10 ms·

Interesting. I've been toying around with this idea for a while, but inexperience with starting a company is prohibitive enough to prevent action. How is your

Interesting. I've been toying around with this idea for a while, but inexperience with starting a company is prohibitive enough to prevent action. How is your current freelance shell company marketed? I'd love to see what that website looks like, and how you advertise it differently.

mcdougle 13y ago
I imagine he just set up an LLC or something to that effect, and made his site look more professional, with a logo on it. I can't imagine it's that difficult. People do it all the time for all sorts of personal businesses. I haven't looked into it in-depth as I'm not at that stage yet, but I eventually plan to do the same thing -- although I hope to scale freelancing into a much bigger business if at all possible
- atwebb 13y ago
  Here you can register/setup an LLC in about 10 minutes online for around $300.
  - hadem 13y ago
    Looks like you forgot your link. Mind updating your comment?
- benburleson 13y ago
  Yes, there's a lot of information out there regarding this, but it's not too terribly expensive to file for an LLC. When the business is actually just you, it's basically invisible in regards to your tax situation. Just open a separate bank account under the LLC's EIN so you don't have to spend as much time tracking business income and expenses when you want the tax benefit of those business expenses.
  - jtbigwoo 13y ago
    >> When the business is actually just you, it's basically invisible in regards to your tax situation. Not true. In the U.S. if you create an LLC or S-corp you can pay yourself a salary and also pay yourself dividends (sometimes called distributions). Both salary and dividends are subject to regular income taxes, but only the salary is subject to payroll taxes. The justification goes like this: if you were paying an employee, you'd pay them a fair salary and then take some extra for yourself as the owner. The owner's payment isn't technically a salary so you don't need to pay payroll taxes on it. Lots of single-person companies play games with salary and dividends to try to drive their payroll taxes as low as possible. The IRS can crack down on those owners that don't pay themselves a fair salary in an attempt to evade taxes.
    - mmagin 13y ago
      (I am not a lawyer.) As I understand it, the real benefit of an LLC for what would otherwise be a sole-proprietorship or partnership is if you do work where there's significant liabilities you need protection from. e.g. you make products which are sold to end consumers, end consumers are frequently dumbasses and hurt themselves, end consumer decides to try to sue you for ridiculous amounts of money. But to make this actually work, it's a big deal to keep the LLC's finances as separate as possible from your own bank accounts, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Factors_for_courts_to_consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Fa...
      - mikeho1999 13y ago
        (Also not a lawyer... just someone who has run a single-person "cute freelancing" or "professional services" company for almost a decade now) Not sure what you mean by "it's a big deal". It's critically important to keep the LLC's finances completely separate from... but the effort to do so is not that high. My limited understanding is that this varies from state to state, but at least in California, all that's really required is for you to have a separate business checking or savings account, and that receipts should be deposited there, and expenses should be paid from there. Having a separate Federal Tax ID isn't even required in California, although it is definitely highly recommended. And at least in terms of trying to get a business banking account, many banks will require it. And @jtbigwoo, you can have a single-person LLC that is "disregarded" as a separate tax entity from the IRS's point of view, which means any revenue to the LLC would show up in your personal income tax (on a Schedule C), known as "flow thru" accounting. That means that no, you don't necessarily have to pay separate dividends and stuff just because you are an LLC.
scarecrowbob 13y ago
I have a couple of DBAs when I was marketing my services as a company. At some point, I found it easier to only sell my services to agencies, so I don't usually present myself like that to businesses. However, it's not really a big deal, depending on where you are. In Texas, a Doing Business As certificate ($12), a bank account, and business cards are usually enough to be a "business".
davedx 13y ago
I have two websites, one for my "freelance profile" (dave78.com) and one for my "business" (redskyforge.com). The thing is, I hardly ever send anyone my "business" site, because I don't think it sells me/my business as well as the freelance site. I would also love to see other peoples' sites!
- traviscj 13y ago
  I'm no expert, but I think that your portfolio is HUGELY more convincing than your business site. I get that your business can't really sell your skills, but it can sell your past projects, just to give some idea of the scale of the things you've done. For example, you say "Enterprise . Mobile . Web" but don't have a single example there. I tried to click on them, but they don't link anywhere. If I pay you, will I get a website like this one? Will it be completely static? If I ask for a webapp, will people have to interact with it through the company email? Some more content (portfolio, pictures of your apps, tech/product/opinion blog, etc), some kind of branding (logo, etc), or social stuff (twitter feed/LinkedIn/testimonials) or something would be a huge help, because it'd help convince people that you actually did some stuff, and have been doing it recently. Sorry if I sound cynical--it sounds like you've done some really cool stuff. And your portfolio page does reflect that. But it doesn't really come through on the business webpage at all. Maybe you're just too busy working on cool stuff to fix up your webpage :-)
  - davedx 13y ago
    That's pretty much it! I made the company website on the train home from work one day and haven't changed it since, because I always use my profile website when networking or finding work. I think the biggest issue at the moment (besides time) is that I'm still not 100% sure where I want to take my career next. Lately I've become interested in either building my own startup or joining one in some kind of technical lead role. Neither of these ideas, or my current freelancing career, really need this business website. Whereas, if I decided I wanted to move into consulting, possibly moving beyond a one-man operation, the business website would suddenly be much more important. Thanks for the feedback. :)
- amouat 13y ago

