Do you need an LLC for a niche website? And the newspaper rule nobody mentions

Build first. Register when it gets real.

I'm going to open with something that sounds like bad advice from someone who sells a book about building websites: don't form a business in order to start one. Form a business when the website starts behaving like one.

The order matters because the two mistakes cost very different amounts. Registering in month one costs you a few hundred dollars and an annual filing obligation that follows you every year afterward, whether or not the site ever earns a dollar. Waiting until you've built something, published it, and know you're going to keep going costs you almost nothing — one slightly awkward month of expenses on a personal card, which you can reimburse later.

Plenty of people who buy a guide about building a directory never build one. That isn't a dig; it's true of every how-to purchase ever made, mine included. Find out which group you're in before you start paying a state for the privilege.

The signal isn't a feeling. It's a specific event: an affiliate network asks for a tax ID, someone wants to pay you, or your monthly tool spend crosses the point where you want it categorised properly for taxes. That's the week to file — not the week you bought the domain.

Sole proprietor or LLC?

If you do nothing at all, you're already a sole proprietor. It's free, it's automatic, and for a site earning nothing it is genuinely fine.

What the LLC buys you is separation. Your business becomes a distinct legal entity, its debts and liabilities are its own, and there's a clean line between your money and its money — which matters more than people expect at tax time, because a business bank account and a business card make the year-end sorting nearly automatic. It also lets you operate under a name that isn't yours, which for a directory site is usually the entire point.

What it doesn't buy you is a tax strategy. An LLC on its own doesn't lower what you owe. And I have to be honest to a fault here: I'm not an attorney and I'm not a tax professional. What's below is what I did, in Florida, for my situation. One conversation with a professional in your state is cheap compared to unwinding a structure you set up wrong.

One LLC, a DBA for each site

I run a holding company. Every site I've built — Jet & Swim, Sky & Swim, Sunstate Trades — operates as a DBA underneath it. One company, one annual filing, one bank relationship, and each site still gets to be its own brand with its own name on the invoice.

A DBA — "doing business as," also called a fictitious or assumed name — is simply registering that your company trades under a different name than its legal one. In Florida each one costs $50. Most states have an equivalent and most of them are cheap.

Whether a holding company is right for you depends on how many ideas you actually intend to build, and that reasoning is a longer conversation than a blog post — it's one of the decisions I walk through properly in the playbook. For now the useful part is knowing the option exists, because plenty of people form a second entire LLC for their second site when a $50 DBA would have done.

The newspaper rule nobody mentions

Here's the step that catches people, and the reason this article exists.

In a number of states, registering your fictitious name isn't the last step — you also have to publish it. Not on a website. In an actual newspaper, in the county where you do business, in the legal notices section nobody has read voluntarily since about 1974.

Florida is one of them: § 865.09 requires the notice to run at least once in a qualifying paper in the county of your principal place of business, and you certify that you've done it when you register. New York has the version everyone complains about — a newly formed LLC must publish for six consecutive weeks in two separate newspapers, and in some downstate counties that runs past a thousand dollars, comfortably more than the filing fee itself. California requires a fictitious business name statement to be published for four consecutive weeks. Several other states have their own flavour of the same rule.

Nobody tells you. The filing portal takes your money and confirms your registration, and the publication requirement lives in a statute you had no reason to read. Most people find out months later — from an accountant, a bank, or a letter that looks alarming.

So before you assume the filing fee was the whole cost: look up your own state, and if the answer is yes, call the county clerk and ask which papers qualify. Then call the paper's legal-notice desk. They'll quote you in about a minute, and the quotes vary far more than you'd expect for what is functionally the same paragraph of text. Get the affidavit of publication when it's done and keep it — that's the document a bank or a courtroom will eventually ask for, not the receipt.

If you're in Florida specifically, I've written the whole thing up: the Florida DBA publication requirement, explained, including what the official-looking mail you're about to start receiving actually is.

The EIN and the bank account

Once the LLC is approved, get an EIN — your Employer Identification Number — directly from the IRS website. It's free, it takes a few minutes, and you'll be asked for it constantly. Never pay a third party for one.

Then open a business bank account in the business name and start running every expense through it immediately. Domains, hosting, subscriptions, the AI assistant, all of it. This is the least glamorous advice in this article and the one you'll be most grateful for, because the alternative is reconstructing a year of mixed personal and business spending from memory in April.

It doesn't end at setup

Forming the company is the one-time part. Keeping it is annual.

Most states want some version of a yearly report or franchise fee to keep your entity in good standing, and the amounts and deadlines vary wildly. In Florida it's the annual report — roughly $135, due May 1, and the late fee is $400 with no exceptions and no appeals. It's the single most avoidable expense in small business ownership, and people miss it every year, usually because nothing reminded them.

If you're Florida-based, here's the full walkthrough, including how to file it yourself in about five minutes.

What all of this costs

Directionally, for a Florida setup: $160 to form the LLC, $50 per DBA, $25–150 to publish the notice, free for the EIN, and about $135 a year thereafter. Call it $400 or so to be properly set up, plus the annual.

That's the legal slice only. The full picture — domain, tools, hosting, the monthly stack, and the cost that never shows up on an invoice — is itemised in what it actually costs to build a directory website.

Common questions

Do I need an LLC to run an affiliate site?

No. Affiliate networks will pay a sole proprietor using your Social Security number as your tax ID. Plenty of people run profitable sites that way for years. The LLC is about liability separation and clean books, not about permission to earn.

Can I just use my own name instead of registering a business name?

You can, and if you trade under your exact legal name you generally don't need a DBA at all. The moment you call the site anything else — which for a directory is essentially always — that's a fictitious name, and that's when registration and, in some states, publication apply.

Do I have to publish my DBA in a newspaper?

It depends entirely on your state. Florida, New York and California all require publication in some form; many states require none at all. Check your own state's statute or ask your county clerk, and don't assume based on what a friend in another state told you.

What if I already registered and skipped the publication step?

Run the notice now. Late is dramatically better than never — it closes the gap you certified about and gives you the affidavit if anyone asks later. If the missed step is already tangled up in a real dispute, that's an attorney conversation rather than a blog-post fix.

Do I need a lawyer for any of this?

For a routine single-member LLC and a DBA, honestly no — it's administrative paperwork and the state's own portal walks you through it. Pay for an hour of real advice when there are genuine wrinkles: partners, trademark questions, multi-state operations, or anything where someone else has a claim on the name.