It is often funny how most people get into the Webmaster business. They often will start slowly dipping their feet in the water by putting up a site or two. The ones who stay in the "biz" gain momentum and often within a year or two have 100 or 200 hundred sites, which encompass free, pay and A.V.S. style sites.
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"Planning and structuring your corporation for maximum protection is something that you really want to pay an attorney for." |
The Webmaster is then into the "biz" lock, stock and barrel with these multitude of sites operating and the multitude of pressures from that business. This is one of the main reasons I counsel my clients to start a corporation at the beginning of their business. Once you are into the day to day, I need to put out this fire; I need to increase traffic type of routine you often forget to C.Y.A. your business.
See, every one of those 100 to 200 hundred sites are all potential liabilities and potential lawsuits that can end up on your door. The moment you enter that stream of commerce called the web you are subjecting yourself to being sued. That is right, from the moment you put up your one little free website you can be sued. What is worse is that even if you live in South Beach Miami
you could have to defend yourself in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
So you need to protect yourself and your assets from these potential liabilities. One of the best and most inexpensive ways to protect yourself is to set up a corporation. Since most businessmen have heard of how a corporation works I will not go into an in-depth explanation of the corporate form.
What I will explain is how to set up your corporation for free. Well at least without having to pay $1,000 of dollars in attorney's fees. The actual process of setting up the initial corporation is relatively easy, inexpensive and can be accomplished without the necessity of an attorney.
Almost every state in the Union maintains a Division of Corporations website where you can obtain the forms in either downloadable format or for online filing. I am located in Florida and our corporate website is near fantastic. I can go online, file my clients initial corporate papers and even pay by online check. If your state does not have online filing you would then take the downloaded forms and file them with the state directly.
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You might ask why an attorney is showing you how to file your own corporation for free. The reason is that filing the initial papers is normally such a routine process that even even a dumb monkey can accomplish it. Planning and structuring your corporation for maximum protection is something that you really want to pay an attorney for.
See, I have had many clients who have filed their own corporate paperwork and then asked me to review it. Some of these clients were involved in lawsuits and asked me to make sure that the corporation would protect them. Some had maintained their corporations correctly and some had not.
Of course the one's who had not maintained their corporations correctly had put themselves at risk. Also, that is really where attorney's fees get expensive. When you screw something up and your attorney has to dance the Mexican hat dance to protect you...it's going to cost you big.
Also, if you have multiple websites you may want to set up multiple corporations. Just like when you set up multiple domain names to handle different areas of the Webmaster business you may need to set up different and separate corporations. If you have pay sites it is going to have a different risk factor than an AVS. website. Deciding whether to have multiple corporations or business entities is something that a good corporate attorney can advise you on.
In this article we have not discussed the other types of business entities available to the Webmaster besides the corporation. You could also set up Limited Liability Companies, Limited Liability Partnerships, Business Trusts, Limited Partnerships and Offshore Corporations to run and protect your business and assets with. Those types of business structures are more complex and you should definitely sit across the table from your attorney to see if those would be right for you.
So in conclusion, whether you use an attorney or not START A CORPORATION to protect yourself and your assets. You then want to spend some time with your attorney to structure your corporation or corporations to give you and your business maximum protection. As always be safe not sorry and protect yourself.