Basic Advertising
I got a deal on mousepads from CafePress a while back and decided to order up a few mousepads for the Apartment Site to mail to my most likely advertisers. Because of the move and all, shipping took a while and a friend had to re-mail them from Houston to Seattle. I have them now and they look pretty good. So will little trinkets help get advertisers to commit to placing some ads on the site and paying actual money? Time will tell I guess... I'm hoping at least if they get used, it will be a daily reminder to them that they might want to purchase some ads. Well, ok, I don't have hundreds of them. In fact, I have five. Maybe I should have bought more, but the half off deal is over, so I'll just have to make do. Before sending them I need to put together some good literature to accompany them and make a couple updates to the advertising sections of the site.
- posted by Drew @ 2:18 PM  

 
Time to Incorporate
I've been ranting on about trademarks enough lately, so here's something else that I've got to work on soon. I need to Incorporate soon. I'm making some money with my CafePress stuff (though nowhere near enough to even pay my rent), but it is some taxable income. In addition I have advertising costs with Google Adwords. So let's brake this down real quick:
$150 Monthly Revenue from CafePress
$60 Monthly Advertising Spend
So with having CafePress pay me as an individual that's taxes on $1800. Now if I'm in the 27% tax bracket I'm paying $486 in taxes on this income. If I were to formally create a business, I could subtract the advertising cost from the CafePress revenue (as well as other potential costs like hosting, domain name registration, etc.). So if we subtract the advertising cost that gives me $90 a month profit. That would translate into a tax bill of $291. So this saves $200 over the course of the year. But as I said there are probably more expenses that I can subtract from revenue. In any case the maximum tax savings would be $486 for the year. So this leaves a couple questions. 1) Will setting up a company cost more than $486? 2) What type of company should be formed (LLC, LLP, S Corp, etc.)? 3) In what state should it be formed? These are all things that will require some research and I'll be sure to post my findings in the near future.

- posted by Drew @ 3:32 PM  

 
Update: Don't Mess With Texas?
I just spoke with Joanne Wright at the Texas department of transportation and was informed that the state is currently working on putting together a licensing agreement for their trademark. Sounds good to me, as I said before I have no problem directing a portion of the proceeds to anti-litter activities. The funny thing is that there is no licensing program in place now. So I asked about how other major retailers are able to use the mark. I was told that they're only going after retailers who are brought to their attention and that if I knew of any that I should let them know. I normally don't want to rat anyone out, but if a competitor can carry a product that takes customers away from me, then perhaps I should. This is something I'll need to contemplate. But for now I was told to send a letter requesting a license to sell products with their mark. So I'm sure this will be a long process. Here's to hoping that they don't try and charge $10 a t-shirt...

- posted by Drew @ 11:44 AM  

 
Update: Don't Mess With Texas?
So it turns out CafePress got a little trigger happy when they zapped my "Everything is Bigger in Texas" products. They have now been restored, which brings me some relief. In the mean time I've compiled a quick list of sites that sell "Don't Mess with Texas" apparel. I'm not going to include links as to not improve the search rankings of competitors but here's a sample of the list:

Y'Alls Texas Store Inc.
Texas.com LLC
Amazon.com
T-Shirts N Texas
MyTexasStore
Fast Forward
The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum
Official Merchandise Site of UT Athletics
Texas and the Territories
Texas Lacrosee and Sports, Inc.

I called the Texas Department of Transportation legal office to inquire about how I might acquire the right to sell products with the mark, although they were out to lunch (it was noon). I'll call back later today and post the outcome here.

- posted by Drew @ 11:06 AM  

 
Update: Don't Mess With Texas?
I just found out that in addition to CafePress taking down my "Don't Mess with Texas" products, it has taken down my "Everything is Bigger in Texas" because it's too similar to "Don't Mess with Texas". Now this is ridiculous.

- posted by Drew @ 8:40 PM  

 
Don't Mess With Texas?
Well, I just got the following email from CafePress today regarding my site that sells Texas themed merchandise:

In accordance with our Intellectual Property Rights Policy, Jennifer Soldano of the Texas Department of Transportation, provided us with a notice in which it alleged that an image used in your Shop infringes its intellectual property rights. Based on this notice, we removed your designs from our servers.

So now two states have wielded cease and desist notices against my Texas themed merchandise site. A few months ago a got a letter from CMG Worldwide, regarding a design I had that depicted "I [heart] TX". You see CMG represents the state of New York and they have a trademark on "I [heart] NY". Now the State of Texas is getting into the act.

Perhaps you may have seen some recent news about the Texas DOT's crackdown on CNN, CNBC or perhaps even on the Daily Show. Now here's the thing that bugs me, Texas registered the trademark in 2000 and then didn't pursue anyone until this year. Meaning, they let people use their slogan in order to build the value of the so-called "brand". Now the state is arguing that the slogan is too valuable and the mark must be protected. Well tomorrow I will contact them to investigate licensing options. I'd gladly send a portion of the profits to support Texas anti-litter activities. They're obviously either being selective in who they go after, or they're allowing people to license the design since prominent sites like Texas.com are selling products.

Otherwise this article this article gives me an idea for an alternate t-shirt design.

- posted by Drew @ 3:45 PM