making own website..

[navmk4gti]

Im looking to make my own website.. i know i need buy a domain name and ofcourse make the website.. is there any other costs in involved?? Any sort of yearly tax have to pay if selling online via own website etc?

Any info will be loads of help

[mcgee9t2]

well if your selling stuff then that is simelar to you owning a shop so yes you have to declare all money from sales to hmrc and they will tax you on it.

also depending on how big the site is you may need to purchaise server space from a third party company.

[navmk4gti]

Will contact hmrc on that part then.. i presume i need web hosting too is this normally free by downloading some software for it

[The Mighty Elvi]

I've made my own website for nothing, so have many others on here.

1. You need to buy a domain name. .com .co.uk are the ones to get. Anything between £2 - £10 to buy. You have to pay an annual fee to continue to own the domain name. These fees are higher than the initial purchase price, about £10+ for a .com. However you can save some ££ on first registration of the domain name by buying it for more than 1 year, say 10 years. (i.e buying the domain for 10 years works out cheaper than buying it for 1 year and renewing it for the following 9 years)

2. Domain hosting. This is where you pay a domain hosting company (Fasthosts, 123-reg etc..) to put your website on their servers. An annual fee for this applies. about £5.99 ish..


3. Make a website. Plenty of FREE templates to download and manipulate. You can then just upload these to your domain host company.  If you do this you will need a file client program. (Filezilla is great and FREE).  All this does is transfer your files from your computer to the domain host server. If you want to change/update your website you do it on your own computer and then just reupload the new file with Filezilla.

3. Or you can use Content Management systems like Joomla, Wordpress etc.these are like plug and play website design/hosting kits. Again FREE.

Depends on your skill level and website needs which method you chose.  You don't need much to manipulate the free website templates, just Notepad ++. The CMS ones are all done via their sites via an admin area.

4. If you selling things via your website you need to register your business with HMRC if your meet their criteria.:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/register/when-to-register.htm

5. If it's a business you'll also have do submit accounts, with exceptions...

http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

Or a Self Assessment if you're trading as an individual.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sa/

There are some members on here who are in the business and can better advise you, but these are the basics.

Jonathan.

[boneybradley]

Read this first https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesses

there's lot's of rules about selling on-line

All distance sellers must follow certain rules before and after an order is placed.

You must display information such as:

your business name (and address if you want payment in advance)
a description of your goods or services
the price, including all taxes
how a customer can pay
delivery arrangements, costs and how long goods will take to arrive
the minimum length of their contract
conditions for terminating contracts of over 1 year or open-ended contracts
information about the customer’s right to cancel

There are extra rules if you’re selling online

As well as the general rules for distance selling, there are some extra rules for selling online.

You must:

list the steps involved in a customer placing an order
acknowledge receipt of any orders electronically as soon as possible
take reasonable steps to allow customers to correct any errors in their order
let customers know what languages are available to them
make sure customers can store and reproduce your terms and conditions, ie these can be downloaded and printed off
give your email address
give your VAT number (if your business is registered for VAT)
give clear prices and delivery costs for your products

So do you want to give your name and address to the world? (you must give both by law!!)

I run my own shop and website oemandmore.co.uk and all the rules make it difficult at first (and many rivals don't follow them!), but I pay monthly for a hosted shopping cart which makes running the site a bit easier (and saves me paying extra for certain legal stuff like secure pages etc)

[navmk4gti]

Awesome info thanks guys... getting website made is not a prob.  I will hunt for a domain hoster.. any recomendations welcome..is the tax you guys pay quite high compared to profit and costs you actualy make.. will prob only see about £100-200 quid sales a month.

[The Mighty Elvi]

Awesome info thanks guys... getting website made is not a prob.  I will hunt for a domain hoster.. any recomendations welcome..is the tax you guys pay quite high compared to profit and costs you actualy make.. will prob only see about £100-200 quid sales a month.

   Tax you pay is proportional to your sales/profit.

I would strongly recommend that you speak with an accountant /  local business advice service.

[navmk4gti]

Ahhh k less profit less tax

Thanks for info been big help

[Diamond Hell]

What Elvi and Boney have said.

I use EUKHost and Joomla for anything I wind up doing.

[Sam]

I don't think this is going to end well. Setting up a trading website is exactly the same as setting up a business except you have the added complexities of building a working and secure site that looks professional enough for me to be willing to slam in my card details. Your best bet would be to simply create an Ebay shop, get into the swing of things and then go from there. You will soon know if the business is going to work etc. and it gives you an instant global audience for your product, you can even stick a web address on each listing when you set up your site with a '10% non-ebay discount' when bought through your site.