Money Blue Book

What a nice lazy Saturday afternoon. I think I will go file my paperwork to obtain a Business Trade Name Certificate.

I have a decent full time job in finance/law and I also write for a few blogs on the side for fun. Although I see blogging as more of a hobby, I think I should start treating it more like mini-business. I could choose to set up the blog business in a variety of ways depending on my choice of business entity. The primary ones are corporations, limited liability companies (LLC), limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships. Each type has its own advantages and disadvantages in regards to liability protection and taxation benefits. There are even fancier and longer named options such as limited liability limited partnerships. But since it’s just me for now and I don’t plan on taking on business debt or expanding the business for some time, my current chosen business entity will be that of a sole proprietorship. Besides, right now I don’t feel like having to deal with filing LLC Articles of Organization papers or having to pay pricey incorporation fees.

Sole Proprietorships Are Easy To Create

Legally, any one can start up a sole proprietorship. You could set up a cardboard table and start selling lemonade and that would be considered a sole proprietorship business. There are no fancy or extra paperwork to create the business entity other than compliance with any relevant state and local licensing and taxation requirements. Sole proprietorships are considered flow through entities, which means that all profit and losses will go straight to the owner and all income generated by your sole proprietor business will be considered your own ordinary income. You can still generally deduct business related expenses for tax purposes, but it has the least amount of tax benefits compared to the other entities. But it’s the easiest to create with the least amount of government regulation. Since I’m lazy, I’ll put off considering more complicated business entity choices for now.

Filing a Trade Name, aka Doing-Business-As Certificate

Although I’m sticking with the easy choice for now, someday, the business might grow to the point where I will need to change business entity to take better advantage of tax breaks. So that’s why instead of running this side blog business in my own name I want to operate it under my chosen business name. It’ll be easier to differentiate and separate my personal operations from that of the business in the future.

Filing an application for a trade name in my state of Maryland is easy and is done through the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation. Filing cost is only $25.

Thinking for the future, I could also consider filing for a federal trademark now to protect the mini-company’s brand name, but it’s not really necessary at this time. Filing for a federally registered trademark is expensive and can cost upwards of $300. For now, I’ll just rely on common law protections until the day I decide that I need constructive nationwide notice of my trademark.

I think the Comcast turtle mascots would love the speed of my website. The Slowsky’s like things “slow and easy” – a perfect description of my site right now.

I apologize for the sluggishness in page load time and the occasional appearance of site error messages for the last few days. I just migrated my web hosting to Dreamhost. I thought this would solve the uptime and speed issues I had with Hostmonster, but it looks like I’m having the same problems with Dreamhost as well. It has been a pretty frustrating week to say the least.

Dreamhost doesn’t offer live chat or telephone troubleshooting so sometimes I have to wait a few hours to a day before they respond to my e-mail support requests. The tech guys at Dreamhost continue to be very professional and courteous, and that’s why I’ve been giving them the benefit of the doubt. But at some point, they have to be able to deliver and fix the problem permanently. I really hope they repair the malfunction soon. The company is very likable, but I can only tolerate so much.

Separating Truth From Fiction

Are there any affordable web hosting services out there with truly reliable service? They all seem to guarantee 99% uptime, but always fail to deliver. It’s so hard to get a genuine, unbiased opinion about which company offers the best service. I suspect many webhosting companies pay people to visit websites and forums anonymously to say favorable things about their company, while badmouthing the competition. It’s hard to filter out the junk to get to the truth sometimes.

I’ve been having the worst server reliability issues with my current host provider, HostMonster. After several months of complaining and pleading with them to fix the problem permanently, I have given up. In the next few weeks I will slowly be transferring my websites to DreamHost. I’ll write a more in-depth rant of my HostMonster experience sometime later in the future. I’ve been swamped with work these days so I’m a bit pressed for time right now. Suffice to say, I’m disappointed in the way HostMonster makes continued excuses for their persistent server downtime and their lack of proper and prompt customer attention. When I indicated to them that I was contemplating changing host providers, rather than try to convince me to stay or offer me a retention deal, they simply asked for my credit card number so they could cancel my account. Boooo! Two thumbs down!

DreamHost is currently running a great promotion. I don’t get any referral for this, but I must share it because it’s such a great limited time deal. If you sign up with them today and prepay for a year or more of service using the promo code 10ten10diez10dix10dieci10shi (yes, that entire crazy long thing), they will give you a discount of $110.10 off your bill! Only the first 1010 customers can qualify so you might want to get on board while you can.

I think it’s time I posted a general liability and privacy disclaimer for this website. I personally find it very unnecessary since most people won’t even bother to read it, but the legal realities of the world dictate that I issue one.

I recently read about this case that happened only a few years ago regarding a lawsuit filed by a company against a well known search engine optimization (SEO) blogger named Aaron Wall alleging unspecified defamation and unlawful publication of trade secrets. The trade secrets claim stemmed from comments made by anonymous third parties on the blogger’s website. The case was ultimately dismissed due to a lack of personal jurisdiction, but the case stands as a stark reminder that bloggers have to be careful.

The reality is that writing and posting work online subjects one to the scrutiny of others. This also applies to comments and postings from third party readers as well. Freedom of speech is a constitutionally protected right that shields many forms of speech from government intrusion, but in the private sector it is often a different matter. Frivolous and threatening lawsuits designed to intimidate are all too often filed by parties in bad faith. Therefore, under this context, it is better to be safe than sorry.

I do not want readers to execute trades or take actions based solely on my advice. Please always carefully read the fine print before signing contracts and always conduct your own due diligence. You should not regard any information that I’ve provided as professional legal or financial advice. Remember that the terms and conditions for financial instruments such as credit cards and bank accounts frequently and do change, so please be aware of that. I try my best to provide accurate information, but occasionally I may miss something.

The official disclaimers will be up shortly.