Most likely than not, you choose between a sole proprietorship and a limited liability company. Which is a better option for programmers? Let’s help you pick the correct answer. 

What Is a Sole Proprietorship?

This form of private enterprise is a so-called disregarded or unregistered entity that requires no state filing. Once you start doing something for money and pay statutory charges and taxes, you become a sole proprietor. As the name suggests, you are the only enterprise owner. This business structure is widely favored by startuppers, freelancers, and those who work from home or online. At the same time, it’s a great match for newly formed small offline businesses too. 

Though an unregistered business structure and not a formal entity, a sole proprietorship still allows you to hire employees and make use of other services available to legal entities such as DBA filing or trademarking. 

Top Benefits of a Sole Proprietorship for Programmers

To help you understand if this form of the venture is good enough for your programming endeavors, here are the key advantages you will enjoy:

• No formalities to handle: Since a disregarded entity needs no filing, there is no serious paperwork to process and submit to state authorities. You might just need to register for a license to support your professional activity, with no other filing formalities to observe;
• You are the only one in control: You are the only enterprise owner, and you are in full control of your venture. You are the one to decide and do what you deem necessary, and you are the one to gain all profits; 
• Pass-through taxation: All business-related profits and losses should be reflected on your individual tax report, thus, saving you the need to file a corporate tax report and comply with any additional tax requirements;
• No annual state filings: While legal entities are to submit state reports on an annual basis to maintain their company info in the state registries up-to-date, disregarded entities don’t have to follow that rule and keep in mind yet another formal deadline.

Sole Proprietorship Tax Benefits and Options for Programmers

A taxation system is the biggest draw of this business form. On the one hand, you are considered self-employed and will have to pay a self-employment tax, which is not as low as you want it to be.

However, that pricy charge is more than justified by other tax benefits you’ll get. Thus, you’ll get an opportunity of reducing your taxable earnings by deducting certain enterprise expenses (for example, the use of your home or vehicle for business purposes). You’ll be also allowed to write off travel, entertainment, or marketing costs and get access to special retirement plans. 

Such taxation opportunities are welcoming for beginner programmers who seek to save on expenses and cut down the costs to the minimum. 

What Is an LLC?

Unlike a disregarded entity, an LLC is an incorporated form of business that calls for state filing. As a result, you’ll get a separate business entity with its own legal framework independent of the enterprise owners. Speaking of which, while a sole proprietorship belongs to a single owner, LLCs can be owned by a single person or multiple persons. 

To continue, the number of LLC co-owners is not limited which makes it a perfect structure for small and growing businesses alike. You might start your venture alone and engage more partners on the way. This way, you get some leeway as to how to expand your enterprise or bring in added capital when it’s necessary.
​​If you are interested in creating an LLC, we recommend reading the detailed guide “How to start an llc” from LLC.Services

Top Benefits of an LLC for Programmers

The bigger your venture becomes, the higher profit you get and the higher risks you’ll have to face. If you start your programming business as a freelancer and think about setting up an LLC when getting to a higher business level, this formal structure has more than one benefit to offer:

• Liability protection screen: LLCs exist as independent entities that are not legally associated with their owners. Hence, as an owner, you won’t be personally liable for any business debts, financial or property-related problems, and lawsuits. Likewise, your own funds and property won’t be used to settle company issues; 
• Pass-through taxation: With an LLC, you’ll still enjoy the pass-through taxation of a disregarded entity. By paying business taxes on your individual tax return, you won’t have to pay a corporate income tax and avoid double taxation;
• Better market credibility: Operating under an LLC umbrella, you’ll look more professional and trustworthy on the market and in the eyes of potential customers, which is an especially big plus for newcomers;  
• More financing opportunities: Banks, credit agencies, and other financial organizations are more eager to give funds to registered legal entities. The same is true for investors that consider legal entities more reliable than unincorporated entities. 

LLC Tax Benefits and Options for Programmers

As stated above, while getting a separate legal entity like a corporation, you can still reap the benefits of pass-through taxation and pay business taxes at your personal tax rates. Thus, you avoid your profit being taxed twice. 

