Great information, everyone, thanks! -Matt
On Jun 25, 2010, at 6:42 AM, Tony Ingraldi <[email protected]> wrote: > On Jun 24, 2010, at 11:31 PM, Matt James wrote: > > > 1) Does anyone have experience going from a personal Apple Developer account > > to a business one? Ideally, I'd like to pay the $99 and get started right > > away testing my app on my iPad and worry about upgrading to a business > > account later. Is it possible to upgrade my account at any time or do I > > need to create another one for my business and throw down another $99 at > > that point? > > You can convert a personal account to a business account without paying > another $99. You'll need to provide some business documents to prove your > company's identity to Apple in order to have your account migrated. You'll > briefly lose access to the developer portal during the migration and you'll > have to review and agree to one or more license agreements on behalf of your > company. > > You'll need to contact Apple via the form at > https://developer.apple.com/contact/ to begin the process of migration. > > There's more information available at > https://developer.apple.com/support/iphone/enrollment.html. > > > 2) Other than the obvious benefits of separation between business and > > personal finances, is there a clear advantage to selling your app on the App > > Store as a business rather than via a personal account? > > I don't know of any advantage in terms of sales on the App Store. In the > United States, there are advantages in general to starting a business as > opposed to working as a hobby (mostly due to the insanely complex tax code .) > > > I'm leaning toward > > starting an LLC in my state, but didn't know if I could dip my toe in the > > App Store water before investing even more money into my app which I'm not > > sure will even sell well enough to be sustainable. > > I personally operate as a sole-proprietorship which has minimal legal > start-up costs (the cost of a "Doing Business As" filing and a business > license in your locality.) I've thought about converting to an LLC, but I'm > not convinced that there are any advantages in that structure for what I'm > doing and the complexity of the tax situation generally increases as you move > up the business scale from sole-proprietorship. > > When I entered into the sales agreement with Apple, I needed an account with > a bank that had an international SWIFT code. This was required to transfer > payments to your account from around the world. I'm not sure if the SWIFT > code is still necessary. > -- > Tony Ingraldi > http://www.majestysoftware.com/ > Old-fashioned values and high-tech know-how > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
