[Hidden-tech] Starting my own small Business Website

[Peter S]

Hello Hidden Techers,

I want to apologize up front for what is a serious 'newbie' question.. 
but I was hoping to draw from your collective wisdom, if possible.

I've built a small website that essentially aggregates all of my home 
utility data (from the various utility websites) into one dashboard.  
It's been a personal project of mine for the past few years, written in 
Django, that I've essentially developed/hosted on my home Linux server.  
Its written to be scalable, so that it works for any US State/City, 
assuming the web crawlers were written for the utility web sites.  I see 
this as a hobby venture (that could grow to be more).

I'd like to go live with it, and make it available to some of my 
friends/family, if they were interested in using it.

While I've been buttoning up things from a security perspective, I've 
also been researching the associated costs of actually running a website.

Specifically:

 1. Purchasing/Sustaining a domain name via Namecheap
 2. Web hosting (maybe multiple nodes... one for main Django app, one
    for Redis Queue workers, one for Splash Javascript rendering
    support) via Digital Ocean, Heroku, or AWS.
 3. Email Hosting..
 4. (Possibly) SSL Certificate purchase
 5. More?

I haven't yet decided on which hosting services etc to use (multiple 
topics for other conversations).  My assumption is that in the short 
(and most likely long term) this won't turn a profit, and would just be 
a small money hole.

I thought it might make sense to at least capture these costs under some 
sort of 'small business' umbrella.  My naive hope is that maybe it would 
have positive tax implications.

I've never started a business of any kind before.

So.. what do I need to do?  I need to get an EIN from the IRS. I've 
heard an LLC may be more than I need.  What would be your suggested 
approach?

Thanks in advance for your time and wisdom (and patience for my newbie 
question),

~Peter


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