What are the best practices for partnering up with people and other companies for brand awareness and marketing each other?

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer nor an accountant, and this is not "professional advice." I have, however, set up a few businesses and had partners. What you need to do is incorporate and then write up an Operating Agreement that lays out the terms of your partnership. Who owns what. How the new partner will "buy into" the organization with their sweat equity. What happens when revenue targets are reached. And how exactly you separate when it's time to move on. Lay these details out and more in your operating agreement. You'll be so happy you did, later. When you incorporate, you may do this on your own...or you may want an attorney or accountant to help. They will know how to set up an operating agreement, but now that you know the term it's likely you can google a template. There'll be a lot of technical mumbo jumbo in there you probably won't need, but the section headers will guide you in the right direction.

Hello - I work as an in-house transactional attorney for a US-based website with 20 million monthly unique visitors around the world, and I've worked on several licensing and ad-rep deals for several countries in Europe, South America, Australia, etc. There are several ways to protect yourself, but at the end of the day you have to trust your partner that you they will want to be honest so you can continue doing business together. That said, you should give yourself an audit right. Not sure what the software is and if it directly correlates to sales, but if so see if you can track yourself or use a third party's tracking software so you can compare numbers with theirs. Also consider including in the agreement a dispute clause, something to the effect that if you dispute their report for a quarter they will have x days to provide you with sufficient evidence to reconcile the dispute to your satisfaction - if not, you can terminate the agreement. Another way to protect yourself would be to ask for a minimum guarantee, but depending on the deal that may be difficult to work in. As far as working internationally, I think the hardest part there is ensuring collections and that you are paid in US dollars. Stand strong on keeping venue and choice of law in the jurisdiction in which you reside, not in theirs. If you'd like to schedule a call to further discuss, I'm happy to chat, let me know! Best, Jeff

The income should be reported by the individual or business that provided the service and earned the income. If the 1099 is in your name, you could ask the issuing Company to change to the S-Corp if that is who earned the income. In the future, have a written agreement between your S-Corp and the Company you are providing service. Also, provide them with a Form W9, so they know where to report the 1099 income at year end.

A 0.31 second Google search located this: http://i.cdn.turner.com/nascar/.element/pdf/2.0/sect/kyn/NASCAR_Prospective_Licensing_Application.pdf

Licensing a platform is a terrific way to generate revenue. We struggled to gain an audience to our site and didn't have the funds to market as heavily as we would have wanted. In came the offers to license. Margins were tighter, but the exposure to new customers made a world of difference.