So can someone please tell me what a business license even is?
I'm the president of my own corporation, and still don't know, I've never seen it formally just casually mentioned
Stop Freelancing
21–30 of 126 posts
Re: Stop Freelancing
#22From the other side of the table - I might be much more likely to work with "John Smith, Designer", than I would with "John Smith Design Studio". Why's that? When I work with "John Smith, Designer", I'm getting John. When I work with his design studio, he might be billing me for work done by his intern or the guy he hires that isn't as good as John.
this is not a concern of actual customers who buy actual stuff for actual, significant amounts of money from John Smith Design Studio because John Smith Design Studio has an impressive portfolio and track record and client references.
if not, well, you can simply just ask John if he's going to be the guy working on your stuff.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#23Interesting. 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.
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
Here you can register/setup an LLC in about 10 minutes online for around $300.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#24This seems like a great idea, one that I've been tossing around in my head for a while now. To the skeptics (of which HN has in droves), has anybody ever gone in the reverse direction, ie, from having their own client-funded business to being "freelance"?
I have. I consider it better insofar as it pushes some business development problems off on other folks.
I am in demand enough that it's no problem finding remote projects and people who are super happy to find someone who has better than average skills, and to pay accordingly. Not to mention that I live in an inexpensive area of the US close to a tech hub but with flexible employment laws.
It's a lot less of a headache as I don't have to sell to folks other than the people who are, in turn, selling my skills. I just do the work.
While it cuts my rate by a lot (maybe 50% in most cases), that's a fine tradeoff for picking up a lot of risk and uncertainty.
The problem is that, as a business, I had to deal with scaling and bringing in more folks to do work if I wanted to grow or expand and deal with sales and marketing just to stay in business. As a freelancer I make plenty of money at my own schedule, but can't really make the next big income jump. I'm okay with that for the next couple of years (my kids are finishing middle school), though I imagine that at some point I will possibly get bored with the work and, at that point, try and return to being a "business".
On a related note, though, I also rent my house for similar reasons.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#25Interesting. 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.
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
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.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#26It really all boils down to risk management. If you're a self-identified say, "Ruby freelancer", the value proposition is "I am an independent Ruby developer for hire". For staff augmentation gigs or applying for a FT position, this is all well and good, because whoever's hiring is looking for warm bodies with specific technical capabilities. However, many companies are looking to solve specific business problems and…
This really depends a lot on the business. Even for consultants, many companies prefer to split business and technical consulting, sometimes contracting them out separately, or sometimes just contracting one of them out as needed. In that situation, they typically do not want the technical consultant involving themselves in the business case, because they were hired to solve a technical problem, not to second-guess the role of the technical problem in the hiring company's business. This is particularly common in large companies hiring engineering consultants: a metallurgy consultant hired by Exxon or BP to assist with a design or problem (actual example a friend does regularly) is supposed to provide technical input on metallurgy as required, not try to sell a company on the value proposition of Metallurgical Solutions. Their value proposition is that they are an expert who can provide expert advice and problem-solving in a specific technical domain.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#27Interesting. 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.
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".
Re: Stop Freelancing
#28I've never really thought that much about having a company just for branding purposes. But, I've run my business as an official corporation for about 10 years now, even though I haven't been 100% freelance for all of that time. There's some running costs for the corporation itself, but but it has a lot of benefits, tax deductions being an obvious one.
Also if you don't have a corporate tax ID and bank account, then some clients may insist on withholding taxes and pay you as regular employee, so that they don't look like they're trying to dodge payroll tax. Again this affects your ability to control your own salary and tax filing and you can avoid it by billing them as an officially registered corporation with checks written out to your company, not your personal name.
The corporation also helps if you bring on more people to help because you can pay them properly with tax withholding and everything is legit. It's not really that much work using an online Payroll service.
I definitely recommend it if you are earning more than a few thousand dollars per year.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#29The main differences between being an individual vs a company are the intentions for which a client hires you.
Being 'Designer John Smith' attracts companies hoping to lure you in as a full time employee eventually. This can be good for finding work when you don't decline the possibility of full time work, but can burn bridges when you decide to leave the client.
Being 'John Smith Design Studio' attracts clients looking to offload development to another company in order to meet deadlines and get stuff done.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#30This is the kind of positive practical advice I wish there was more of on Hacker News.