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Tomorrow is April 1st, which means that it’s 15 days before tax returns are due! I was catching up on my podcasts today and heard a story from Marketplace Money about some pretty skanky tax scams that you should beware of. To listen or read the story, click here.
And if you’re like me and haven’t yet done your taxes (I just got my copy of TurboTax, today), here are some last minute tax deductions to watch out for that’s related to your website. (As always, be sure to pass these tips by your tax preparer or accountant before you submit your return)
What’s that? You don’t have a website up yet? You don’t know what your domain name should be? You already have an idea for a domain name but you want to wait a little while longer before you get a domain name?
All nonsense. All of it.
Here’s why….
1. You don’t need to have a website in order to get a domain name- However you will need a domain name if you’re going to build a website…and the sooner you get a domain name the better.
2. If you don’t know what your domain should be…start with your own name- Go out and register your name. If your name is John Leathermaker, then register johnleathermaker.com. The idea is to start getting your name out there on the web and registering the name that everyone knows you as is a good start. Plus…do you have a company name? Does everyone know you as John’s Handcrafted Belts? Register that too…johnshandcraftedbelts.com. And yes, it is possible to have more than one domain name…you can simply point both domains to the same website. Customers that don’t know your website address will probably just guess and type in your name when they do a search for you or your business name. If your website address has your name or your business name (or better still if you own both names), they will be more likely to find you.
3. Remember that a domain name is really a piece of digital real estate- Did you know that someone paid $180,000 for the domain name Offer.com? Or $110,000 for AutoClassifieds.com? Why would someone pay so much just for a web address? Because a good domain helps identify you. A good domain name brands you. A good domain name helps people to find you on the Internet. And a good domain name can get disappear pretty fast. It’s easier to remember Offer.com than Theworldsbestoffer.com
I had a friend who came up with the perfect domain name for a website that he was planning to build. He checked to make sure that the name was available and it was. What did he do? He waited. He told me, “Well, I’m not quite ready to make a website yet…I’ll get it when I’m ready to start on my website”. Guess what happened? When he was finally ready to start his website a couple months later, the domain name was gone. Someone else bought it two weeks after he checked the availability.
If you’ve come up with the perfect domain name for your website, chances are that someone else has or will come up with the same idea. Who’s going to own that domain? The first person that buys it. And once it’s bought, it stays bought until the owner sells it or lets the registration expire. Domain names that end with a .com are at a premium because when it comes to web addresses, everyone naturally thinks of “.com”. Sure you can settle with yourname.net or yourname.org or even yourname.biz…but rest assured that most people are going to head over to yourname.com first.
4. Search engines reward longevity- If you ever do a search for something on Google, you’ll notice that many of the websites that come up first in the search engine results have been around for 2, 3, or maybe even 10 years. Search engines like Google tends to give preference when it comes to listing websites on search engine results to websites that’s been around for a while. So even if you aren’t planning on building a website for a while, it can benefit you to buy your domain name as soon as possible. If you have a blog on Blogger or Typepad, you can hook your domain name up to your blog. Heck, you can even point your domain name to a blank page that says “Coming Soon!”. The important thing is that it doesn’t benefit you to wait.
5. Domain names are a cheap form of branding- A nice logo can set you back a couple hundred bucks. Business cards…maybe anywhere from $20 to $50. Full color postcards? About a $100. A domain name? If it’s available…about $10 or less. I’m pretty sure you can spare $10 (maybe less) to secure your own domain name.
So what are you waiting for? Don’t know how to register a domain name? No problem….watch the video below.
Just a quick announcement. Every month I do telephone workshops with an Information Marketers group on various web-related issues. Last month I did a call about “How to Market Your Website Offline“. I’ve just made the audio of this call available as an MP3 download for all of my newsletter subscribers. Here is an excerpt:
If you’re interested in hearing the rest of the audio, you can click here to subscribe my free newsletter. You’ll receive the link to the rest of the call along with this week’s newsletter article on “How to Use Social Networks to Market Yourself“.
MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr…they’re all part of the phenomenon called “social networking”. You’ve probably heard of these sites and you’ve probably have heard of social networking. But what does it mean for you? Isn’t this just one more thing that you have to keep up with that may or may not make you any money? Believe it or not, social networking can be a powerful way to get the word out about your work and to get new customers…if you know what you’re doing.
In this week’s newsletter, is the first article in a two-part series on “How to Use Social Networks to Market Yourself“, where I’ll explain what social networking is and how to get started. To read the article sign up for the Crafted Webmaster Newsletter for free here: http://www.craftedweb.com/subscribe.html If you subscribe now, you can get a free audio download on “Effective Ways to Market Your Website Offline“.
I was surfing through the American Craft Forum this weekend and found an announcement by Bonnie Blandford about a new survey by the National Association of Independent Artists. In 2007, the NAIA commissioned a study about craft show exhibitors and the marketplace. Some of the findings are rather interesting if you are currently in the craft show circuit, but it also has implications throughout the entire industry. The survey identified three trends:
Aging Artists/Craftsmen- 82% of the survey respondents were over the age of 46 while 14% were over the age of 62. 4% of the respondents were between the age of 26 & 35 and none of the respondents were under the age of 25.
Waning Interest in American Craft- Respondents stated that 31% of their work sells to 33 to 45 year olds and 63% report that the 46 to 59 year old bracket buys their work.
Artists Are Staying Closer to Home- 41% of all shows attended by the survey respondents are less than 60 miles from home base and 16% of all shows are between 60 – 280 miles from home, while only 15% of all shows are more than 280 miles away from home.
So what does this mean to artists who do craft shows in particular and the crafts industry in general? The study concludes that the industry is in a state of flux and that these are trends that people started noticing as early as the mid 1990s. Where is this state of flux headed? The study doesn’t say, but artists are already having conversations about it in forums, in studios, and in the craft show booth. Ironically, I was having a conversation about the future of shows only a couple days ago with a fellow crafter who is a 20+ veteran of the show circuit. What were our conclusions?
There’s a shakeout coming (and it may have already begun). Those big regional shows held in convention centers are going to start dying off leaving mostly the really excellent local shows and those bedrock fine craft shows like Smithsonian, Philadelphia, etc.
Those artists who have been doing shows for years and years are going to start sticking close to home, partly due to age, but mostly because long distance shows will become less and less profitable (i.e. price of gas, the falling dollar, economy, etc). Show patrons will be sticking closer to home for the same reasons.
From what I understand from my generation of artists (20s through 30s), the overhead for getting into the show venue isn’t very inviting…especially considering how you can’t count on even breaking even at many of these shows. So they’re not all that eager to do shows in the first place (at least not for very long). They’re concentrating on the local shows, wholesaling to boutiques and gift shops, and selling online.
The Internet is going to play a huge role in art and craft sales…the notion that nobody buys art online is getting less and less true by the moment. According to the New York Times people spent $4.3 million at Etsy in November of 2007 alone.
One of the big conclusions that I came away way was that if you’re not online, the time to get online is right now. If you have a small web presence…congratulate yourself and then get to work…because now is the time to get better, stronger, and faster. I don’t believe that craft shows are dead, nor do I think craft sales are not going to go all online. But what I do believe is that the Internet is going to be a major tool in the sales arsenal. Artists that keep telling themselves that no one buys art online are fooling themselves.
If you’re not online now…here are ways to get started today…
The goal of The Crafted Webmaster is to help artists, craftsmen,gallery owners and other people in the art and craft industry learn how to effectively use the web to promote and sell their works...
Tomorrow is April 1st, which means that it’s 15 days before tax returns are due! I was catching up on my podcasts today and heard a story from Marketplace Money about some pretty skanky tax scams that you should beware of. To listen or read the story, click here.
Website Tax Tips [1:40m]: 
