don't use it directly. From html coding that you learned by following my previous recommendation, hand code a similar template. Now you will have a template you understand and are comfortable modifying and fixing if it becomes necessary.