Business and web-savvy Dopers, I need some advice.
I’m something of an artist, and I’m considering starting my own “business” (in quotes because I’m planning to sell stuff, but not expecting to generate any kind of large profit) selling prints of my work and doing comissioned portraits and such. This would obviously not be a physical business location, but I’d put up a webpage where people could see my work and a price schedule, and contact me for requests and such.
My questions are:
-What do I need to know before launching this, business-wise? I know approximately zero about running a business of any kind.
-Do I need to go through the same process as someone starting an actual small business? (I vaguely recall something about posting a notice in the paper, and pretty much nothing else)
-What about taxes? How do I keep track of or report the income, do I need to pay quarterly taxes? I’m not expecting to generate much income at all off this, is there a minimum amount I have to take in before it becomes necessary to report it?
-Is there a website or some other accurate source of information I can read to learn about any other technical aspects of this?
If it makes a difference, I’m in Oregon.
Thanks!
~mixie
The best idea with a web business is to treat it exactly as if you were starting a regular business - it just so happens that instead of leasing shop or office space, you rent space on a webserver attached to the internet. You have to clearly understand what it is you want to do and what your potential customers want.
The key things to do right now are:
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Do as much research as you can on your type of business, the internet, etc.
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Start with a business plan: figure out what your goals are, how you’re going to get there, what you’re going to do and when, etc.
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Draw up a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis about your business.
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Draw up a budget and figure out all of your costs involved in the setup and ongoing running of your business.
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Get some advice from a good accountant about the business structure and whether you’re on the right track.
I’m not sure what sort of government support you might have in your area, there maybe a department of development/business/trade that could send you information packs about rules, regulations, and forms for starting up a new business. Also they might offer training courses on setting up and running small businesses. An example of what I mean [which I realise is not applicable to you] is the Queensland Department of State Development.
That should be enough to keep you occupied. 
mecaenas advice is sound for setting up a proper business. However, I get the impression the OP wants to starts slowly and cheaply, by only putting up a website and hoping there are at least sufficient orders to pay for the costs.
I’m not an American lawyer, so I can’t give you detailed advice. But IIRC the U.S. does allow for small businesses to be conducted entirely in your person/name. Drawback is, if the business goes bankrupt, so do you. Advantage is that at first you do not need to file lots of paperwork and pay costs for setting up a Ltd. corporation. However, you may have to register a business name somewhere (as you mentioned). The local Chamber of Commerce should be able to give you info on this. I see no reason why setting up a business for e-commerce would be different than for ‘physical’ business.
With respect to taxes, things are often very different in different places. For one-person businesses I would venture a guess that you only need to file a tax statement for your person, and treat the business results as income from which you may deduct the business costs. Again, you should check this with someone who really knows about tax law (the Chamber of Commerce may again be a good start for basic information, or maybe your states tax website).
At least for tax reasons (and also in case the business takes off) you should start with proper bookkeeping right away. This means meticulously registering all income and expenditures, keeping receipts of sales and of things you bought, then calculating the balance to see whether you are making a profit or not. If you can’t do this yourself, you’ll have to hire someone to do it for you. If you don’t keep proper books, you may think you are doing well while in fact you are losing money (or are forgetting about large bills/taxes coming in the near future).
BTW if you ask someone else to make your website, you should ensure that he transfers (assigns) all copyright to the website to you, in writing.
And if you want detailed advice, you probably will have to make clear which state you live in. There may be lawyers and other professionals in ‘confusion’ but I believe those are not the ones you want advice from. 