The following information is provided by Jamie Hunt of Legal Clarity Ltd.

If you choose to form a company from which to operate your online business you will have greater maintenance and set-up costs than if you simply start trading as a ‘sole trader’. Sole traders do not usually have to register with any body other than the relevant tax authorities. However, there are key advantages of forming a company, as described below.

If you operate as a sole trader you will usually be liable for all debts and other liabilities of your business without limit. In other words, your personal assets as well as your business assets would be at risk. However, if you form a company (a limited liability company) you will in almost all circumstances benefit from limited liability. This usually means your personal liability will be limited to the amount you have agreed to invest in the share capital of the company. Companies also come with quite a degree of flexibility allowing for further investment by new shareholders and the recruitment of additional directors to bring management expertise to your venture.

Companies often have more status with the business community than sole traders/proprietors. Customers and suppliers often prefer to deal with an official company, rather than a more informal sole trader.

Forming a company is usually cheap and straightforward and can be undertaken entirely online. If your company is formed as a one shareholder, one director company then there is likely to be little else to do initially, although you will probably have a requirement to keep the relevant companies registry up to date and keep and file accounts annually. Forms to update the relevant registry are usually relatively simple, likely to be available online and the content you need to insert may not change much from year to year.

The country in which you operate may have specific rules regarding names. Two companies cannot share the same name so when forming a company you will need to search the relevant registry to ensure that your chosen name is available and that no one else is operating under the same or a similar name. Even if you choose to establish yourself as a sole trader you will want to choose the name for your business carefully and perform checks to ensure that no one else is operating under the same or a similar name (particularly for the goods or services you supply and in the geographical location you operate). Matching your chosen name with domain name availability is also obviously critical.

Whether you form a company or not, operating online means that you will probably want to prescribe terms and conditions that apply to people viewing your website, as well as the terms that will apply to an actual customer that goes on to buy the goods or services that you supply. Advice from local legal sources should be taken on these issues.

In summary, forming a company is a cheap and straightforward process and in most circumstances brings the advantage of limited liability over operating as a sole trader.

Jamie Hunt, Legal Clarity Ltd

The information provided in this article is intended as a general guide only. It is not exhaustive or tailored to your individual circumstances.

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Should I Form a Company or become a Sole Trader when setting up an Online Business?

This guest post is contributed by Barbara Williams, who writes on Becoming a Computer Technician. If you like her work, have comments or want to hire her, email her at: barbara.williams07@gmail.com

You have to hand it to the Internet – it has singlehandedly destroyed (or is in the process of destroying) all forms of paper-based communication, the kind we refer to now as snail mail. And now, Twitter seems to have taken the place of fan mail, what with many celebrities taking to tweeting to boost not just their online profile, but also to gain some free publicity as well.

Ashton Kutcher, John Mayer (he of the Jennifer Aniston tell-all fame), Kirstie Alley, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Tyra Banks, Cameron Diaz, Kelly Osbourne, and many others have taken to Twitter like a duck to water, and now they have hundreds of thousands of followers. But if you’re hoping for a personal tweet from them, then you may just have to depend a great deal on luck because with all the followers they have, celebs just don’t have the time or the motivation to reply to every tweet they receive. In short, to them, it’s similar to fan mail which they do acknowledge subtly, but which often gets a standardized reply.

The question most people are asking however is this – although there are many celebs on Twitter, how many of them send out tweets on their own? Or do they have assistants to take care of their tweeting needs? If I had to take a wild guess, I would say that 90 percent of celebrities use Twitter as a PR tool rather than as a social network which connects them to the masses. They promote themselves and their movies, and in a new and unprecedented move, they’re sensationalizing their own lives. We can now read the kind of news we earlier used to find in gossip rags and tabloids, direct from the Twitter feeds of celebrities who are apparently ready to kiss and tell.

Image courtesy Lance Strate's Blog Time Passing, click on the image to see source.

This is similar to celebrities selling the exclusive rights to their wedding and baby pictures to tabloids rather than be confronted with grainy shots taken by hidden cameras. Their new policy seems to be – if anyone is going to gain anything by exploiting me, it might as well be me. So we now have Twitter adding to the popularity (or notoriety, depending on how you look at it) of the stars, and making them seem like “one of us”. It’s basically a form of publicity for them, one that they can adopt without resorting to stunts or gaining negative reviews and criticism. And the best part is that it can be outsourced to their PR people, and no one is ever going to know the difference – the cloak of anonymity that the web provides is just what our celebs need to hide under even as they supposedly tweet about private lives.

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Celebrities, Twitter and Free PR

I’m a Latina – here, I said it. I was born in Romania, from Romanian parents, a Latin legacy that burns like a flame in my heart since the day I finally understood that poetry was first written by love…

I am, and I breathe passion, and I am blessed to have a soul to respond like a thunder. But before this… I was wearing a black shirt, I had a black heart. It feels good to have light now, but the past, well… sometimes the past, comes to haunt me. And I had to share this: we shall never forget what gave us roots, what thought us to be, what made us understand… We shall never forget that we once had a bleeding heart, and a black shirt. Thank God we can sometimes strip off the past.

