Some advice/structure needed for a creative start up!

[TootalEclipse]

Hello,

I have just stumbled across these forums but I can see they may be very useful in terms of help and advice from people with experience.

I'm currently fresh out of university in a situation where I have some pretty huge creative ideas and am looking to start up my own company. I took business studies in GCSE and A-Level but to be honest I am quite sketchy on a lot of areas having not practiced for the past 3 years while at university!

I am a creative individual who has two "unregistered" ventures - one is my own freelance work (which I regularly get) and the other is a rapidly growing webcomic with commercial possibilities.
I have always been a freelance artist trading under a yet to be registered business name, while I was at university I kept a moderate amount of freelance work going to act as pocket money to keep my student loan healthy, but now I am out of university I have stepped this up almost full time and I am earning pretty much a living at the moment - at my parents house P) at approx £40-£60 per day depending on work load. However all of this is manual work I create and I have not yet explored the reproduction side of my work to add even more profit.

However I realize I will need to register as a business and to confuse things a little bit more - the "manual" creative work I am doing right now is acting as savings to fund my more commercial project which I am running with my partner. Together we run an online webcomic which is published once a week - we are only a couple of months old but are already rapidly expanding in viewers and the future is looking very bright for it. We are looking to make this a commercial success in terms of merchandise, making profits off on site adverts, trademarking it to get products out etc. We have exhibited at one large trade show and had huge success for it and managed to sell a lot of products as well as getting excellent feedback/praise (completely unregistered at this point) so we really need to start thinking about making things official legally so we can trade.


What I am thinking of doing is registering the name of my freelance trade as a LTD company and then trademarking the webcomic and trading under my name, I'm not sure how good of an idea this is as I want my partner to feel fully included too as we do a lot of the work together.

The other option is to register my freelance name as a sole trading business - just myself and then trademarking the webcomic business to a name we will have to come up with ... only I will have to manage a sole trading life style and to keep LTD company books.

I am just trying to figure out some kind of structure here, I apologize if any of my writing is confusing but I hope that someone can give some advice!

 

[StevensOnln1]

If you're doing freelance work you should have already registered as self employed with HMRC. When did you start? If you started later than 6th April 2012 you'll still be ok by registering now so you can file your 2012/13 tax return on time.

Sent from my GT-P1000 using UK Business Forums

 

[FIZIX Agency]

If you are freelance and register as a ltd company then you can get hit by the IRS pretty hard, I can't think what the legislation is called but I'm sure someone can advise.

I would probably just protect the names tbh.

 

[Gecko001]

Going freelance just after university is fine but remember you will be trading on what you have learned at university and that has a certain shelf life. Have you completely given up hope of getting a job working for a largish firm in your particular field?

 

[FIZIX Agency]

Going freelance just after university is fine but remember you will be trading on what you have learned at university and that has a certain shelf life. Have you completely given up hope of getting a job working for a largish firm in your particular field?

Its exactly what I did, I was like the OP doing freelance stuff while at uni and thought "I already have customers and basically have a business here" and thought, well I may as well give it a shot and it paid off. 10 years later, I have no regrets.

If the OP is willing to put in the hard work then by all means go for it.

 

[TootalEclipse]

If you're doing freelance work you should have already registered as self employed with HMRC. When did you start? If you started later than 6th April 2012 you'll still be ok by registering now so you can file your 2012/13 tax return on time.

Sent from my GT-P1000 using UK Business Forums

I probably should have registered sooner but as I was only doing very occasional work at university I didn't bother as I had a lot of work on my plate as it was. I've sent out my application today so I can get on with full time work!

If you are freelance and register as a ltd company then you can get hit by the IRS pretty hard, I can't think what the legislation is called but I'm sure someone can advise.

I would probably just protect the names tbh.

Yes after reading up I have decided that I will register as a sole trader for my freelance business which is rapidly expanding. However my partner and myself will be registering our webcomic business as a LTD company so allow us to fulfill our commercial plans.

Going freelance just after university is fine but remember you will be trading on what you have learned at university and that has a certain shelf life. Have you completely given up hope of getting a job working for a largish firm in your particular field?

My field is in games design - specifically character and environment design (which comes into my webcomic business to an extent - I will also be developing games and apps for the characters), it's something I do as a hobby too so it's not something I could easily forget. My creative and technical skills have been something I've been doing my entire life so I would rather pursue my dreams now rather than to be tied down with a studio job and have regrets later when I didn't attempt them! If this year doesn't go as I expect then I have a first class degree and professional portfolio which will hopefully give me an edge if I needed a "steady" job if my plans do not work.

Its exactly what I did, I was like the OP doing freelance stuff while at uni and thought "I already have customers and basically have a business here" and thought, well I may as well give it a shot and it paid off. 10 years later, I have no regrets.

If the OP is willing to put in the hard work then by all means go for it.

That's good to know! I am pretty tunnel visioned with my plans so I'm hoping that I can keep up the effort to MAKE this work! I think one of the biggest things I've found so far is time management. If you were doing a job you didn't like so well - you'd have work hours, so now you're doing a job that you do like doing then you should also make work hours - no slacking!