Hi, This is the way you can go about it. 1 - Let the freelancer work 2 - Set up an umbrella LLC (just one LLC) 3 - If you want to create and protect brand names then you can file DBA otherwise you are fine 4 - Owning websites is like owning assets. You do not start a company for each building your company will own. Make sure that you create FEIN and State Tax ID for that State and use this for creating a bank account. 5 - You can have multiple sub-accounts with a bank for each website, however, make sure that they are all under your Umbrella company's account. 6 - File taxes as parent company Genie Bazaar, Get Freelancer -- This post was edited to remove a hyperlink. Please visit the Community Best Practices for posting guidelines: http://community.sba.gov/community/discussion-boards/introduction/welcom...

MsLily, I hope you get to see this response. I've worked with a lot of companies in similar situations as yours. Here's what I've recommended and it worked really well. Company Structure First, create an umbrella company and make it an LLC and have it taxed as a Subchapter 'S' Corporation. Second, get a sales tax permit for your LLC. Then create the fictictious business names and have them owned by the LLC. Each one will be able to collect sales tax under the LLC tax permit. Commercial Insurance Get insurance for this business. I can't emphsize getting insurance enough. Many people make the mistake of operating a business from their home and thinking home owner's insurance will cover the business. That's far from the truth. You need two types of insurance: general liability / business insurance and then errors and ommissions. You may also need product liability insurance. Check with your friendly commercial insurance agent about your specific needs. Merchant Accounts When you get a merchant account, some agents will tell you that you need one for each business. Technically this is true. However, I've seen situations where the parent company applied for the merchant account and disclosed the products sold on that application. You will need to identify to your customers what name will appear on their credit card statements. This is important to avoid chargebacks. Other Important Issues Customer confusion will be rampant and confuse even you as you attempt to identify which store the customer purchased from. SEO/SEM for multiple sites is not something easily performed by a single person. This will increase your cost of ownership dramatically. I hope this helps you and others. Kind Regards, Lee Roberts Online Store Software -- This post was edited to remove a hyperlink. For posting guidelines, see the Community Best Practices: http://community.sba.gov/community/discussion-boards/introduction/welcom....

What you can do,is two things setup your website as a cube cart if you google cube cart,its a complete online store full setup for about $250 you would have your main domaine name you have now,you would then setup addittional pages for example, if your store is ballgames.com as your main domain your pages will be ballgames.com/football-boots/ and so on. These would be setup as catagories, this way you can market the pages on pay-per click/blogs etc. Each page in cubecart as its own checkout and stock count Check it out ---This post was edited to remove a commercial link. Read our discussion policies for more Community best practices.

Hi MsLily, Here is a basic guide to starting an Online Business. I am unsure of the answer to your specific question. Can anyone else provide MsLily with an answer while I do more research? BriaS

Websites are not neccesarily different businesses per se, but different marketing avenues really. If you are promoting your products with different websites, but charging your customer under one name, I don't think you should have any problems. I would not register three different company names. Why? You'll be creating a lot of work for yourself, tax issues, and management issues. Create one corp or LLC. Register your websites under that corp. If you accepting payments online, then maybe register a main corp website, and have the checkout feature (shopping cart) charge under that main website. Do a DBA for each website. Many multi-brand corporations do this, unless it's fiscally beneficial to spin off a DBA to it's own corporation or llc. As far as the right software to acheive this, there are many online that are geared toward this. For instance, I run my business on Magento Ecommerce, which was built with multi-storefronts in mind. Here's some more info on my experience: magentocommerce.com/blog/cushions-umbrellas-on-magento/ (not a commercial link I think, but I will trust the moderators decisions) -- this post was edited to remove a commercial link. @robgarcia - Our linking rules only allow links to government websites.

this post was edited to remove a commercial link. @robgarcia - Our linking rules only allow links to government websites. Sorry bout that.

I've talked to a number of other people in your situation and they seem to usually head in the same direction...most form an LLC that acts as an umbrella company and then set up DBA's (doing business as) for each individual website under that umbrella. That way the divide the websites, they can deposit all money into one 'pot', and they only have one taxable source to think about at the end of the year. If you want to speak with someone who deals with this everyday, try EZonlineFiling.com. They file Corporations, LLC's and DBA's and run into this type of thing everyday.

Internet marketers, like myself, usually don't bother to separate domains into their own entities. I personally own 20+ domains and the headaches of registering each one as a business, filing taxes on each etc would be too much. Instead, register an umbrella company first. If more than one of your domains starts to blow up and you want to isolate it and protect the others in case of liability issues, then you need to start doing registering each. This will also help if you're looking to sell the domain/business later on.

Thank-you Brias! This link is pretty useful.

thanks sooo much everyone! very helpful and useful info. After reading and much more research, LLC seems the best and easiet way to go.