What Ever Happened to September?

So the past month involved a lot of waiting, but there is also a lot of news!

Logo - I decided to run a logo contest at designoutpost.com. You can currently see the submissions here: http://www.designoutpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11409 I will be picking a winner tomorrow, 9/30/2006 and using the logo for business cards and my website.

Sole Proprietorship - I went to a seminar sponsored by Texas State University in San Marcos on starting and running your own business. I quickly learned that there was no need for me to incorporate, since I'm not currently concerned about my personal wealth being kept seperate from the business, as I don't intend to take out any loans or do any financing to get started. I found the following links extremely helpful in setting up a Sole Proprietorship:

http://www.ehow.com/how_1843_form-sole-proprietorship.html
http://www.sba.gov/starting_business/legal/forms.html
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98202,00.html

And here is an Austin-specific link that has the actual form you need to take to the Travis County Clerk:

http://austin.about.com/cs/smallbusiness/a/sbstartup.htm

I had a great experience at the county clerk's office. All I had to do was go to a computer, type in the name I wanted, when the computer returned "no records found," I took my pre-completed form to the cashier, paid $16.20, and I had a sole proprietorship in 5 minutes!

EIN - I wanted to get an EIN for tax reasons. I discovered that you can do this in minutes online at the IRS website. Here's the link to form SS-4, which gets you an EIN:

https://sa.www4.irs.gov/sa_vign/newFormSS4.do

Website - The website still hasn't been created, but I'm leaning towards using a template from http://www.templateoutpost.com/. I just need to check to make sure the H1s and Titles of each page are unique and changable for SEO purposes.

Taxes - At the small business seminar I went to, I learned all sorts of exciting things about tax shelters for small business owners. I purchased 2 books from Amazon with tax tips for home-based business owners. Wish me luck!

Sorry for the long delay in reporting and thanks for your patience as Maniac MarCom gets off the ground!