I have registered three developer accounts on the App Store (two for companies and one as an individual). Disclaimer: This was some time ago though.
If you have already registered a developer account, you will have already decided on whether it is for an individual or a company, in which case, your tax/banking need to follow that.
If you want to register a new dev account for a company, you should give yourself a few weeks since you will need to do some back-and-forth paper work with Apple. It's not that complicated but it takes time. Plus you will need to actually do the incorporation stuff for your government.
The following are things that I wish I had done from the start. If you go the company route, I would recommend that you consult a lawyer to get all of the incorporation paper work done correctly, and consult an accountant to learn about your financial reporting responsibilities. It will give you peace-of-mind down the road. Also, be on-top of your accounting. Again, for peace-of-mind down the road. It's easy to put off.
One more tip. Don't rely on iAd alone. Do backfill to something. Admob for example.
Also, have a realistic expectation for a purely ad-supported app. They do work, but require significant activity. E.g., let's say you get $1.50 per 1000 ad impressions (cpm) on 60s ad rotations. How many total user minutes per day do you expect? You can use this to get a very rough estimate.
Thanks, this is great stuff! I have a developer account registered as an individual. Does that mean that I can still charge/add ads, as long as I provide my own personal banking and tax information?
Also, yeah, I have no illusions about making a ton of money from this app. It's mostly just something I started putting together while I was learning iOS, and then kept polishing once I was comfortable with iOS because I liked the idea. If I can't get the money stuff squared away I'll probably put it up for free anyway; I just figured that if I'm gonna release it to the world I might as well see if I can get some beer money for doing so.
I should also mention from experience with a niche app which has a few thousand users, I ended up making $1.50 in revenue over the course of a year.
I released an update this December, and am now charging $1.99 and doing thousands of percent better, and I haven't put any effort into promoting the app yet.
If you have already registered a developer account, you will have already decided on whether it is for an individual or a company, in which case, your tax/banking need to follow that.
If you want to register a new dev account for a company, you should give yourself a few weeks since you will need to do some back-and-forth paper work with Apple. It's not that complicated but it takes time. Plus you will need to actually do the incorporation stuff for your government.
The following are things that I wish I had done from the start. If you go the company route, I would recommend that you consult a lawyer to get all of the incorporation paper work done correctly, and consult an accountant to learn about your financial reporting responsibilities. It will give you peace-of-mind down the road. Also, be on-top of your accounting. Again, for peace-of-mind down the road. It's easy to put off.
One more tip. Don't rely on iAd alone. Do backfill to something. Admob for example.
Also, have a realistic expectation for a purely ad-supported app. They do work, but require significant activity. E.g., let's say you get $1.50 per 1000 ad impressions (cpm) on 60s ad rotations. How many total user minutes per day do you expect? You can use this to get a very rough estimate.
Best of luck to you!