Super Trustscfm03012010.s3.amazonaws.com/.../STmod2_Protect_InternetBusin… · your domain name. Lose a lawsuit and someone else will step into your shoes to run the internet business

Super Trusts

Lesson #2

Protect My Internet Marketing Business

By

Richard Geller

Calworth Glenford, LLC dba www.financialsuccessinstitute.net

Disclaimer – this limits our liability – Read it!

In plain English, I did my best to make this the best guide I could make it, for someone wanting to help others facing foreclosure, credit problems, financial difficulties, or just wanting to maximize protection of their assets. But I am sure that I left stuff out, forgot some important stuff, and made some mistakes.

Plus, I can’t know the laws of your state, and the facts in your particular situation. And I’m not a lawyer nor do I play one on television. Some of this stuff MAY NOT WORK. Or it may be ILLEGAL. Who knows.

So…

You have to take responsibility for whatever you do or don’t do after going through my home study eCourse. Don’t blame me!! I am not responsible for what you do!!

If I were you, I’d find a good attorney to advise me. And I’d check out whatever it is that anyone tells you to do – me, the attorney, your mother-in-law, whoever.

Then I’d take my chances. Life is full of risks. You could do great following my advice. Or you could fall on your face. Who knows, maybe some of the stuff I suggest is illegal in your state. I don’t know. But regardless, you can’t go after me for telling you to do something or not do it – because I am right now disclaiming any liability. You are on your own!!

And with that out of the way, read on…

While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this eCourse, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this eCourse and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial

damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages.

And another important note – this one about ethics

The techniques I outline in this eCourse – some of them anyway – may strike you as pretty outrageous. Unethical perhaps. You may find a few techniques that you can swear are illegal.

I don’t advocate anything illegal. And I don’t want you to do anything unethical. These techniques exist. People do them all the time. I don’t want you do be at a disadvantage by not knowing them. So I tell you about them, no holds barred.

I think it’s too easy to judge others when you haven’t been in their shoes. Some people are in frightful situations and they are frankly quite desperate. They need answers. I hope, if this is you or your clients’ circumstance, you find answers, some of them here.

That doesn’t mean I think you ought to do things that are unethical, or that things you choose to do are right for everyone. That is for you to decide. Okay?

And a final important note – this one about plagiarism!

You DO NOT have permission to resell this information. You DO NOT have permission to give it away to someone else. This information is sold under a license that lets you read it, use it FOR YOUR OWN USE, but not give it away, make copies, sell it or resell it.

For another copy, contact me at: www.financialsuccessinstitute.net

Thank you!

http://www.financialsuccessinstitute.net/

Super Trusts

Lesson #2: Protect My Internet Marketing Business

© 2011 Financial Success Institute. All rights reserved. www.financialsuccessinstitute.net

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IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU PRINT THIS OUT PRIOR TO READING

Introduction: Do you take your internet marketing business security for granted? Certainly, you encrypt all financial transactions and keep personal information about customers on a highly secured server.

However, do you realize that your business intellectual information could be taken from you in a lawsuit? You would be forced to give up all rights to the customer email list that you've worked hard to develop, nurture, and build a relationship with. Same thing with your domain name. Lose a lawsuit and someone else will step into your shoes to run the internet business you've built from the ground up.

Internet marketers value their email account the same way they value their business banking account. You might not be able to withdraw money from an email list quite as easy as an ATM machine but it's not much more difficult. Raising money from a good email list is no more difficult than sending out an email blast that you are offering a new product or a discount on current products. Because the people on your email list trust you and look to you for information, within mere minutes of sending out your email blast, you'll hear your electronic bank account go KA...CHING, KA..CHING.

In this second lesson, we cover: the steps you need to take to fully protect the intellectual property used by your online marketing business. It's amazing how many small business owners don't

completely understand the value of some business property

that they own until it's too late. We'll go into detail

about that in this eClass.

