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If you’re in Chicago over the course of the next 10 days, be sure to check out Taste of Chicago 2008. It’s one of the biggest festivals of the year.

5 Things To Do Before You Start A Business. When I started my web development business, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I jumped in and figured that everything would sort itself out. I would get a lot of business, work a lot of hours, make a lot of money and it would all be great.

Now it’s 4 years later and I’m in the same financial situation that I was when I began. No extra money, living from project to project, begging clients to pay me on time. As I look back, I’ve learned a lot over these 4 years, so I thought I would put together a list to help myself and help others.

5 Things To Do Before You Start A Business

Get An Accountant - I have been working freelance for nearly 4 years but I have only recently signed up with an accountant. Needless to say, I will be paying the tax man for a while. Even if you aren’t making much money at all, it is vital to your survival that you get an accountant who is versed in small business. No matter the price, they will save you money in the long run.

Get Some Investment Money - When I started my business, I was riding the waves and taking my bumps, but I never had any money in the bank. Lack of liquidity has really begun to show its ugly face as I have tried to bring in sub-contractors to handle some of my work. Clients do not pay me on time, but I feel like a jackass if I don’t pay my workers on time.

Incorporate Your Business - This has not yet come back to bite me, but I could have saved some tax money if I had incorporated from the beginning. When you incorporate you can create a separate bank account for your business. Also, as I have begun to build some business assets (websites, written documents, etc), it would be nice to have the “corporate veil” to protect them. If you have a good accountant, they can help you set this up.

Set A Daily Schedule - This is one of the biggest issues of working from home and I still battle with it on a daily basis. Working from your house provides you with limitless perks, but if you do not get yourself out of bed and start your day, or if you are unable to stay on task throughout the day, you will not last very long.

Get Your Value - I used to be scared about giving clients a pricetag and sometimes I still wonder if I am giving them their money’s worth. I have consistently low-balled estimates and it has cost me a lot of happiness and money in the long run. No matter what business you are getting into, figure out your pricing and don’t be afraid to walk away from a job if the price isn’t right.

Just a quick update, I am currently working through the MySQL portion of my PHP / MySQL eBook I am aiming to have the entire eBook, about 25 lessons, done sometime in June, 2008.

In the meantime, you can check out my Free PHP eBook, which will give you a good example of what you will get from the full version.

I received this email in January from someone who was using my Free PHP eBook I am very sorry that I am only now replying to this. I will try to do a better job of checking this email address in the future.

Hi there

I am working my way through your eBook and I am having a lot of
difficulty with the passing of the variable from a form to a php
script. I have even gone as far as cutting and pasting your exact code
on page 18 and its still not working. All I am succeeding in doing is
showing

Hello, you are years old

The variables for name and age are not being passed. The form side of
the code seems to be working.

Please could you help as I have no idea what the problem could be.

Thanks

There are two possible reasons that this code is not working for you.

Reason #1: Sometimes when you copy-and-paste code directly from a document (Word, PDF, etc) and paste it into another document, the special characters (Quotes, etc) will be encoded differently between the two documents, and this causes a problem. Aside from the learning aspect of it, it is important not to copy-and-paste your code for this reason.

Reason #2: Your server may have additional security settings, which I did not account for in the first version of the Free PHP eBook. Basically, at the top of the page which is receiving the variables (in this case, form1output.php), you need to use the $_POST action for each variable. I will be accounting for this as begin to revise and update the eBook.

Thanks again to everyone that has taken the time to download and use the PHP eBook. I’ve had over 700 downloads, so I consider this a success thus far.

I’ve been trying more things out with making money online. In December, I had an Amazon Blog going that made me $15. In January I scrapped that blog and tried using an Amazon Script that created an entire store, but I got about zero visitors the entire month.

I add Adsense to the pages leading through to my Free PHP eBook, and that made some loose change. I didn’t post those AdSense until the middle of January, so hopefully February will bring more - though at this rate, I won’t be getting a Google payout anytime soon. Eventually I will revise my PHP eBook and perhaps 1) Give away the first few sections for free, then 2) charge a small fee for a much longer version of the PHP eBook.

I worked with Blog Project A and made some strides with the Ticketmaster Affiliate program.

January 2008 Income Report
Adsense: $3.80
Amazon: $0.00
Ticketmaster: $23.00

Total: $26.80

(Dec Total: $26.30)