Hi, I am 14 years old and am interested in starting a business on web page design. I am good with computers, but am wondering how to get started. Do I need to take some kind of class? Remember, I'm only 14, but I think this would be great for me. I am excellent at building sites using pre made programs such as Homestead, Angelfire, hometown, etc. but do not know HTML. Please IM/Email if you can help out/give suggestions! Thank you!

I'm pretty sure that you cannot legaly "own" a business while you are a minor

Also the laws about starting any business differ from country to country (make that from state to state in the US). I sugest you ask this at your local townhall. There is a good chance they have brochures that explain this.
As Codered mentioned you can't start a business if your a minor. However there is a way around this: one of your parents could officially own the business. But don't rush into this, make sure you know what you're getting into.

You can do things privately in most countries, but you cannot register a business name as a minor. Although, you can open a bank account with a "trading as" option.

In New Zealand you can run a sole trader as a minor, but you can't enter into a contract as a minor, so that means no limited liabilities or anything else. I believe all you have to do is inform the tax department that you are self-employed.

You are only 14 right gian? How the hell do you know so much? I had never heard of a limited liability corporation until I took economics my freshman year of college.

Well I recommend learning more then simple HTML, you'd probably want more knowledge of server side stuff like PHP or JSP like generating images on the fly and dynamic content.

Just spend some time furthering your skills, because people do not pay money for a tripod website with a black background and pink panther midis..

I bet nobody would notice if you just had them send you money, and then you setting up their domain name and getting the dynamic content and stuff going.

I did levels of liability and partnerships vs. corporation in grade 10 Business Principles (14-15 y/o)

I've done 2 years of economics. You start to learn a little bit about these sorts of things.

At least in MD, you can start a corporation as long as you have one member of the board that is at least 18. I think the laws in other US States are similar. My friends run AFWHT (As Family We Hang Together Records, http://afwht.com) a small grindcore, metalcore, hardcore, screamo, and related genres label. They aren't incorporated yet, but I think they were checking into it (it isn't terribly expensive to incorporate; something like $30 here, but then you have to do tax filings and whatnot). But anyway, everyone that is a part of AFWHT is under 18; right now it is just a joint-proprietorship so if someone decided to do something like sue them, they would be screwed...

I've been doing business studies for a year. Limited Liability was the first thing in the first week that we covered.(14 at the time). Gian, how do you know so much?

I now see that I should be grateful to have gone to a school system with zero required "business studies" or economics classes!

I had to do some stupid economic stuff in _US History_! I guess it make sense since US History is just a class to feed you pro-capitalism, anti-anarchism/anything-other-than-captialism, everyone but the US is stupid and needs us to help them propaganda.

US "help" is usualy delivered by the US airforce.

Yes, as we drop billions of dollars of food and warm clothes to help millions of poor people survive the harsh winter

Psion: Yes. You should also feel ashamed of your priviledge as a rich white male.

I actually chose to do economics. I learned one thing from my two years: don't do economics next year.

regretfuldaydreamer: What? What do you mean "know so much"? I recited only very basic law surrounding contracts and minors (something I run into a lot anyway) and limitied liabilities (as you said, covered in the first week of business studies).

"Yes, as we drop billions of dollars of food and warm clothes to help millions of poor people survive the harsh winter"

Is that why there is still so much poverty in the US? Or would that be because of the American Dream (get rich no matter how many have to suffer for it)

@Gian : I meant in general. For 14 you know a hell of a lot about a lot of things. (You are 14, right?).

@regretful:i think that is SwimLax... that is 14... but wasnt there sumone a while back who claimed to be 14 but knew so much stuff about computers... i think its in their profile.. or website... actually i think it was gian!

Why would being 14 exclude me from knowing "lots about computers"?

Simple, the longer you've been alive the more time you have had to learn things.

"Simple, the longer you've been alive the more time you have had to learn things"

That theory implies that the person to whom the "you" refers didn't spend most of his waking houres in front of such a devilish time wasting device better known as TV.

CodeRed, I disagree. If that were the case, then why would there be illiterate adults in the world? I think it is more what you are doing with your time that is more important, and I just happen to spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer screen.

My statement is true regardless of whether or not the person uses their time wisely.

" My statement is true regardless of whether or not the person uses their time wisely. "

well in that case, why didn't many of the older generation back in the 70's (in the uk) get better jobs than mining and manufacturing? If you spend your time like half the population of the 1st world, that is, doing drugs, getting drunk, causeing problems, commiting crimes ect. then you wont go far. This is simply because they have waisted there time. You actually have to spend your time learning if you want to know new things. however, if you do spend the time well, you can learn a lot.

" My statement is true regardless of whether or not the person uses their time wisely. "

Being able to name all the characters in 10 soaps isn't considered knowledge.

"Being able to name all the characters in 10 soaps isn't considered knowledge."

That's most certainly knowledge. Now if someone tried to call it useful knowledge, I'd disagree.

