As many of you are aware I've just received my private pilot's license and I'm pretty excited about the prospect of flying my wife and I to TRAFFIC Downunder in a few weeks time. Flying is one of those pass times where you look at the clock multiply the time by a big number and you get your approximate cost......not necessarily a nice situation.

Being in the domain industry and a developer/hacker as well I thought that there must be a better solution to my new expensive hobby. After talking it over with my accountant I recently launched downwind.com.au which is a blog/resource for the aviation industry. I'm slowly getting it up and going with a lot of help from my wife who is writing a lot of the articles.

The articles are all about our flying experiences and what and where we've been travelling to etc. I've brought the site under one of my companies which means that it and all of my flying is now tax deductable. This is a great outcome and reduces the expense line of my hobby immensely. :-)

Ultimately, I hope to be able to generate enough traffic so that aviation industry advertisers begin to use the site to reach their customers. This would be another great outcome for me to earn a few extra dollars to support the enjoyment I receive from flying.

This brings up an important point. When you look at developing a domain it could mean that you are developing it not just to increase your revenue line but to decrease your tax liability. A critical part of any business plan should always be a good tax accountant that can advise you on how to take advantage of the tax law given your personal circumstances.

In the meantime, I have to go and have a fly, courtesy of the government and a little ingenuity of what you can do with a domain name.

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Downwind.com.au
written by Whizzbang, 27 October 2008

Many thanks for your encouragement around downwind.com.au I'm continuing to develop the site and will be expanding the aviation wiki and resources area.

Feel free to add anything to the wiki that you may think would be useful for aviators.

...
written by morgan, 26 October 2008

Great - I started working towards my private pilot's license but had to put the process on hold when my son was born. I'm really looking forward to getting back on track.

When I began learning to fly I had a hard time finding out information about flight schools and so I started PilotAdvice.com to provide a flight school directory for student pilots. As you discussed above, I'm hoping the site will eventually help to offset the costs of this fun but expensive hobby.

Congrats buddy
written by Mike C, 25 October 2008

Mike... congrats.

Enjoyed the few pics you got on the new site. Post up more

http://www.wannadevelop.com/

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