My sites target local residents, so 99.8% of my traffic is within the same state.
Someone recently suggested that we have a group lottery pool... everyone send in $X, and then I would buy the appropriate number of Quick Pick lottery tickets. If one of the tickets win then we would all split the money.
This is an interesting idea that could be fun for the users, and one that might send a fair amount of traffic to my site, so I'm thinking about it.
The question, though, is how do I handle the money sent to me to purchase the tickets? I have about 120,000 unique visitors each week, so it's not unrealistic to think that 1,000 people might send $4 /month. But if I put $48,000 /year in my business bank account to buy tickets then it will look like income, and I'll have to pay income tax on it.
Before I give up on the idea entirely, or resort to paying a CPA to advise me, have any of you guys gone down this road? Any suggestions on how to handle the payments without paying income tax on it?