God damn you guys, I didn't say the longer you've been alive THE MORE THINGS YOU'VE LEARNED, I said the longer you've been alive THE MORE TIME YOU HAVE HAD TO LEARN THINGS, which is ALWAYS true. The other statement would be a GENERALIZATION, not necessarily applicable in each and every case, but GENERALY the way it is. How about learning basic english before you critizise me

No, the more time you've been alive, the more opportunities you've had to waste time too.

Or the longer you are alive the more you have learned about wasting time.

You are all wasting time with this dumb ass discussion!!!.. and im wasting time joining in on this discussion.. but ne way... i agree with codered... when he say that "the longer you've been alive THE MORE TIME YOU HAVE HAD TO LEARN THINGS,"... I absolutely believe that life what you make it!!

I'm 13 and set up an apache server in linux in 2 minutes- including compiling (then again thats a pretty menial task)

Then got it to run php a little while later (so I'd have more to play with). Now I'm learning Java so I can take the server side to user interface further. I'd consider myself to have extensive computer experience.

Bottom line:
Don't make a business that sells products you can learn to make from the back of a napkin take more time to gather more skills.

The aptitude of the current generation of computer "whizkids" is rather amazing. We are breaking out into areas of technology that before were solely the playing field of technicians and qualified people. I'm 17 now, but a quick search at groups.google.com for "Johan Venter" (my name, btw) will show you exactly what I was doing when I was 12/13. ;-)

The problem is that hardly anyone (of any age) realizes how sleazy almost all popular programming languages and development tools are! Just think of what a better place the world would be if 13-year-olds chose to learn ML instead of C!

In a perfect world there wouldn't be languages wars. All the programmers would simply bring the best of each language together and create the Ultimate Programming Language.

Me and my brother had this problem, however when I turned 18 I simply did everything on his behalf ^^ He now has quite alot of money invested in the stock market...

@Psion: Oh dear...

The ultimate language is called Lisp. Well, sort of. Lisp is probably one of the best languages ever (it is the second oldest in use, and I bet it will outlive FORTRAN). But anyway, there will never be a language that is best for every single application. I bet it would suck to write a word processor in ML. Same goes for writing a kernel in Lisp (it has been done before, but with some low-level DON'T-EVER-USE-THESE-OR-ELSE functions in the dialects of Lisp used).

Psion is right about C; it does suck. A lot. Come on, stop using a language that started out as a set of assembler macros on the PDP-7 for all of your programs. Unless you are doing something really low level, use Scheme, ML, Python, or some other real high level language (C++ doesn't count either). You can even extend most languages with C when you _really_ have to. *goes back to hacking on his 7800 line C++ IRC bot (hey, I know how much C++ sucks)

wat is ML?.... is not c and c++ popular?.... can yall explain in depth why it is shitty...

So are you claiming that they invented LISP right after inventing an instruction set for the first computer?

I said "in use" gian. FORTRAN is the oldest language still being used to write _new_ programs now, and Lisp is the second oldest. Lisp will take a long time to die because there are so many dialects of Lisp.

That's what they said about Latin :-)

The only reason they keep latin around is to make doctors and the kind look smarter than normal people. So pretty much the same reason why we made up the computer jargon.

Latin is declared a "dead" language.

erm. I'm pretty sure computer jargon has a use.

hey - whats wrong with c/c++? true it's not a "real" oo-language, but it gets the stuff done without too much hassle..

and if you just read about a half year latin, you understand why it's dead. it's about ... 100% gramatics. (and usually the teacher is almost as dead as the language)

C++ and C are basically high level assembly. C++ is a bit nicer, but still really low level. Unless you are writing low level software, you really don't need to use C or C++.

Hey, i started my own business when i was 15, now it is GHF Productions. In the state of california you don't need a business license and as long as people pay to you and not the company you don't have to pay taxes unless it excesseds a certian amount. To get a web design company started find a job or two and do that first, make some money and buy a domain name and youhave to publicize yourself to who ever you know or met because chances are they will know a person who needs a computer related job done and they will think of you. Business cards, like 500 for $25 from Mail Boxes Ect or a place like that, is a good idea. Thats how I got started at least.

I agree C++ is ugly,That isn't stopping me learning it though. Its like Windows, its crap, but because everyone else uses it, you have to use it.

Windows has highly optimized crashroutines and M$ likes to show them.

Sometimes when I use windows, the bluescreen goes away and a desktop appears!

That's a bug that will be fixed in the next release: Windows 2004 Overpriced Edition.

Hmm... i just installed Office 2000, during the installation a dos command line window oppened breifly for about 30 seconds. And they're the ones trying to rid the history books of MS DOS

so what exactly happened to swim lax or whatever?

So many of these threads from first time poster end up like this, they never have the manners and decency to return

Ofcourse they didn't removed dos completely. It contained the must usefull feature windows has: format C:

I remember reading recently when I was working with DOS an Win 3.1(Of Win3.1 and DOS6.0, DOS is way better) that M$ were removing all references to DOS and Win3.1 in all their documentation.