How this site makes money

The short version

Right now, nothing. The site earns no money at all. There is no advertising, there are no referral commissions, and nothing on any page is paid for. That will change — the plan is described below, before it happens rather than after — but as of September 20, 2026 this page exists to tell you that the answer is currently zero.

What we will never do

These are commitments, not aspirations, and they are testable against the site:

• No paid placement in the numbers. No company can pay to appear in a calculator, a comparison table, a dataset or a ranking. The fee tables are built from state revenue departments, and a partner has no more influence over them than you do.
• No hiding the free option. Where there is a way to do something yourself for nothing, that comes first on the page, above anything we are paid for. On the LLC pages that means we tell you to file directly with the state, because for most people that is the right answer and it is cheaper.
• No ranking by commission. Partners are chosen on merit and the reasoning is published. Where a better-paying option was passed over, we say so.
• No sponsored articles, no guest posts, no link selling. Nobody can buy a mention or a link here at any price.
• No selling your data, because we do not collect any. See the privacy policy — the calculators run entirely in your browser and the numbers you type never reach us.

What the plan is

Two things, and both will be described on this page the day they start rather than discovered by you afterwards.

Advertising. The intention is to run Google AdSense. When that happens this page will say so and the privacy policy will be updated in the same change.

Referral commissions. Some links to services — a registered agent, for example — may become referral links, where we are paid if you sign up. Where that happens it will be labelled on the page itself, underneath a plain statement of how to do the same thing yourself for free.

Why you are being told all this

Partly because the FTC requires it: a publisher paid to recommend something has to say so, clearly, next to the recommendation. The labels on the pages do that job and this page is the full version behind them.

Mostly, though, because of what this site is competing against. Search for what an LLC costs and you will get page after page of "best formation service" lists, all written by people paid per signup, none of which will mention that you can file the form yourself in twenty minutes for the state fee alone. The only durable advantage available here is being the page that tells you that. Publishing the funding arrangement in full, including the money turned down, is how that claim stays checkable rather than being something we assert about ourselves.

The same instinct produced how the numbers are produced, which covers the other half: where the figures come from, how they are checked, and what happens when one turns out to be wrong.

If you think something here is compromised

Tell us and it gets fixed in public. hello@thenumberdesk.com, or the contact page. A correction that costs us a commission is still a correction.