mcdougle 13y ago

I imagine he just set up an LLC or something to that effect, and made his site look more professional, with a logo on it. I can't imagine it's that difficult. People do it all the time for all sorts of personal businesses. I haven't looked into it in-depth as I'm not at that stage yet, but I eventually plan to do the same thing -- although I hope to scale freelancing into a much bigger business if at all possible

atwebb 13y ago
Here you can register/setup an LLC in about 10 minutes online for around $300.
- hadem 13y ago
  Looks like you forgot your link. Mind updating your comment?
benburleson 13y ago
Yes, there's a lot of information out there regarding this, but it's not too terribly expensive to file for an LLC. When the business is actually just you, it's basically invisible in regards to your tax situation. Just open a separate bank account under the LLC's EIN so you don't have to spend as much time tracking business income and expenses when you want the tax benefit of those business expenses.
- jtbigwoo 13y ago
  >> When the business is actually just you, it's basically invisible in regards to your tax situation. Not true. In the U.S. if you create an LLC or S-corp you can pay yourself a salary and also pay yourself dividends (sometimes called distributions). Both salary and dividends are subject to regular income taxes, but only the salary is subject to payroll taxes. The justification goes like this: if you were paying an employee, you'd pay them a fair salary and then take some extra for yourself as the owner. The owner's payment isn't technically a salary so you don't need to pay payroll taxes on it. Lots of single-person companies play games with salary and dividends to try to drive their payroll taxes as low as possible. The IRS can crack down on those owners that don't pay themselves a fair salary in an attempt to evade taxes.
  - mmagin 13y ago
    (I am not a lawyer.) As I understand it, the real benefit of an LLC for what would otherwise be a sole-proprietorship or partnership is if you do work where there's significant liabilities you need protection from. e.g. you make products which are sold to end consumers, end consumers are frequently dumbasses and hurt themselves, end consumer decides to try to sue you for ridiculous amounts of money. But to make this actually work, it's a big deal to keep the LLC's finances as separate as possible from your own bank accounts, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Factors_for_courts_to_consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Fa...
    - mikeho1999 13y ago
      (Also not a lawyer... just someone who has run a single-person "cute freelancing" or "professional services" company for almost a decade now) Not sure what you mean by "it's a big deal". It's critically important to keep the LLC's finances completely separate from... but the effort to do so is not that high. My limited understanding is that this varies from state to state, but at least in California, all that's really required is for you to have a separate business checking or savings account, and that receipts should be deposited there, and expenses should be paid from there. Having a separate Federal Tax ID isn't even required in California, although it is definitely highly recommended. And at least in terms of trying to get a business banking account, many banks will require it. And @jtbigwoo, you can have a single-person LLC that is "disregarded" as a separate tax entity from the IRS's point of view, which means any revenue to the LLC would show up in your personal income tax (on a Schedule C), known as "flow thru" accounting. That means that no, you don't necessarily have to pay separate dividends and stuff just because you are an LLC.

scarecrowbob 13y ago

I have a couple of DBAs when I was marketing my services as a company. At some point, I found it easier to only sell my services to agencies, so I don't usually present myself like that to businesses. However, it's not really a big deal, depending on where you are. In Texas, a Doing Business As certificate ($12), a bank account, and business cards are usually enough to be a "business".

davedx 13y ago

I have two websites, one for my "freelance profile" (dave78.com) and one for my "business" (redskyforge.com). The thing is, I hardly ever send anyone my "business" site, because I don't think it sells me/my business as well as the freelance site. I would also love to see other peoples' sites!

traviscj 13y ago
I'm no expert, but I think that your portfolio is HUGELY more convincing than your business site. I get that your business can't really sell your skills, but it can sell your past projects, just to give some idea of the scale of the things you've done. For example, you say "Enterprise . Mobile . Web" but don't have a single example there. I tried to click on them, but they don't link anywhere. If I pay you, will I get a website like this one? Will it be completely static? If I ask for a webapp, will people have to interact with it through the company email? Some more content (portfolio, pictures of your apps, tech/product/opinion blog, etc), some kind of branding (logo, etc), or social stuff (twitter feed/LinkedIn/testimonials) or something would be a huge help, because it'd help convince people that you actually did some stuff, and have been doing it recently. Sorry if I sound cynical--it sounds like you've done some really cool stuff. And your portfolio page does reflect that. But it doesn't really come through on the business webpage at all. Maybe you're just too busy working on cool stuff to fix up your webpage :-)
- davedx 13y ago
  That's pretty much it! I made the company website on the train home from work one day and haven't changed it since, because I always use my profile website when networking or finding work. I think the biggest issue at the moment (besides time) is that I'm still not 100% sure where I want to take my career next. Lately I've become interested in either building my own startup or joining one in some kind of technical lead role. Neither of these ideas, or my current freelancing career, really need this business website. Whereas, if I decided I wanted to move into consulting, possibly moving beyond a one-man operation, the business website would suddenly be much more important. Thanks for the feedback. :)
amouat 13y ago