[Hidden-tech] Starting my own small Business Website

[Shel Horowitz]

Hi, Peter,

On the tax side, you should consult with an expert. Buying a half-hour of
time may be a really good investment. My understanding as a non-expert is
that to qualify as a business and take the deductions, you need to show a
profit three years out of five. I am not in that field and am not
soliciting that business. (I'm a marketer, and would be happy to explore
with you whether there might be commercial applications for your
dashboard--I think there might be.
)
ᐧ

On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 9:58 AM Peter S via Hidden-discuss <
hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Shel Horowitz - "The Transformpreneur"
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