More specifically, you'll learn the steps necessary to stop

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competitors from stealing your business ideas and other

intellectual property.

You'll soon understand why you don't want your operating

business to own the intellectual property. The only less

secure place to hold that property than in your operating

business is when you do so as a sole proprietor.

You don't want to use just any business entity as an

operating business either. Businesses set up at the state

level, as corporations, offer very little liability

protection when your business is conducted on the internet.

You are also going to be introduced to the best retirement

account available to small business owners. It comes with a

wealth of advantages that can't be found anywhere else.

It's the best place to securely sock away the profits you

earn from your marketing business.

Finally, you'll be shown the entire business structure you

need to have in place to create an ultra secure Super Trust

designed to protect your internet marketing business.

At the end of this eClass, you'll specifically have in place...

A thorough understanding of exactly what intellectual property is and why it is so valuable to your business.

How and when to officially register your intellectual property.

How you, your business, and your family will benefit from the security and other benefits you can have from a Solo 401(k) retirement account.

Knowledge of the three major business structures you need to have in place to create a Super Trust that fully secures your entire business - from today's business operations all of the way through to your wealthy retirement years.

Let's get right to the lesson...

Intellectual Property Besides any inventory you stock, your internet business' intellectual property can have substantial value. There is a whole section of law

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Highly Valuable Trademarks

dealing with exclusive rights granted to people that develop or legally acquire rights to intellectual property of all kinds. Domain names and email lists are the most common for internet marketers but you may have other types depending on your specific business model.

This lesson goes into detail about the value in your email list and domain name and will briefly look at other types of intellectual property you might need to fully protect with a Super Trust. These include:

Trademarks

Patents

Trade secrets

Processes

Music

Literature

Other artistic types of work

Hi, it's Richard Geller, welcoming you to another very informative and important eClass. This one goes into the exact steps you need to take to fully secure your online business with a Super Trust. Let's begin with a look at how you make money with your list that makes it a valuable business asset that others want to take away from you.

Ways a List is Monetized

1. Create your own products like eBooks and niche videos to promote to a focused list that is ready to buy.

2. Promote other peoples’ products matching your subscribers' wants for a percentage of each sale.

3. Affiliate and resale rights marketing.

4. Newsletters with ad sales.

5. Joint venture marketing.

6. Create a membership site to promote to your list.

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7. Promote your products to someone else's list.

There are multitudes of ways you make money with your email list.

The Money is in THE LIST

I've been studying marketing for years and got into online marketing early in the internet revolution. Online marketing continues to evolve quickly but a successful process has emerged. Marketers create a free and persuasive offer in exchange for people joining their email list. Over time, the marketer develops a trusting relationship with list subscribers by providing useful and accurate information that is of interest to subscribers. Next, online marketers create a product for sale or offer existing products that interest people on the list. Like magic, money begins streaming in.

But it's not as simple as it sounds. The size of the list requires the use of automation while keeping it on a personal level at the same time. Credible copywriting techniques are needed and they are constantly changing. Finally, everything needs to be kept simple and focused on subjects that interest your list.

When you do it right, THE PAY OFF IS HUGE!

Do you even know what your list is worth? On the internet, it represents your entire list of customers. If someone takes away your list, you'll have no one to market to or at the very least, you need to start developing it all over again. Arrrg... there goes your passive income stream you worked hard to build up!

No one can put a generic value on each email address. It's not $1 per address. The real value is in how much money you are able to make from the list. If your list has 25,000 addresses and you average $50,000 each month from marketing efforts, I'd say your list alone is worth several hundred thousand dollars.

Only you can know what it's worth to you but if you lose a lawsuit it will in-all-probability be the first asset a judgment creditor goes

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after from your online business.

Besides your list, you have probably spent more than a little effort and money on your domain name. I'm not talking about the $9.95 you paid GoDaddy.com to register the name. I'm referring to all of the work to make it search engine friendly and the pay per click advertising you've shelled out money for, to draw subscribers to your site.

