My brother and I are tackling this all at once and are in full marketing mode. Also, in the meantime I have decided to try a few different approaches to making money outside of my main line of business to pay the bills. This includes computer repair, bicycle repair, roof replacement sales, and construction project management. I'd work at a coffee shop if the hours would work with my personal life.
Business Number One Set Up - For homies with real work to make real money (Fo Sho Method)
I am probably going to have to work backwards a little so bear with me. First off I'll start with the process. We started a single firm as an limited liability company to allow for us to file our taxes as a sole proprietors while being a bit limited from any lawsuits. We perform that has a little exposure in the transportation industry. You can do this process very simply via the state you live in, however based on legal advice it is important to establish some operating rules and get a corporate handbook. You can do most of this without legal services as the corporate handbook typically comes with generic operating rules you can fill out yourself.Then we got an email address via Google Apps, domain via Network Solutions, set up a site via Wordpress and their hosting, an 888- phone number, and physical (virtual) address via DaVinci to begin establishing a presence. We are using Mavenlink for project management and time tracking, Expensify for receipt/expense management, and Quickbooks for accounting. This went quick and easy, so to speak. A few notes though...I prefer Basecamp over Mavenlink due to some minor nuances but both are super easy to use. Try out Everest on Android which interfaces with Basecamp from your phone. Expensify also recently had to break their relationship with Quickbooks due to some Intuit pressure so we are looking for alternatives.
We travel a lot (when we are working) and work from public wi-fi hotspots when we get out of the house so we are exposed to a lot of network sniffers. This led me to desire a VPN (or SSH proxy which I already ran but never liked it being only HTTP traffic). I have a Mac at home and Verizon FiOS connection with lots of bandwidth. I tried various approaches to command line set up for a VPN but was not successful.
As a last ditch effort I bought Mac OS X Server for Mountain Lion at a hefty price of $20. Yep. $20. Do you realize they used to sell their Xsan software for $1000? It is included in Server. VPN? Yep, included. SSH? FTP? Open Directory? Logs and Stats? Certificate management? User and Group management? Calendar, Mail, Wiki management? Websites? Yep, all of it. $20. It doesn't allow certificate authentication for VPN on the client side as far as I can tell but whatever. I am not a network or server admin and it costs $20. Come on.
Follow the setup, head over to the VPN option, turn it on, set up a long key, use LT2P and your golden. Oh yeah, you have to get a Dyn.com address to point to your computer if you have a dynamic IP address, and then port forward 3 ports for VPN on your router, but that is it. There are manuals out there to do all this so I am not going over it here. Now I can connect to my home server when at a local coffee shop and not worry about any script kiddies or mischievous part time hackers messing around with my network data.
Business Number Two Set Up - For the guy or gal who wants to freelance (Lazy Pants Method)
In the meantime, I started another business to make ends meet. This work includes local computer and bicycle repair. Both hobbies but things that I am very adept in. I needed a domain, website, phone number, and advertising. Since I plan on making money on this and didn't want to complicate taxes, I am operating this business as a DBA (doing business as) under my already created LLC. I asked for approval from my brother since this work could expose our LLC and he gave it to me. Remember in a partnership you should treat it that way.We bought another domain address through Network Solutions and then my brother set up a second Google Apps account linked to the new domain. This gives me one interface for managing the accounts and email addresses. Very nice. I also am hoping to track all of my customers and invoicing through our existing QuickBooks account for ease of tax payment. I then headed over to Google Voice and set up a new phone number to go along with my Google based email address. Set up is a snap but then what do I do with the number? I first had it linked to go straight to voicemail as I already have a personal Google Voice number linked to my Android phone.
Halt! Major problem...I had 3 missed calls with no voicemails. Did these customers not leave a voicemail because the call screening was on or because they didn't want to leave a voicemail? Not sure but all I know is I didn't have a chance at even selling them. ALERT, ALERT! SUPER CRAY CRAY SECRET OF THE DECADE: I pay for a Skype number for business purposes (I like to give my clients a local number to call and then forward it to my cell phone) and realized I could forward the Google Voice number via Skype to my cell phone to side step Google's one-phone-per-voice-account requirement. Hey Oh! You like that? Yes. It worked.
I now have two Google Voice accounts forwarding to my phone (at a cost of about $60/year due to Skype) but that is a tax deductible expense. Bad news is that the Google Voice app on my phone only shows messages from my personal Voice account. Fix for that is you simply tell Google Voice on your business account to email you for all missed calls and voicemails. I have Gmail notifications for these emails therefore I know when I have a text, missed call, or voicemail.
Oh, forgot about advertising. Craigslist, Google Places/Local, Yelp for Business, Greensheets, and Google AdWords. I first tossed an add into Craigslist for the bike business because everyone and their grandma claims to provide computer services. I have had good luck with Craigslist so you should try it out. Google Places/Local is helpful as it will give you a solid presence when someone searches on Google and your work is related to your location. For example, I want people to see me in my area when they search for my service type. Also, you get a dashboard to see the analytics and I think more reviews gets you higher on the page rank. Same with Yelp.
Greensheets is a local free rag that I have sold things in before. The cost is reasonable but it is very old media. For me, I am looking for folks who don't want to take the traditional REI, Best Buy, big bike shop route and I think these services fit me well. I have not tried AdWords yet as I need to see more revenue first.
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