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If you want to feel my heart… I was wearing a black shirt

New Media Dynamics… Reinventing the Press Release – White Paper for PR Pros

Great communicators have always had to adapt to change. They either adapted or they failed to communicate. While the essence of communication has remained unchanged for tens of thousands of years, the tools used have grown and evolved greatly. Still, no matter what technological advances have been added, essentially none of the methods have been discarded, they were simply refined.

This is true of press releases as well. Once, a relied upon media and customer outreach tool, the press release is long overdue for an overhaul. The rapidly changing media environment of today demands more creativity, flexibility, focus, and even novelty of communicators and their tools. Traditional media outreach went out the moment purely traditional media shifted to the Web. Companies that do not understand this are frankly doomed to extinction in the 21st Century.

For Pamil Visions, statements like this have always been part of our corporate dogma. The reason for this is that we grew up, or came into being as a company at the onset of this shift, in fact we even contributed to the shift significantly. We are, after all, an Internet communications company. The reasons for this shift to online social and other types of media are well documented and numerous, but the important thing here is not whether communications is going digital, but how we as business people adapt our tools to the shift. For this reason, Pamil Visions’ experts, in collaboration with others from around the social web, are endeavoring to document and foster these needed changed.

Apart from new forms of press releases, like social media variants, today’s optimized press release is more refined, contracted, simplified and in the end media friendly.

This first in a series of white papers; Press Releases Designed for Effect – Reinventing the press release for the new media dynamics, reveals what a this new tool looks like. Also, the paper will become an integral part of an ongoing information stream designed to foster not only more effective communication, but a greater understanding of the social Web as a whole. In short, this will be an in depth “how to” on engaging the digital world. So, “just when you needed it most”, Pamil Visions will introduce readers to the latest information possible – primers for going digital and staying there. We begin with the press release…

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New White Paper from Pamil Visions

As I grow old and I look down my life
I see my roots have vanished in the dust
Or is some kind of fog blinding my eyes
Keeping me far away from my own past?
I move my legs and see no footprints down
Though mud was covering my toes till now
I cannot help but wonder all the way
Should I go back? What happens if I stay?
I was just born, I have no wings to fly
I need a hand but how to ask and why?
This heavy tongue makes poetry a curse
All I can wish for this land is accurse.
It was my choice to die and than re-born
What I forgot is how my heart was thorn
With heavy spines of miss and loneliness
And bitter nights with not one dream to bless.
Visions of death come crawling in my sleep
There’s no way back, in vain I weep.
No songs to sing, no dance to dance
No hopes to hope… and sure no chance.
Where should I go? I’m far from home
And in this very country I’m alone.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Far from Home

Bing Drops the PR Hype, and so Does Its Search Market Share
Bing begins to lose popularity. Is this the result of poor PR or poor service?

Erin Andrews Peephole Case Solved By FBI
Erin Andrews peephole case solved. A Chicago man was arrested on Friday in connection with illegal videos taken of Andrews nude in her hotel room. The FBI arrested Michael David Barrett at O’Hare airport, and he is scheduled to be arraigned in Federal Court today. Andrews issued a statement through her attorneys and PR Newswire as well. Prominent instances of this video are still on the Web, so we suggest Andrew’s attorney ask that they be removed. (link provided)

The PR Power of a White Paper
Business is booming with white papers. With recently published reports on how the technology industry is taking advantage of this important marketing tool, one cannot ignore how PR has the power to harness the white paper.

Are Companies Going Too Far with Breast Cancer Awareness Month?
There are those who feel that the Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month has gone a little too far and that companies are now just exploiting the cause. The big question is . . . does it matter?

Keep Hidden Meanings From Ruining Your PR Campaign
PR goofs may be funny, but they can ruin your campaign. Learn some ways to avoid PR mistakes before they happen.

Robert Joe Halderman’s Day of Fame and the Saga of Destroyed Reputations
David Letterman, Joe Halderman and Stephanie Birkitt are the main actors of a PR scandal without precedent.

Liz Claman of Fox Business Network Defines Business Sexy
Anchor Liz Claman offers her recipe for being sexy without detracting from the news she reports. Desribed as one of the most “camera ready” lady on the news, Claman is really more concerned with the issues than she is with her sex appeal. Perhaps this is so because her “method” has been honed so well she does not have to think about it. For this writer, I would never have thought such a big deal would be made out of something every “Hollywood” news lady would know?

Top Ten Reasons Why Female Late Show Employees Had Sex With Letterman by PRDude
Another reason to smile, this time by an anonymous author who calls himself the “PRDude” on Twitter.

PR Funny of the Day: “Word of mouse” by Kwittken & Company
Don’t judge the value of a company by typos and small errors. Look for the value of the ideas instead.

Mercedes Benz Sales Still Plummeting, And It’s No Wonder
Daimler’s Mercedes Benz may be in be trouble. Conflicting sales numbers and inadvisable or failed deals spotlight a company struggling to get its feet back under it. In a failing economy, amid losses of jobs everywhere, can Mercedes afford to depart from their core expertise? From failed customer support to failed partnerships Daimler may need to look into new leadership rather than new markets like China.

