As a webmaster providing site maintenance and eCommerce updates for various clients of mine, I often get caught up in the work without putting much thought to the proper business facilities that need to be in place before working. What I mean by this, is that when you start performing services for someone, you need to ensure that a few things are lined up in advance or you could end up paying for your mistakes later.
Here are a few important tips to help you get ready to provide website maintenance and/or webmaster services to your clients:
* A registered business name and/or tax account. Face it, you can’t get away from Uncle Sam forever by getting money through PayPal. If the amounts reach a significant level, your earnings will be reported to the IRS and you could face tax penalties that could have otherwise been avoided.
* A decent accountant and/or billing system. If you can’t keep track of the money coming in and pay your taxes, etc., you’re certainly not going to be able to keep track of it going out either.
* A website maintenance agreement is also essential. Before you start mucking around with someone’s website and/or their shopping cart, you better be sure that you clearly indicated in a contractual agreement what you are and aren’t responsible for. The last thing you need is to get sued by someone for breaking their shopping cart, when you only made a measly $50 on the work to begin with.
* An E&O insurance policy for peace of mind. Ties into the previous tip as well… pray it doesn’t happen, but if you do break something and it leads to a lawsuit or any kind of dispute, having a good liability policy to protect you is priceless.
There are certainly more tips that I could offer to you if you’re already providing webmaster services or thinking about starting to offer them, but these are the essentials. And if you’re now second guessing your decision to start because of the costs involved, etc., don’t be. You can get most of these things setup for less than $500 for an entire year. The client contract is a piece of cake – all you need is a website maintenance agreement template to edit, make your own, then re-use for all of your clients. Insurers offer special policies to Internet professionals as well, so you won’t be applying for some gigantic policy, etc. The registered business name and tax account can usually be setup within a few days/weeks – most forms can be downloaded from the government websites.
For those of you already offering these services…. If you have any additional tips or suggestions for newbies, we’d love for you to leave them in the comments.
