Things are finally settling down a little bit in my household with our newborn. I’m getting used to the lack of sleep and the incessant crying. I’m getting used to multitasking while taking care of the kids. In fact, I wrote my last post while standing up and bouncing my son in my sling! In any case, now that I have somewhat of a routine, my writing schedule should slowly revert back to normal.

In any case, it has been a while since I’ve answered questions. Usually, I’m pretty good about responding to email but lately, I’ve been dropping a lot of things on the floor in order to catch up on rest. But without further ado, here are the topics for today.

These first two sets of questions are related so I’m lumping the answers into one.

i am in the process of importing from thailand to uk for the first time.
my seller in thailand seems to think he can send via shipping direct to my door and i just settle the bill. this surely cany be true can it,as who would clear uk customs? what should i be expected to pay: vat 17.5% duty 4% agents fees,admin etc?having difficulty rounding it up to an accurate figure. thanks for any advice

A company in china claims they can ship my order for $450 all the way to my door. Can this be trusted, or will it be caught up in customs and then I get a non-expected bill? They never told me I needed to do anything on my end.

I can’t comment on shipping to the UK, but in the United States, whether or not the shipment makes it directly to your door is dependent on which shipping carrier is chosen. For example, we get many of our shipments by air via DHL. DHL takes care of customs for us and just sends us a customs bill. It’s extremely simple and everything arrives very quickly. The downside is that it’s expensive.

However, if you are shipping your items by sea or with a carrier that doesn’t handle customs for you, you’ll need to hire a customs agent. Usually, the customs agent will take care of everything for you including delivery if you need it. The costs vary depending on the size and the nature of your shipment. In any case, check with the carrier that your vendor is going to use and double check if you need an agent.

In general though, always expect to pay a customs bill. The vendor will never take of that for you.

I’ve been running my business as a sole proprietorship for a long time even though it is well established. I know I need to change but I’m not sure what I need. What is the best business structure for a company that makes 300k in revenues? Thanks in advance!

This is a very tough question to answer and is well covered in my article on choosing the right business structure for your business. First off, your situation is not unheard of. According to my accountant, many of his clients run sole props with high insurance coverage if their business is not a high liability business. That being said, if your company has a high risk of injury to the end customer, you definitely need some sort of business structure for the limited liability alone! In any case, which structure to choose is highly dependent on several factors.

• Do you want to issue shares of stock and eventually take your company public?
• Is your company extremely profitable or borderline?
• Do you have many employees or plan to grow your company?

In general, if you need funding or want to take your company public, a C Corp is required. A C Corp also has the advantage of lower tax rates if you leave money in the company itself. However, if you don’t want to keep money in your business, then having an S Corp or an LLC might work for you. Here in California, it pays to have an LLC if your company is extremely profitable because the cost of having an LLC is based on revenues. However, if your profit margins are low, an S Corp might make more sense because you get taxed based on profit. In any case, read my tutorial and check with your state.

Thank you for the great content on your site! I currently run an online store and wanted to ask if I should use adsense to help fund the site and/or affiliate marketing?

I would definitely NOT use adsense for your online store. The way adsense works is that ads are displayed based on the content of your site. Therefore, all of the adsense ads you display will have links directly to your competitors. Sure, you make make a few bucks here and there when customers click on the links, but these customers could be buying your products!!

As for affiliate marketing, I’ve seen stores partner with other complementary businesses to cross promote products so it can be an effective business tactic. If you can find a related business that works for you, I don’t see the harm. That being said, I always try to keep my customers on my website. After all, you make the most money when someone buys your own products.

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