What’s a DBA you ask? Glad you asked its simply ‘Doing Business As’ registration in your local county. You will see ads online to do this for you….DON’T DO IT, IT’S A RIPOFF! This little item is only around 10 bucks and you can probably get it done within an hour if you live near your county seat. Some of these services charge $50 or more to do this simple task. First look up online with your county to find where you can file your DBA at. Usually its at your county annex. Next think up a name you want for your business. This doesn’t necessarily have to be your business name but it helps to be close. This will be the name that will probably show up on charges to your customers. Have a few choices ready as the one you want maybe taken. The clerk will have you fill out a simple form, record your business name and take your money. Easy and done!

You might get the form there or it might be mailed to you. You can now take this to a bank to open up a bank account for your business if you wish. More importantly you can give the information to your state sales tax department to get a sales tax license. This is the holy grail for dealing with real vendors. They will want to see it before they do business with you. You will be able to be a wholesale buyer at this point. We’ll talk more about vendors later but for now this is good information to know about who you want to deal with.

So for all this you are now the most basic business owner there is….the Sole Proprietor. If you get bigger you may want to change up your organization into another legal type of business. But for now you can get paid into a business account, order from vendors and yes pay sales taxes for what you sell in some cases. Just a side note the sales tax realm is changing quickly for internet businesses. So far no big deal for the small fry but it is something that you need to look into especially in your own state what’s expected.

If you haven’t been in your chosen business before but are learning you will have double duty. One to learn how to run your site and interact with your customers. How will you have your customers pay? What will your policies be? But secondly you will have to learn the ins and outs of your business. Such as the nuances of your products such as their seasonal draw or maybe how much it will cost you to ship them to your clients. Which items will you lead with?

You are thinking about your business, but what about your competitors? How many competitors are there? I’m not one to say you should let numbers daunt you. Sure there are a lot of websites and brick & mortar stores to contend with. But there is always room for one more if you do it right. Look at them and think what could you do better? A unique product? A better way of doing business? The possibilities are endless but you should have an idea of how you’re going to roll. It should be something more than ‘I’ll be cheaper’. While can be a good feature being cheap alone won’t win you millions of customers overnight and sometimes people will wonder if you’re too good to be true. An idea maybe would be to build a community of sorts to talk about the type of things you offer. Building a community takes time but its worth the effort.

Chew on these ideas a little to think not so much about what your website will look like. But more what you intend to do with it. Selling services/products, tips about your products or maybe even your product line or services have hit the news as of late. How much time do have and how much time do you have to put into your site? Throwing yourself all into it will probably cause you to burn out and too little time will not show results. So like most things slow and steady wins the race.

If nothing else from this short article take away the idea that being in e-commerce is not a get rich quick thing. No matter how many cartoon mascots, sexy race car drivers or celebrities on tv tell you how easy it is. Its not you can over time do well but don’t believe all the “Uncle Frank” stories about how some uncle somewhere had a website and made million in a few months selling his website or domain. It is satisfying to build one enjoy your time and don’t be in hurry to cash out the big bucks.