For the majority of websites out there that make money, the chances are that they have not gone the ‘official’ route to becoming an actual business. For example, a lot of website owners are sole traders and take the income produced from websites as their own income.

However, if you have worked hard to make a successful website, you might want to turn the website into a registered business. From doing this, not only are you making sure you are not preventing the website from paying corporation tax etc., a lot of business owners look to only buy official and registered businesses. So, it will in fact increase the value of your website business if you choose to sell it one day.

Setting up a website as a business is something that depends on where you live. The US will have different rules to the UK to Europe to Asian countries. Once you have officially set up your website as a business, there are a few things you might want to do to make sure your website business runs smoothly.

 

 

#1 Do Proper Book-keeping

Hopefully, you will have been doing some sort of book-keeping for your website before it was registered as a business. Once you are a business, a simple Excel spreadsheet is not good enough for book-keeping a business. For this reason, although it will cost you a monthly fee, it is a great idea to use online software to track your finances – for me, Quickbooks is one of the best around at doing this. Although, do shop around since there are several very good companies you can go with for book-keeping.

 

 

#2 Use a G-Suite Email Account

Again, hopefully you would have done this already. When your website becomes a business, such as a limited business, your website is financially separate from yourself. Therefore, it is not a good idea to use your own email address for matters relating to your business. Instead, it will be better to pay the monthly fee that comes with G-Suite to get a professional looking email address that has @yourdomainname.com.

 

 

#3 Get a Business Bank

As mentioned above, when your website business is limited, it is financially separate from your personal accounts. Therefore, you will need to make sure your website business has a bank. This will also help with book-keeping since it will be easier seeing the business transactions rather than looking through your personal accounts for them.

There are a lot of good business banks out there, so just like with the book-keeping, it is best to shop around.

 

 

#4 Pay for a Registered Address

Your website needs to have an address for legal reasons. For some, they use their home address. But, do remember, with this, that anyone can then search for where you live on the internet if you choose to use your home address as your registered business address. If you also do any email marketing, it is a law to make sure the registered address is at the bottom of the email too.

For this reason, a lot of people tend to pay for a service where they can use another address as their registered address. This will keep your home address hidden online and make your business look much more professional too.