First question to exceed 100 views!

Congratulations to "Daveman" for asking the first question to exceed 100 views on Explain Business.

Daveman asked "How should I pay myself and cofounders? As contractors or employees?"

For those of you that are curious, the consensus answer was you need to pay yourself as an employee so fire up those W-2s!

Finding trusted vendors for small business

One of the cool things about the Explain Business forum is the quality of the participants. Some really great people with deep domain expertise about employment, law, and accounting have answered questions on the site.

Because of this, we just set up a "Trusted Vendors" list on the site. On the lower right hand corner of every page you can see a list of vendors for Accounting, Administrative Services, Employee Administration, Hiring, iPhone App Development and more.

How do you get on the list of being a Trusted Vendor? You just need to participate on the site to demonstrate your expertise. We'll then add prominent users to the list (or companies that keep being recommended by our users).

Popular Business Advice Questions

Explain Business has been running about a week and a half so far, and already it's booming with great business advice questions! Here are some of the most popular questions so far:

How should I pay myself and cofounders a salary? As contractors or employees?

Google Spreadsheets versus Excel

Can a startup get group health insurance?

How much equity should you give to advisors of a startup?

Can you collect unemployment benefits while starting a business?

We're really happy that people are asking very practical questions about running or starting a small business and the community is providing such great answers!

Getting the URL ExplainBusiness.com

Since we pushed Explain Business live about a week ago, I've gradually started showing it to more and more people.

One of the first things a lot of people have ask me is, "How did you get that domain name?"

The answer is pretty simple: I bought it two weeks ago on GoDaddy for $9! When I was tinkering around with the idea of creating a Business Advice site, I decided to check out what domain names were available.

I wanted the word "business" in the title since it seemed to be something that people search for a lot. I tried about 10 different terms that weren't available and finally found this one. It seemed suitable so I snapped it up!

So, I guess there are some decent domain names still out there if you're not too picky. I must have spent 30 minutes in total trying to find one. I like the name because it's two real words and is easy enough to spell. The downside is it's a little long and sounds like it might be a site explaining business to 3rd graders.

Get Business Advice Questions on Twitter

Are you the sort of person that loves talking about, thinking about, and helping startups? We just setup a feed of all the top questions posted to Explain Business. This way you can help startups from the comfort of your Twitter account.

By following this account, you'll get to see what entrepreneurs are asking about on the site. When you see a question that you feel like answering, just click through and answer the question on the site.

Get business advice questions on Twitter here

Thanks!

Review of StackExchange after first day

Hi all,

Yesterday we created a Q&A site for entrepreneurs to ask questions about starting a business or running a small business. Check out our site "Explain Business" to learn more.

We used the StackExchange platform to power this site, and I thought I'd discuss my initial impressions on it. I created the site yesterday and shared it with with only about five people to mess around and review it.

1. It was surprisingly easy to setup for someone with limited technical knowledge. I had it more or less fully functioning in under two hours.

2. Almost everyone I showed it to thought I built the site on my own. I had to explain to them it was white labeled software.

3. If you pick a distinct niche, the site is valuable even with a few users. One friend of mine that is thinking about starting a company wrote:

"Dude. I am loving your site and finding value in it already! For reals, not just sucking up."

4. With minor exception, everything seemed to "just work".

5. The biggest negative was that the OpenID sign up process is VERY confusing.

6. Building a community of core users will be the most important determinant of a site's success. The game play aspects of this (badges, points) helps make the site stickier but doesn't help you get core users.

Okay, that's my "one-day" review of StackExchange. Pretty please with it so far!

A business advice site for entrepreneurs & small business

As an entrepreneur, about once a week I run into a very difficult question I don't know the answer to. Can I hire this person as a contractor? Do I need to pay the IRS on a quarterly basis if I'm not projecting a profit? How do I give shares to advisers?

Googling these questions doesn't seem to work very well. I get snippets of the answer, but really what I need is someone to tell me the answer to my exact question. In order to get an exact answer, I need to either ask my lawyer, accountant, or email the alumni entrepreneurship club from my business school.

The problem with asking a professional or emailing a club is it has a financial or social cost. You can't keep sending emails to people asking for free advice and it will cost you a lot to keep calling your lawyer or accountant.

We just launched a new Q&A site, Explain Business, to help entrepreneurs and small business owners ask each other questions.

We hope this is a great way to help people get their businesses started and also meet other entrepreneurs. Heck, maybe it can be a bit of a support group. We used the StackExchange software platform to get the site up in an hour or two. Hopefully you'll find it useful!

So go ahead, check it out here!