Value of Domain Names There are websites out there that automatically calculate the value of a domain name based on typical internet information such as number of daily visits, speed of the site, and how many directories it appears in. I have no idea how accurate these automated calculations are but one values Google.com at a little over $2 billion dollars. It shows a value of $41 million for CNN.com. I think we can conclude that many domain names are worth a lot more than pocket change.

Even something much less known like cars.com is valued at $1.6 million.

The .com extension still rules the internet. If you have a good domain with the .com extension, your domain name alone could be worth a fortune. Just the .com extension is worth 5Xs to 10Xs more than .org or another less common extension. For instance, CNN.org plummets in value down to about $1,600.

What is your site worth? Who knows? But in the wild west of the online world, having a desirable and well established domain name is like having a gold mine. Keep reading to learn what other goldmines you might be sitting on without even knowing how much your intellectual property is worth.

Licensing Your Intellectual Property Registering your trademark and other intellectual property is the only way to assure that others can't just steal them from you along with all of your hard work that has gone

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on behind them.

It can be even worse than someone just using your own intellectual property to compete against you. If it's not registered, they can start using it and then turn around and register your trademarks, copyrights, and other intellectual property into their own name. Next thing you know, you receive a cease and desist order to stop using your own trademark.

While this eClass isn't directly about you registering intellectual property, that is the first step in you being able to fully protect it with a Super Trust.

Your trademarks and intellectual property are valuable assets worth protecting. It should be an essential part of your business and wealth building plan.

You want to register intellectual property at the Federal level rather than the State level. Otherwise, you will only have rights to the property at the State level which will never be enough when you're doing business on the world wide web. Begin your registration at United States Patent and Trademark Office: http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp

What Intellectual Property to Protect Intellectual property is divided into three major classifications:

Copyrights

Patents

Trademarks Copyright protection is needed for original works by an author. It can be something that you author on your own or something you had authored for hire and you now have the rights to. These include literature, drama, music, art, and similar artistic works. Copyrights are registered with a different government office from trademarks and patents. Begin the copyright registration process at: http://www.copyright.gov/

Trademarks come in two forms - Trademarks and service marks.

http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp

http://www.copyright.gov/

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Both typically use a combination of words and symbols to identify the source of the products. The Nike Swoosh or McDonalds Golden Arches are a couple of the most famous trademarks created.

There is little difference between trademarks and service marks. Service marks are associated with services rather than products. Kinko's photo copying services is a service mark example. Many times, a trademark and service mark are used by the same business. General Motors is a well-known trademark and Mr. Goodwrench is their well-known service mark.

Trademark Symbols - TM, SM and ®. You can use TM for trademark and SM for service mark any time you claim rights to a unique trademark. Even if it is not registered. However, the ® symbol is restricted for use only after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approves your registration. The ® symbol places the world on notice that you have exclusive rights to the trademark and variations that resemble it.

Besides having the right to sell, license, or lease your intellectual property, if you ever decide to sell your business, the buyer will value your business as worth more if your intellectual property is registered.

Once you are registered as the exclusive owner of your intellectual property, you need to take the final step to protect these valuable assets. Not just from shady businesspeople that might want to sell counterfeit goods and services using your trademark but from those that want to take control of your internet business via a lawsuit.

Structuring Protection for Your Internet Business There is a difference in protecting your internet business from what you learned in the first module about protecting your personal residence. Because you are in business, you need to add a business entity to this

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structure. Never work as a sole proprietor - no liability protection at all.

A Limited Partnership coupled with a Super Trust offers you two layers of protection. The main idea being that a judgment creditor cannot be awarded anything inside the Super Trust. You still need to have a grantor be someone other than yourself to create the Super Trust.