At the same time, though, LLCs boast taxation flexibility and allow you to choose an optimal taxation scheme. You can elect an S-Corp tax status for your business. You’ll be exempt from a self-employment tax and will be able to optimize other taxes to match growing business needs and growing profits.

Why a Sole Proprietorship/LLC May Not Be the Best for You?

A sole proprietorship will leave it all to you. You’ll be the one to gain all profits and you’ll be the one to tackle all legal and enterprise-related problems too. And it’s not only about your personal involvement but also about your own assets that could be legally seized to offset your enterprise debts and liabilities. 

With an LLC, there will be more formalities to handle both at the formation and at post-formation stages. However, the liability shield and tax opportunities you’ll get are well worth the hassle. 

Consult With a Business Professional

Before you make a final decision on which enterprise structure is better for your programming business, we strongly recommend that you consult with an experienced advisor and a tax expert. They will explain all the legal and taxation nuances to you and help you choose the legal framework that will best work for your individual situation. 

Conclusion

All in all, both enterprise forms have their own pluses and minuses. However, until you start making a high profit and need some sort of side financing, a sole proprietorship will get your smaller venture covered. However, once your business appetite increases and your enterprise grows to a higher level of income and complexity, think about switching to an LLC.

The post Sole Proprietorship vs LLC: Which Is Better for Programmers? appeared first on AppGen 2022.

In this article we will dwell on the influence of mobile applications on business development, which will help to find the right answer to the above-mentioned question.

Application or Browser?

In recent years mobile devices generate more than half of all Internet traffic, and traditional computers continue to lose ground. Internet users use mobile devices more and more often to search for necessary information on the web, to shop, to communicate and to have fun. However, even mobile versions of websites cannot adequately compete with applications. According to experts, a browser for every 11 minutes of mobile device use accounts for just 1 minute, or 9% of the total time, whereas most of it is spent on applications. Therefore, when talking about business development on the Internet, now we can immediately imply the creation of a mobile application as the main tool, and the website goes to the second plan. A multifunctional application will also become an excellent assistant for company employees, as it can provide the necessary communication, help distribute and manage work processes, control task performance, coordinate and accelerate the work of the team.

Customer Retention

A website can attract new customers using numerous promotion tools in search engines and social networks, and in this regard, applications lose out to web resources. Using search, a user can go to your site and find out the information they need, order a product or service, which is much faster than searching for an app in the market and installing it. But when it comes to customer retention, apps definitely have no equal! To re-visit the site, the user will need to restart the browser, spend time searching for it in the search engine or in the “Bookmarks” menu, which will not be as convenient and not so fast. But in the case of the application, it is always “at hand” in the phone and it is enough just to click on the icon to get the required information. Moreover, the app can periodically let you know about itself with push notifications, make favorable offers for the user, inform about promotions and discounts on products of interest to him. User retention counts for weeks, and a competent marketing policy and strategy of the company, together with the proper quality of the app, allows for excellent results.

Business development

The main indicator of success of any business is the increase in profits, and a mobile app can help with this in two ways. On the one hand it will help to organize the company’s work and efficiently manage working processes. On the other hand, such a product will be appreciated by customers, who will be able to perform necessary actions, whether ordering a pizza or calling a cab, quickly and conveniently.

As an example, the travel industry, where more than half of potential travelers in past years found airline tickets through a mobile device and corresponding programs. If a company doesn’t have an app, it actually loses half of its potential customers. It’s not uncommon for companies to increase profits by 25 percent or more after launching a mobile app. Beauty salons and other companies providing services in the beauty segment, with their help increase their profits by 3-4 times, and large retail chains collect hundreds of thousands of loyal customers. And for small companies and startups, mobile applications bring tangible benefits, which entrepreneurs will immediately feel as an increase in business profitability.

The post Does my business need a mobile app appeared first on AppGen 2022.

It is not surprising that the overwhelming majority of customers choose one of these systems or order two native products simultaneously. But which platform is best for your business?

Target Audience Location

If you don’t yet know which platform to choose for developing a mobile app, the first thing to do is to analyze the markets of which countries or regions you plan to enter with the app. In Japan, North America, some Western European countries, including Great Britain, a large part of the population uses the products of Apple corporation. If you plan to focus your attention on these regions, it is worth thinking about developing an iOS application to reach a larger audience. But users in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa overwhelmingly use Android devices.

