Want to start a company-Need some solid advice

There are a number of things we need to know first.
Also, have you considered using freelancer.com to get more jobs?
Have you considered partnering up with another guy and give him projects before you create your own company?
Also I want to congratulate. You are so young and you are thinking to create your own company. The world needs more kids like you

Initial investment depends on way to many things to sum up on a forum post, including any additional office equipment that may make your life easier.

You can do most of it on the cheap if you stick to using Paypal and use their invoicing as well as getting a website up that includes a portfolio. You really don't need much more than that when you're starting out to be honest. As you grow, you can add a CRM into the mix that is synced up with your landing pages for optin's and automation. As well as other tools, such as Basecamp or something similar for project management and the list can go on and on...

My best suggestion is get an LLC in Nevada aND start blogging about youright passion

I just want to say congratulations and keep up the good work! You can register as a business, incorporate yourself and even patient your business name. Start the branding process... All of this you can do for under 2 grand!

You can also just go to someplace like elance and provide your service. The nice thing about sites like fiverr and elance is your traffic is already 90% complete. The other side is you can create your own website and market your services that way. Build an email list!!! At the same time learn about delegating some of you work and you can use the same sites.

Again, keep up the good work

You don't need any investment at all to do it, well just simple stuff that you probably already have, not big deal.

I mean a website and hosting, that's all you need but to go by yourself you need a decent amount of clients already, you can charge them for maintenance (not sure if you're doing it) or maybe they want to add or change things after a few months and you can work with them since they trust you and like your talent.

I recommend you to try freelance sites like Freelancer or Upwork, you can find tons of new projects to work with and lots of new clients (long term) but also new contacts, networking is always important for a business.

The only thing you need to have success there, it's patient, good portfolio and catchy speech, if you have talent it will be super easy for you, otherwise you will need to invest some more time.

Start being social with the best networks for your niche, for example Behance and Dribble where you can share your works and have a fan base.

I would recommend you to start your own email list, you can offer a free wordpress in exchange of their emails, not provide just crap, provide a high quality wordpress site/theme for free because your email list will be one of the most important aspects inside your business.

To work by yourself you will need a lot of traffic or a good amounts of clients already in your portfolio, if you can do it just go for it! if not just create an account on Freelancer and Upwork and keep doing what you know best, in the end you will be able to move from there to your own business where you don't need a 3rd party to find clients, they will be finding you instead from your website, social media or other strategy you're doing.

Also If you have good knowledge about wordpress and you can create themes, I highly recommend you to check Themeforest, start selling themes there because you can be doing a lot of money, top authors already made over 1 million just by selling themes, they are not just selling themes there they have their own business where people can ask for a custom wordpress theme.

It's quite common there, because some clients don't want to have a theme that other people can have, if they like your work it's probably that they will ask you for a custom theme and that's a direct client.

The best choice to drive traffic it's offering freebies on Behance and Dribble, there're tons of blogs related to freebies that will post your stuff and they've decent traffic, free exposure just by giving free value.

If you want to "make it BIG", the first thing to understand the top development companies aren't really development companies -- they're creative companies. And there's a huge difference between the two. The business that you're talking about is a company that hacks together Wordpress websites. But what a creative company does -- especially the "big" ones -- is conceive and implement digital campaigns. When you hire one of these companies, you not only get a few developers to build you a website, you get a whole team to conceive of and implement a successful campaign. People like designers, a project manager and a creative director. And I'd add that only part of these goals might be related to a website. Social media, email, digital advertising and even more traditional media such as TV and print advertising can come into this process.

And it should be no surprise that the best creative agencies have top-tier talent -- not a bunch of second (or third) rate coders that you find on Freelancer. My background is in web development, DevOps and IT management, so I know good code. And having hired a couple of jobs from oDesk and Freelancer, I can tell you that there's a reason most of the rates are so low on those sites. I've also seen what most designers on those sites come up with and again, it's not work that screams top-tier creative agency, which is exactly why they're doing gigs on Freelancer in the first place.

The last thing I'll mention about most top-tier creative companies is that they are almost always founded by people who have worked in other top-tier creative companies. A couple of friends will leave one company to start another, often taking a few of their clients with them. Which makes sense: a creative agency is business-to-business focused, not business-to-consumer focused, which means that having a pre-established network of clients and former clients is crucial.

My point is not that you have to create a company that does the things mentioned above. But if you really want to be "big", that's the bar you're going to have to meet. On the other hand, you can scale down your expectations and still be relatively successful (though I still think outsourcing work on Freelancer is a really bad model for this sort of company.)

One thing you have going for you is your age. Instead of creating a low-tier web development shop now, you could some time working at an existing creative agency, getting paid to work on exciting projects for important clients, gaining valuable experience, knowledge of what it takes to run a successful company and building up your network. Even if you spent the next 10 years working for someone else, you'd only be 29 when you started your own company. Something to consider anyway.

A last point is that I think few people on the WF really have any experience with these sorts of companies. If you really want to find out what it takes to build and run a company like that, why not contact a few? Most of these agencies are pretty small and if you were to do a little research, I bet you could find email addresses for some of these companies founders. Why not send a few of them an email introducing yourself and asking if they'd be willing to chat with you for 15 minutes on the phone? Clearly not all of them would be willing to chat, but I think you'd be surprised at how many would be glad to give you a bit of their time if you pitch yourself right. And who knows? Maybe they have positions open too!

Good luck!

I like Kay King's post. Technically you already have a company, you're offering your services to the market and making money. This is referred to as a sole proprietorship, a type of business. If you want to take the next step, I would look at using a site like Legal Zoom to formally and legally form a business entity to operate through. You don't even need to change your current strategy (which is apparently working). An LLC will allow you to open a bank account in the name of your business, and open the doors of credit in the name of your business. All of which will be a requirement for expanding your business in the way you intend.

Hi,

I am in the same position as like you though am a markers. I guess you should take one more year and build up your won team. Then when you have 10-20 people in your team you should go for company. Thanks

Get yourself an excellent reputation on Fiverr start offering more upscale extras. Get your services on every single Free Lance website out there.

UPDATE: Got 2 Big clients in the last 2 days. I've agreed $450 each for both websites (Woocommerce stores). Plus two new orders from returning clients ( Around $500) .All this is so overwhelming. Thanks everyone.

To make a web development company, are you considering to opening up a new website or a new office?

so ur fine with the 20% fiverr fee and now want to pay 50-60% fee to your goverment? + taxes + papers etc
If u wanna upscale just hire some va's