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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.

I figured I’d see if I could get in on some of the Macbook Air® action. Today Steve Jobs announced the Macbook Air at MacWorld 2008. The Macbook Air is a super-thin Macbook, measuring in at 0.76″ thick at the widest point and 0.16″ at the thinnest point, the Macbook Air will set you back a cool $1,800 for the cheap version. I’m not really sure why the more expensive Macbook Air is nearly $3,000 since it has a bit more processing power, but less memory… Hardly seems worth it for the upgrade.

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Macbook Air

As widely expected, Apple is launching an ultra-thin notebook called the MacBook Air. At 0.76″ thick at its widest point, the three-pound Air has a wedgelike shape that tapers down to 0.16″ thick at the front base. LED backlighting on its 13.3-inch screen, multi-touch trackpad (which offers some nifty features like rotating photos, all in the touchpad), and a backlit keyboard. Specs are decent: 1.6 or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (on a cleverly shrunken socket), 2GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive (or 64GB SSD option). No optical drive (of course), and just one USB port. It’ll set you back $1,799, which is on the inexpensive side for ultralight notebooks with specs like this. Ships in two weeks.

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I don’t post on this blog very frequently because it is more for me to keep my ideas floating, but not in a day-by-day matter. On my main project (Blog Project A) I currently post 1-2 posts per day, and plan to up that to 2-3 posts per day as the weather begins to warm.

I have several competing blogs in my RSS feeder, and have noticed that some of them post an insane amount each day. One blog in particular, which has several writers and is part of a larger blog network, has posted 14 posts already today, and it’s now 2pm. To me, this is excessive. Yes, they are building a lot of pages and that may bring in more traffic, but these posts are not SEO’d and some of them are simply pictures with a few words of text. To me, it’s annoying to have 14 posts from one site in my RSS Feed. I usually just mark all those posts as ‘read’ and then move on to the next blog that has 1 or 2 new posts.

After having a big day on Wednesday, I was disappointed to find that I did not make any money on Thursday. With 17 Product Link Clicks, Thursday had 5 more clicks than Wednesday, yet there was a lot more buying action on Wednesday.

Thursday also marked the first full day where I ran AdSense on my Amazon Affiliate Site. I figure I can pick up some loose change and maybe push my AdSense Account a bit so I can finally get a check from Google. Really that’s the only reason that I’m interested in using AdSense at this point - I’ve banked about $45 from other websites, but unless I get it up to $100, I’ll never see a dime of it.

So of course this brings along the question - is the AdSense going to cut into my Amazon Sales? We’ll see how things go over the next week. With the holidays upon us, it probably isn’t the best time to be testing out ideas, but this is the first month of my Amazon Affiliate Site, so I’m just going to try a lot of different things - by this time next year I should have it honed and working like a well oiled machine.

I just wanted to give a linkback to a website that is working to make Iraq Our 51st State. It’s an interesting idea.