In 2015, the United States government published over 1,000 pages of new rules, regulations and proposals. Per day.

Over three years, the European Commission published 3,600 new regulations and directives, totalling 13 million words. That would take you three months just to read.

Many of those regulations don’t apply to online businesses, of course. But if you think that the Internet protects you from bureaucracy, think again…

Many regulations DO apply online. And laws made in the United States or Europe are frequently aimed at all online businesses, irrespective of where they’re located.

Yippee!

Seriously… your most valuable commodity as a solopreneur is time. Your biggest enemy is the lack of it. So guess what? If you are NOT spending your “time dollars” on one of these three tasks…

1. generating traffic
2. engaging the heck out of your audience
3. selling stuff

… you’re as good as burning those dollars.

True, you’ll never escape administration completely. There’ll always be targets to set and boxes to tick.

But if you want to eliminate a huge, time-sucking chunk of “admin” from your working days, here’s what you need to do…

Lose Your Fear of “Big Brother”

George Orwell only had it half right…

Yes, Big Brother is watching. But he’s not watching YOU in particular – not if you’re a solopreneur. No offence, but he’s got bigger fish to fry!

Don’t believe that? Then you have a potentially business-killing problem that we need to work through.

Let’s start by considering these three regulations that the solopreneur has had to figure out all alone…

1. The EU Cookie Law. If you use web cookies (and who doesn’t?) you need to obtain consent from your European visitors to use them.
2. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Guidelines. If you endorse products on your site as an affiliate, you need to disclose your relationship with the retailer “clearly and conspicuously.”
3. The EU VAT Rules. If you sell digital goods to EU buyers, you have to collect proof of their location at checkout and charge Value Added Tax at the buyer’s local rate.

Never heard of some of those? Sorry, but ignorance of the law won’t wash with Big Brother.

To keep him happy, you need to…

1. Keep up with all the latest online business news on the web, so that you’re aware of any new regulations that affect your business.
2. Research new regulations in detail to understand what they mean and what you have to do. (And don’t expect anything as simple as a single document setting out your responsibilities in plain language.)
3. Figure out how to actually meet the new regulations.

What’s the net effect of all that? A GIANT suck on your most precious commodity: Time!

And it gets worse…

Following these regulations to the letter will frequently result in a poorer experience for your users. They’ll need to take more steps to perform simple tasks, put up with more pop-ups, jump more hurdles.

That’s the bad news.

The good news? It is perfectly possible for the time-pressed solopreneur to “stick to the rules” WITHOUT threatening the very existence of their online business.

Here’s the first thing you need to do…

Get Someone Else to Be Your Eyes and Ears

Monitoring the web for news of laws and regulations and guidelines that you may (or may not) need to follow is a never-ending task.

Digging into those new laws to understand what you need to do, and how you should do it, is more thankless still (unless you happen to be fluent in legalese!)

Solution? Get somebody else to do the heavy lifting for you!

Here at SiteSell, we keep a constant eye on the web, particularly for news that’s relevant to solopreneurs. And we make sense of all that legalese for you, too.

Last year, for example, we were the first to cover the EU VAT Laws in depth and suggest common-sense solutions for solopreneurs.