Once that is accomplished, you want to transfer ownership of your valuable intellectual property out of the business entity and into the trust. Start with your email address list and your domain name. Then consider if you have high value trademarks and service marks that need to be transferred as well.

Your business entity (Limited Partnership) remains your marketing tool. All of your business operations are conducted under the name of your business entity. That means your business name: "First National Internet Marketing" appears on your letterhead and your website banners but the name is actually owned by the trust. Your business entity either licenses it from the Super Trust or leases it.

The legal or licensing documents between your business and trust need to have strong language protecting the trusts ownership of the intellectual property. Typically, the lease contracts run out and need to be renewed after a specific period of time. However, you want to take that protection to a new level. You need to include language allowing the Super Trust to cancel the lease under certain conditions before the lease period is over. For instance, the Super Trust has the option to cancel the lease under any conditions that the Limited Partnership changes senior management or ownership. The Super Trust can have the option to renegotiate the lease but it also has the ability to cancel the lease and retain full rights to the intellectual property it owns.

Now, you add a Solo 401(k) retirement account taking the entire structure up to an even higher level. A Solo 401(k) account let's you save money earned by the trust tax-free. And lots of it.

Here's an illustration of the Super Trust structure you need to fully

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protect your internet marketing business and fund your retirement tax-free.

So, like I mentioned, you create a limited partnership. Put the trust in the role of the general partner and yourself in the role of the limited partner. You also place you domain name, email list, and other intellectual property in the ownership of the trust.

Finally, you set up a Solo 401(k) account where profits are reinvested and compound tax-free.

Now you have your operating company (limited partnership) that doesn't own anything of real value. But that is the only asset you have in the structure that can be taken away from you in a lawsuit. If someone sues you, you roll the valuable but leased intellectual property back into the Super Trust and let them have the worthless operating company or if they don't want it, you dissolve the partnership and start a new operating company with the same structure.

And not only do you have all of your profits safe inside the 401(k) account but you put them in there tax-free to earn real wealth for

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you and your family.

There are a few variations to this arrangement that you should consider. One is using a Roth 401(k) instead of a tradition 401(k). Depending on your circumstances, a Roth 401(k) can have real advantages for you.

But before we get to the 401(k) accounts, let's first look at the details to the limited partnership....

Limited Partnership as Operating Business Entity A limited partnership (LP) is also known as a limited liability partnership (LLP). This business entity is composed of two or more partners with at least one of them being a general partner.

The general partner in a LP has unlimited liability which is the reason we assign that role to the Super Trust because the courts won't reach in there to pay a judgment.

With you being the limited partner, your exposure is nothing more than what you have invested in the partnership. By leasing the intellectual property from the Super Trust, the partnership doesn't have much value. A few desks, chairs, and computers but most internet marketing businesses need little more than that to operate.

Limited partnerships are controlled by state statutes. Because state law changes frequently and limited partnerships are a relatively new business form, it's important that you understand the laws in your state. You also need to work with a competent attorney to be sure you structure the partnership in the most beneficial way for your particular business.

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Solo 401(k) and Solo Roth 401(k)

To summarize:

2 or more different partners

General Partner - full control, full liability (name Super Trust as General Partner)

Limited Partner - limited liability, limited control, no employment taxes upon distribution

As far as taxes are concerned, limited partnerships are the same as a general partnership. The limited partnership is a "pass through" entity. Profits pass through to the partners, who report them on their personal tax returns. Here is where the Solos 401(k) account becomes an important addition to your business structure.

Pass Trust Income to 401(k) Tax-free Fees, licenses, and/or lease payments for use of the intellectual property is classified as passive income. Passive income can be passed tax-free to either a Solo 401(k) or Solo Roth 401(k) account.

A Solo 401(k) plan includes the ability to make almost any type of investment, including owning real estate without the need to establish another business entity or pay custodian fees to manage the account. You can manage it yourself.

The Solo 401(k) Plan is the most tax-advantageous plan available as well as having high annual contribution limits.

