Web Business Creation Reflection

 This week we learned about different Legal Structures and Licensure and Tax requirements for businesses. The different legal structures vary in complexity, from a simple sole proprietorship to LLCs and Corporations. I learned a little bit about all of them, and decided that a Sole Proprietorship or a general partnership would be most appropriate for my situation. The business I’m starting is very small, and does not require a large amount of money to start it, so I don’t really need investors or shareholders. I could easily run it as a sole proprietorship if I wanted. However, my husband will inevitably help me out with it, and we share all of our income and expenses, so it would make sense for us to enter a partnership. That way we both have equal responsibility and equal share of the profit. To set up a general partnership business in Idaho, we’d start with choosing a business name and registering our partnership business with the Idaho secretary of state. If unregistered, then ...

 This week we talked about website design and eCommerce platforms. We had to compare two successful websites that use the same model that we plan to use and look for common attributes that they share.  The two sites I compared that use an affiliate model are https://www.thespruce.com/ and https://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/. They are both blogs that cover lifestyle, decor,  and home improvement, and they use affiliate links and sometimes promote their own products as well. Five things they have in common are: 1. They both have white backgrounds with floral elements  2. They both have a list of their most recent content easily accessible on their home page 3. They both have different sections/topics listed across the top of the screen 4. They both have a place on the home page where you can sign up for emails 5. They both have all their social media listed at the bottom of the page It was interesting to see how many similarities these sites have. I think people have ki...

 This week we talked about picking a site builder and a host. At first this was confusing for me because I wasn't sure what the difference was. But now I understand that a site builder is just what allows you to create and customize a website, but the host is what actually stores the data and allows your content to be accessible on the internet. Brother Scott used the example of the land you build a house on being the host, and the actual building being the website. I think one of the confusing thing is that many hosts also offer site building options, and lots of site builders have hosting included.  I researched quite a few options, including Wix, Weebly, Uphost, Bluehost, Wordpress, Ionos, Namecheap, and Hostinger. I compared various components, including the price, the minimum time commitment, the features and flexibility, and ease of use. In general, I found that those that had the best capacity and widest variety of features were also the ones that cost more. Which makes...

 This week we studied about choosing wholesalers and the difference between affiliate marketing versus drop shipping. When looking at the different wholesalers, I noticed that the global one I was looking at had very low per unit prices, but they had large minimum order quantities (MOQs). For example, some sunglasses were listed as $0.83 per unit, but the MOQ was 1200 pieces. So at minimum, one order would cost $996. This might be a great option if you're confident you can sell all those sunglasses, but if you're just starting out and you're unsure of your site traffic/demand, then it's a pretty big risk. The US wholesaler sold sunglasses in much smaller quantities. You could buy in batches of a dozen. So yes, they were more expensive per unit, but you could buy a dozen for as little as $19, which is a much lower investment to start out. So I think choosing a wholesaler depends a lot on how much you're willing to initially invest, as well as what kind of product you...