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PR News from Everything PR

1. 

   Courtesy yourseomentor.com

2. 

   Courtesy silenceandvoice.com

3. 

   Courtesy emptyfield.com

4. 

   Courtesy savagechickens.com

5. 

   Courtesy entwipreneur.com

6. 

   Courtesy cagle.com

7. 

   Courtesy tastyblogsnack.com

8. 

   Courtesy polledemaagdt

9. 

   Courtesy kari-shma.blogspot.com

10. 

    Courtesy polledemaagdt

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Ten Twitter Cartoons to Die For

If you try to visit www.searchme.com today, don’t bother: you’ll be redirected to Google instead. Apparently, the positive media coverage (including one of my articles on SitePoint) did not help the Sequoia Capital funded startup to get a new round of financing.

CEO Randy Adams wrote a letter to Michael Arrington, where he explains the reasons for taking the site down:

We knew when we started the company that to compete with the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo,it was going to take at least $100 million, half to build the back end across thousands of servers and half to get distribution (maybe more with Microsoft spending $100 million on Bing advertising alone). What we didn’t plan on was the terrible downturn in the economy which made it impossible to raise another $50 million to get distribution (mainly through toolbar deals).

CEO Adams is obviously very naïve if he thinks that $100 million is enough to compete with the likes of Microsoft and Google. I was pretty enthusiastic about searchme.com myself, but attempting to compete with the search giants with a “visual search engine” is unrealistic: while pretty to look at, a visual search engine, as refined as it may be, will probably never become too popular online, because the users need information more than they need pretty pictures.

Searchme.com raised around $44 million in venture capital, a stunning number for a startup that allegedly copied http://search.spacetime.com/ . If Searchme.com ever manages to get another round of funding, I hope they will rethink their strategy and, instead of trying to compete with Google, they will actually try to attract a more plausible audience: the iPhone users.

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Another Search Engine Bites the Dust

This is a guest post by Bizymoms.

Franchise businesses have gained in popularity over the years with many new and innovative franchise opportunities entering the market. Spectacular advancements in the field of information and communication technologies have also given a boost to the franchise networks and allowed them to expand across geographies.

Particularly for new and aspiring entrepreneurs a franchise may be one of the most viable options to be considered. The prevailing global economic slowdown is forcing many companies to downsize, resulting in pay cuts and job losses for many employees. New jobs are difficult to come by, and in any case many people are unable to achieve job satisfaction at work. In addition to this, there are many stay at home moms who are considering working in order to contribute financially to their households in the current times.

For all new entrepreneurs, a franchise holds out a promise of setting up your independent business with the backup of an established organization to support them. The key advantages of a franchise option for a budding entrepreneur are as follows:

1. The total expertise and experience of the franchiser is readily available to the entrepreneur from day one. One does not need to learn the hard way through a maze of mistakes and ‘hit and trial’ methods because the franchiser will pass on everything they have learned in an efficient package to the entrepreneur.
2. The franchiser has an established brand name and goodwill that can be capitalized by the franchisee entrepreneur. In any new business there is a long lead period required till the business can establish a reputation for itself. A franchise offers established goodwill and reputation so that you start earning revenues from the start.
3. The franchiser provides the technical backup and knowledge. There is a whole team of support professionals who are ready to assist you wherever you face any hurdles or hiccups in the functioning of your business.
4. The franchiser takes care of the marketing, advertising and promotional activities at the broader level, while you may have to contribute to it at the local level. Your business gets the automatic benefits of economies of scale that a franchise network enjoys in terms of marketing and advertising.
5. Business systems have been usually refined and perfected already by the franchiser. Therefore, it allows the entrepreneur to run his business within the prescribed set of parameters and maximize the efficiencies of business. In other words, the business process is highly simplified and organized which makes it easy for the entrepreneur to run the show smoothly.

Looking at these benefits of a franchise business, it makes pragmatic business sense for budding entrepreneurs to consider various franchise options offered by established franchise brands in the marketplace.

Bio: Bizymoms has been helping women start work at home businesses for over 10 years. Now, with our Franchises for Moms section giving great home business ideas, women can start their own franchise business!

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A Franchise Business Is a Viable Alternative for New Entrepreneurs

If you wondered why I was so silent the past few (OK – many) months, today’s entry might offer some answers. A few close friends already know, but most of my readers are still wondering: what happens; why is the SEO book for WordPress not updated yet; why are my posts here so seldom and so on.

Well, there are many answers to these questions, but the one that matters the most is a simple: because I am a mother now.

My son, Paul-Jules, is 9 months today – easy to see that the past nine months were heaven for me. The months before his birth were not easy at all: I had a difficult pregnancy; a time I would rather forget than discuss here or anywhere else. I just mention it because many mothers and expecting women don’t have to cut work till the last minute. I had to do it from the first months – exhaustion and stress might have ended with a tragedy. I thank God for being on my side and giving me this wonderful baby.

I will not start now a mommy blog, nor do I have the intention to broadcast my child from now on. This is a onetime announcement: I am proud to be a mom, but I will focus my online activities on professional issues rather than private.

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Meet Paul-Jules, My Pride and Joy