Not subject to the claims of creditors

Exempt from bankruptcy

Exempt from taxes

You must be the sole owner of the business, although a spouse can also be included in the plan and a partner and his or her wife

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qualify as well. You can have employees but only part-time, working less than 1,000 hours a year. Contract employees do not count towards the Solo 401(k) qualification.

There are several self-employed retirement vehicles out there but for high salary earners, the Solo 401(k) almost always makes the most sense. The Solo 401k offers several unique advantages that you can't find with any other tax-deferred retirement account:

Compared to other tax deductable retirement accounts, the $49,000 cap ($54,500 if age 50 or older) can be more than twice what is available from other plans.

Solo 401(k) plans allow loans direct to the beneficiary. You can borrow up to 50% of your account value or $50,000 (whichever is lower) tax-free and without penalties. It offers both immediate tax savings and a source of funds for an emergency or for other profit generating uses.

The 'over age 50' catch up provision is the most generous of all Federal retirement plans. It allows an extra $5,500 in tax-free deposits compared to $1,000 or $2,500 for SEP IRS, IRAs, or SIMPLE IRS respectively.

Annual funding is flexible. Once established, you can fund it to the max each year or anywhere between zero and the max. There is no minimum funding requirement.

Easy to establish and maintain. Unlike an employer administered 401(k), there is no discrimination test required to establish the account. IRS form 5500 only needs to be filed annually after the value of the account exceeds $250,000.

Consider the Solo Roth 401(k) instead of the tax deferring Solo 401(k) account, the after tax Solo Roth 401(k) might be more suitable to your specific needs.

The Solo Roth 401(k) account was created in 2006 when Congress merged two of the most popular retirement accounts - the Roth IRA and the Solo 401(k). This account allows annual personal contributions of $16,500 ($22,000 if you are over 50). Also, your business can contribute another 25% of your compensation as Profit Sharing. However, the business contribution is pre-tax rather than

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after-tax.

A Roth retirement account is one where you pay the taxes on the income before placing it into the account. The advantage comes from the fact that after you have paid taxes on the income, you don't pay taxes on the earnings in the account. This works particularly well for people that expect to be in a higher tax bracket after retirement or will grow their retirement account much larger than their personal contributions and want to avoid taxes on the earnings.

Summary There you have it, the step-by-step process to fully protecting your Internet Marketing Business.

1. Register your intellectual property, beginning with your email list and domain name.

2. Place the ownership of your intellectual property in the Super Trust where they are fully protected from lawsuits.

3. Operate your business as a limited partnership with your Super Trust in the role of general partner and you personally in the role of limited partner that further limits your personal liability to your investment in the partnership.

4. Pass your profits through to a Solo 401(k) account as passive income, employer contributions, and your salary contribution. The very high allowable annual tax-free contributions grow even more to provide you with a very wealthy and fully protected retirement.

Your “Assignment” for This Module

Talk to an attorney in your state specializing in limited partnerships.

Work with a close family member to become the grantor of your Super Trust if you have not done so yet.

Find an accountant that knows everything there is to know about setting up a Solo 401(k).

Send any questions or comments about the material to: [email protected]

http://www.freemyfunds.org/

http://www.freemyfunds.org/

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Keep your eye on your inbox, because you won’t want to miss the eye-opening tips, tricks and secrets coming your way soon!

Richard Geller Publisher, Super Trusts

P.S. Be sure to review all of the materials that are included with this curriculum package. You should have received three other files:

1. Super Trusts Module 2 – Checklist Summary of main manual

2. Super Trusts Module 2 – Difference Between Patents, copyrights, and Trademarks

3. Super Trusts Module 2 – More Tips for Protecting Intellectual Property

Documents

Super Trustscfm03012010.s3.amazonaws.com/.../STmod2_Protect_InternetBusin… · your domain name. Lose a lawsuit and someone else will step into your shoes to run the internet business