By law to advertise commercial goods or services using any name other than your own as an individual, you must register that name using any one of a number of government mandated registration methods. Most commonly this is done by filing an Assumed Name Certificate or a Doing Business As registration, usually through your County registrar's office. Other methods include registering a Trademark, or filing Letters of Incorporation as a corporation or as an LLC. Any one of these registration instruments will give you the legal authority to operate a business under an assumed, or business name and do things such as accept money, open a business checking account, or market your products or services. These documents are required by law to provide links between the assumed name and the business owners for matters of taxation and legal liability.

Often, especially online, people will operate using a business name that has not been legally registered leaving virtually no traceable information in case of problems and issues or fraud and theft. Fraud artists will often hide behind these unregistered business names and change them once they have been uncovered or will operate under multiple unregistered businesses at once.

As a business concerned with fraud and theft issues in our classifieds, we have implemented a registered business program so that you can be assured when dealing with people advertising as businesses on our site, that they have at least legally registered as a business in their jurisdiction. On May 1, 2007 this system became mandatory for for anyone wishing to advertise using a business name on our systems. This included classifieds, sponsorships, banners, hosting and other all other advertising. This is required at the time of classified account registration prior to posting advertisements.

Do I Need to Register?

Let's use as an example a fictional person named Bob Johnson. Bob has some geckos and supplies he wants to sell on our site, but he is not sure if he needs to be a Registered Business. We asked our legal department to tell us what Bob needs to do to sell his geckos and this is how they broke it down for us.

• If ads are posted as posted by Bob Johnson he will NOT need a registration
• If ads are posted as posted by Bob Johnson's Geckos he will NOT need a registration
• If ads are posted as posted by Bob Johnson's Albino Geckos he will NOT need a registration
• If ads are posted as posted by Bob Johnson's Starlight Geckos he WILL need a registration
• If ads are posted as posted by Bob's Geckos he WILL need a registration
• If ads are posted as posted by Starlight Geckos he WILL need a registration

How Can I Prove My Legal Business Registration to PetHobbyist/kingsnake.com?

We have waited to implement this system until a good percentage of states made their business registration information available online, having started development work on it in 2005. For most of you, locating your information online and sending a link to it to our Account Review team will be all that is required. In some instances where the documentation is not available online, we will be accepting the documentation by fax. The following forms of documentation will be accepted as proof of legal business registration.

Acceptable Documentation:

• Copy of DBA/Assumed Name Certificate issued by State or County
• Copy of Certificate of Incorporation
• Copy of Federal Payroll Tax forms 940/941 in business' name
• Copy of State Sales Tax form in business' name
• Copy of State Income Tax form in business' name
• Copy of Federal Income Tax form in business' name
• Copy of County/City/State/Federal Permits or Licenses in business' name
• Federal or State Trademark Registration or Application Documentation
• Other Government Issued Documentation as reviewed

• Domain Name Registration
• Checks or Bank Documentation
• P.O. Box Registration
• Other Documents Issued by Private Individuals or Businesses

How Can I Register My Business with PetHobbyist/Kingsnake.com?

There is no extra charge or fee associated with this service BUT only active classified account holders may register, and only if they can document their legal business registration information.

To search for your information online look at our state DBA search page first. If you cannot locate your information there we suggest that you use Google to locate your County's web site and see if the information is available online. If your business information is unavailable online we can accept business registration information by fax at (512)597-8914 .

Once you have located your information online, contact our Account Review Staff and send them the link to your information. Once the registration has been approved, the button will automatically appear in your advertisements.

We will be offering a "portable" version of the button for use on your own web site soon.

The link to my business info contains my address or other personal information, can I be listed without linking to it?

The only cases we will allow listing without the link to the actual business registration is in the few cases where there is no information about the business registration online and the registration is confirmed by fax OR when the web site that contains the publicly accessible data has technical issues that preclude "deep linking". If the business infomation is available on a publicly accessible web site run by a government entity, we will link to it. That, after all, is the point of the business verification system, to allow potential buyers to screen potential sellers by confirming that they are a legitimate business. In the case of documentation faxed to us for confirmation we WILL NOT make that information available and only information that is available through public sources will be listed, and then only with links to the publicly available data. If these links contain information you consider be private, you will need to consult with the web site publishing the data to resolve that.

Does this mean you need to be a business to post ads?