Monetization

Almost any application can be considered as an effective tool for making money. Therefore, before choosing a specific platform, you need to decide on the monetization option. In other words, what do you want to make money on: advertising, selling products, traffic, attracting customers for your business? Apple has positioned itself, since its inception, as a manufacturer of premium segment devices for affluent customers. This strategy has borne its fruit, since the users of Apple devices on the iOS platform according to the statistics have by 4-5 times more purchasing power than Android platform users. Moreover, the owners of Apple products much more often and willingly purchase applications, as well as order additional paid features in them.

App for online stores

Many stores go beyond just “offline” sales, offering their potential customers to choose a product and make a purchase on their website or download an app for ongoing purchases. If you plan to sell products in the app, it is worth considering that in this segment, users of iOS devices are also ahead of their Android opponents. The difference is about 6% in favor of the former, because they purchase more often from their mobile devices. These differences are not so significant, but they are there, so it is worth taking them into account when choosing a platform for your future application.

The cost of app development

Developing an app doesn’t come cheap, regardless of whether it will run on iOS or Android. So what to order an app on to get the desired result at an adequate cost?

As a rule, the work of specialists in iOS is paid higher, and placing the finished product in the AppStore is more difficult and more expensive. However, due to the fact that iOS is a highly specialized operating system and works only on a line of Apple devices, it is much easier for developers to conduct tests and check the compatibility of the application. This reduces development time, and therefore reduces the cost of specialist services.

Application development for Android has its own specifics due to the large number of different devices working on this platform. The developer should adapt the application to different variants of screens and technical characteristics, perform tests and assess the quality of the product on devices from different manufacturers. Therefore, it is possible to talk about a certain parity in the pricing policy of creating applications for these platforms. The price may slightly vary depending on which studio or company you turn to.

MVP or idea testing

Not all ideas that may seem brilliant and profitable at first actually end up meeting expectations. An entrepreneur often invests a lot of money into creating an application that nobody wants, and instead of profit, brings disappointment and losses. To minimize this risk, iOS or Android app development often starts with the creation of a Minimum Viable Product. This is a kind of working version of the application, which can be installed on the device, with the implementation of only the main functions. That is, MVP is a maximally stripped-down version of the application, which helps to test the idea in real conditions and understand if it is worth continuing the development and creating a full-fledged expensive product. If users are interested in the MVP-version and the market reacts well to its appearance, you can consider the idea successful and continue to work.

The post iOS or Android: which platform to choose for development appeared first on AppGen 2022.

When creating projects for these platforms developers use different programming languages, which have significant differences, because of which iOS specialists will not develop applications for Android, and vice versa. In this article we will analyze what iOS applications are made in, and what development tools are used by programmers to improve their work.

Before we get directly to the topic of development, we should talk about what kind of apps there are and why they are created. Applications can be divided into:

Native, which focus only on one specific Android or iOS platform. Such apps are quick to install, easy to work with and fully interact with the technical capabilities of the gadget without depending on an Internet connection. Developing a native app has a higher price tag and is considered a forward-thinking strategic move.

Cross-platform apps are created for multiple platforms at once. They use the JavaScript programming language and its frameworks, on which projects for different platforms can be implemented. Cross-platform development is suitable for non-customized projects and can be just as effective, but less costly in resources.

In addition to the technical characteristics, it is necessary to mention the type diversity. Applications can be divided into many groups, such as:

• Entertainment (games, image processing, audio and video formats).
• Assistants (information search, weather applications, etc.).
• Informational (news, events, etc.)
• Social networks
• Leisure (sports, hobbies, travel).
• E-commerce – mobile online stores (the ability to buy through apps).
• B2B applications in the structure (internal control systems and organization of processes within the company).

Each group has its own peculiarities and allows the full potential of business, entertainment or public projects.

For example, creating an app for a restaurant is one of the main components of the success of the entire restaurant business, whether it is a small coffee shop or a chain of fancy cafes. A mobile project will perform several important functions: attract the attention of new customers, increase sales, maintain the interest of the existing clientele, increase business profitability, effectively and easily manage one or a chain of restaurants.

The post What iOS apps are written on appeared first on AppGen 2022.