Expat629

2/day Not bad considering I was one of the first peeps to sign-up, forgot about the site for a year, then came back.

Aside from design aspects, you're suffering from a MAJOR lack of branding (Acrylic mentioned this too). On first click it's unclear what you do and it took some investigating to figure it out. Your "mission statement", as it were, is below the fold (requires scrolling) and doesn't really explain the purpose of the site either. AsianSoc was launched officially in January 2008, and aims to target the modern Asian community of today, providing a unique portal to tackle entertainment, culture, education, religion, events and other popular topics, whilst promoting harmony and unity across the Asian communities across the UK and around the world. Are you a community site? News? Social networking? General information? It's not really enough to say that you want to give an "online presence" or "unique portal" to this really large, really diverse group of people. (Millions in the UK alone?) There are a bunch of ways to make the purpose of your site more obvious, including: Brand name - what does "AsianSoc" mean? Logo - reflecting the culture of your audience and what you do Tagline - a tad generic at present ("breaking down barriers" could apply to just about any minority group and, again, does not address your specific target audience or purpose) Web content - page titles, page text, headers, etc.

I'm originally from a small town in Maryland, USA and immigrated to the U.K. in April 2006. I am currently living in Tynemouth, a small coastal village about 20 minutes outside of Newcastle upon Tyne. Not exactly true. The "$100k visa" is an investor visa, so you have to start a company in the U.S., have a minimum number of employees, etc. It's not even offered any more AFAIK. Not to bring you down but it is extremely difficult to immigrate to the U.S. unless you have direct family ties. I can't even get my British partner into the country, which is why I'm living over here. Work visas take a few years to process and are subject to a per year cap (if you can find an employer willing to sponsor you in the first place) and the U.K. is always exempt from the Diversity Visa Lottery, which sucks. Anyway, I won't ramble but drop me a PM if you have any specific questions Re: U.S. immigration. My partner and I have been through all of the options, I think!

Yeah, it's more or less yours. Just be careful that all of the bankruptcy stuff is done and dusted, or else your debtors may come after you for whatever you've made (although perhaps paying your debts should be a priority - YMMV). ETA: Bionic types faster than me and he brings up a good point - bankruptcy shouldn't be done casually. That being said, I don't advocate declaring bankruptcy at all but I do know someone who did it a few years ago, was able to keep her car due to her job, got approved for rental accommodation in a few months, and now just bought her own home (her boyfriend is the only one on the mortgage papers at present, but they'll add her after she hits her three year bankruptcy anniversary). What's more important, though, is to figure out why you went bankrupt and keep it from happening again. It may not be the best time to be self-employed, since you'll be making very little, if anything, initially. Those are just my two pence having seen someone go through it very recently; not trying to judge you and I do wish you all the best, whatever you decide.

I spent £0.00 today but my partner spent £7.00 on soda and ice cream at the Co-Op, and since it comes out of the same account I guess that means I spent it too.

I think that's an important distinction to make. Hyphens are definitely easier to read, but you should own both versions of the domain (call it an insurance policy ).

Agree with ^. Dashes in domain names have a slight (read: negligible) advantage for SEO purposes but are a nightmare for your visitors. A good place to start is the "radio test" - can you say your domain name out loud, smoothly, and will people understand it? If you find yourself saying, "My website is Rad-DesignZ.com. That's Rad dash Designs and Designs with a Z dot com," then you're in trouble right from the start!

I agree with the others that it's a huge price to pay for a start-up. You have no established brand or name recognition, so this is the one time you'll be able to be flexible with your identity. You'll need that $850 to get the rest of your business up and running.

Congratulations, Slimboyfatz! It was a well-deserved win. Thanks also to everyone who voted for my site.

I'll raise my hand for this; I'm a full-time freelancer (not a full-time designer though). It is possible to generate enough leads that lead (heh) to enough work to have an above-average income. Is it common? That's harder to say. I tend to sacrifice some income in return for freedom, but it's entirely by choice - I don't pursue my "career" (i.e. what earns money) 40 hrs/wk, so obviously I will make less. However, the extra time is put towards things that may make me a gazillionaire in the future and I get lots of leisure time, so I'm satisfied with that trade-off. When you add in commute time for a "real job" and the fact that I don't need to get dressed up every day, I might even be saving time and money.

Long live Penguin! Nice to see you back and posting again. Hope you're doing well and shaking off whatever illness you had/have.

Mildly flawed logic: My partner was the victim of credit card fraud about two years ago. A lifetime resident of the UK, someone spent thousands of pounds buying electronics and things and having them shipped to Nigeria. The credit card company never flagged this activity as potential fraud until my partner saw her statement. Okay, they can't catch everything with their fancy machines, right? About six months later (December 2006) I was doing some Christmas shopping from very well known U.K. merchants - GAME, Argos, etc. My card was frozen for "fraud reasons" because of a £14 purchase from Argos. This caused all of my Christmas purchases to bounce, but I eventually sorted it out. However, the woman from my card's fraud department warned me that if I repurchased for the same amount from Argos, the card would freeze again because the system did not know who Argos was (the system is clearly not British). The moral of the story: Buying thousands of pounds of high-end electronics and shipping them to Nigeria = okay Buying a Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker from Argos at Christmastime = FRAUD --- Thinking about that has just made me remember another gem. When I first moved to the UK, I had a heck of a time opening a bank account here. My partner and I went down to NatWest in the city centre three times with various bits of paperwork we were told to bring, and each time they said it wasn't enough. Frustrating! We were living with my partner's parents at the time because I'd just landed and we couldn't obviously get our own place until we had a bank account with which to pay for it. So, we didn't have utility bills, etc. in our name for this reason. We had no trouble proving my partner's address because she's British so she already had a British bank account. On the third trip to NatWest, with my MBNA credit card statement deemed "insufficient" because it was MBNA America (same company as British MBNA, and my correct British address), I was told that I could bring in a bank statement from a British bank as proof of address. IF I COULD OPEN A BANK ACCOUNT IN BRITAIN, I WOULDN'T BE TRYING TO OPEN ONE!

Email contracts stand up just fine, provided both parties admit to certain basic principles, such as ownership and control of the email addresses in question. If you bring an email contract before a judge and also produce emails or other written proof to show that the client agreed to the contract, unless they want to turn around and prove that they don't own that email address or it was hijacked or some other B.S., the contract is a mutual agreement. IMHO, the chances of this happening are roughly the same as them saying, "That's a forgery! I've never seen that before in my life!" if you produce a legit, signed paper copy of a contract. Digital signatures are legal throughout the E.U. (including the U.K.) and in the United States. Here's some information on conditions that must be met, courtesy of EchoSign (PDF): http://www.echosign.com/static/AboutE-Signatures.pdf

Everything I learned about the stock market came from: Protrade.com (sports stock market, but you could use movie stock market, etc) Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich I know, laugh at my sources, but playing "fake" stock markets was a nice, low-risk way to learn by doing. It also gives you valuable insights into your own trading patterns, i.e. are you a day trader, long-term investor, etc. I, for one, know I cannot sit on a stock and wait a year for a payoff, but I'm also not an information-obsessive who can quickly jump on and off (day traders). So I'm in the middle, which is good to know. Or you could always stick to mutual funds and let other people do the grunt work. My preferred method.

I'm not familiar with the case but I would assume the following points are relevant: Google does not claim the material is their own (as your English teacher used to tell you - "cite your sources!") Google does not profit from cached pages Google does not take profit away from the original website (links are still active, banner ads work, etc) Still... there are always grey areas on the Internet. *Sigh*