I'm sure they pay the taxes they owe and they do it within the legal framework they operate in, otherwise we would be reading a whole other article about corporate fraud.
Instead the article is about a company that paid zero in taxes on their profit thanks to "extraordinary use of tax breaks and clever accounting".
I'm not against any of the tax structures you mention, GE doesn't need the best tax experts in the world for those things. So even though I haven't read the 57,000 page tax return I am willing to guess that all of the tax breaks used where not of the same considerate nature as the ones you mention.
It just seems like the primary motivation is to avoid paying taxes, not switching to green energy or even pay health insurance. The article even mentions "inefficient ways that GE structures its businesses just to avoid paying taxes", which, if true, is a major indicator.
Of course I may be completely wrong, I don't know what the motivation is and why they seem to work so hard not to pay taxes on their profit.
"Consider the resources that GE spends to lowers its tax bill... Indeed, a corporate tax system with a tax rate of zero could well be preferable as it would waste fewer resources and raise not much less revenue."
I've had a look at the Google Analytics profile together with the owner. The site is not flawless and there's a lot of room for improvement, but it does have significant traffic and I saw the statements from the third party showing clicks and revenue every month since January 2009. This sealed the deal for me.
The third party is a CPC network, I had no idea that CPA tends to generate more revenue or how that even works. I'm not sure either what Adsense/Adwords Arbitrage means but I would like to know more!
There is a membership area but no paid membership. Definitely something to consider. The newsletter has about 5000 subscribers, also a source of revenue there.
The iPhone/Android app was my first thought when looking at the site. I have another company that makes apps and thought it would be a perfect fit.
Yes a huge chunk of the traffic comes from Google. Diversifying the source of traffic is something I'd like to do but don't know exactly how. Which leads to a question: Do you know of a good company I can turn to for these kinds of services?
The other company I have is called weApps Sweden, please feel free to get in touch with me at [email protected]
Exactly! Stickiness and the time spent on the site were problems that the owner talked to me about.
The bounce rate is about 73% and the time spent on the site is a little over 1 minute. Is that good, bad?
The site is structured much like a web-portal was back in the days. There's a TON of content on the front page which then leads further into the site.
The owner has been trying to keep visitors on the site by adding a forum, competitions, slideshows etc. There's no blog but he does have quite a following on the newsletter.
The ~750,000 unique visits (as it stated in Google Analytics), does that mean unique visitors or unique visits as in say 1 person visiting 750,000 times?
I'm not completely sure as to what numbers advertisers care about?
Great point :) Revenue would increase with a higher number of visitors. Any good tips on SEO or other strategies? Currently, 80% of the traffic is from google. Thanks!
Thanks for your reply! That is very true, the advertising is coming from a third party that focuses on the niche market of pregnant women and new parents. All of the hits are from Sweden since the site is in Swedish.
I'm very open to the idea of an affiliate partnership, but I must say that I'm cautious since a many online stores advertise on the site (which generates extra revenue separate from the third party)
I would very much like to look into it. Not sure if there's a DM feature on HN, but if you know of companies that would be a good fit then I'd like to explore the opportunity with you. Thanks!
Good point. The site has a little over 1M pageviews per year. Of those around 750K are unique visits. I don't know how many unique visitors it had, but I can check.
What does this all mean in terms of generating revenue? Which ones are more important to focus on than the other?
(again I'm pretty new at running an online business, thanks for all you input)