Legal Issues Sole Proprietor or LLC?

[Larry]

How do most of you manage your forums? Is it a business or a hobby?

Do you register an LLC or keep it Sole Proprietor?

If you do make money off of memberships and/merch/software addons or themes how does that all work?

 

[Ashley]

How do most of you manage your forums? Is it a business or a hobby?

Do you register an LLC or keep it Sole Proprietor?

If you do make money off of memberships and/merch/software addons or themes how does that all work?

As it's merely a hobby, Chatting Time is a sole proprietary project. I can't imagine turning a general chat forum into a full-fledged business. I don't think it would be worth it

 

[Heatman]

I think most people start off as a hobby and sole proprietorship. Over time, when they see the project thriving, they decide to make it an LLC. I know a few forum owners who took that path and they are doing very well now.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

How do most of you manage your forums? Is it a business or a hobby?

Do you register an LLC or keep it Sole Proprietor?

If you do make money off of memberships and/merch/software addons or themes how does that all work?

I group my forums under the ownership of Shawn Gossman, LLC.

Keeping it under an LLC does give you a little bit of liability protection. For most things you can be sued for, it will be your LLC being sued and not you individually for the most part with some circumstances (copyright infringement for example) being a different story.

However, for the most part, at this time, my forums are hobbies. My blogs are a different story.

 

[Larry]

I group my forums under the ownership of Shawn Gossman, LLC.

Keeping it under an LLC does give you a little bit of liability protection. For most things you can be sued for, it will be your LLC being sued and not you individually for the most part with some circumstances (copyright infringement for example) being a different story.

However, for the most part, at this time, my forums are hobbies. My blogs are a different story.

I like that idea. For me at least I love writing pieces on things and eventually want to monetize off of it. So eventually for sure I need an LLC. I should maybe research what it would take to make one? Plus, isn't hosting and forum software licenses a tax write off?

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I like that idea. For me at least I love writing pieces on things and eventually want to monetize off of it. So eventually for sure I need an LLC. I should maybe research what it would take to make one? Plus, isn't hosting and forum software licenses a tax write off?

If it's connected to your business, anything can be a write off.

 

[Henrywrites]

I group my forums under the ownership of Shawn Gossman, LLC.

Keeping it under an LLC does give you a little bit of liability protection. For most things you can be sued for, it will be your LLC being sued and not you individually for the most part with some circumstances (copyright infringement for example) being a different story.

However, for the most part, at this time, my forums are hobbies. My blogs are a different story.

Doing this is great, and what also came to my mind was whether you've had situations where you got sued for anything since you registered the company under LLC?

If yes, which situation caused that and why was it so?

 

[Larry]

Doing this is great, and what also came to my mind was whether you've had situations where you got sued for anything since you registered the company under LLC?

If yes, which situation caused that and why was it so?

My guess the only reason why someone would want to sue a LLC or forum business entity would be like if the site got security compromised and personal data was leaked or the owner would go against their own privacy terms and lied on the agreement, or perhaps the person found a lot of copyright material used without the authors consent, that's the only reasons I can think would be liable for lawsuit.