No matter what course of study, no matter what semester, becoming self-employed is always a great opportunity to finally put the theoretical foundations of your studies into practice. Being self-employed alongside your studies brings with it many advantages, because you are your own boss - but of course there are also many difficulties. With these tips, we'll show you how to skillfully avoid mistakes when starting your own business.
1. Student health insurance if you are self-employed
There are a few things to consider so that you can stay insured cheaply if you become self-employed, as many students still have family insurance. You can stay that way with your own business as long as you are under 25 and your main job is studying. This means that you are not allowed to work more than 20 hours a week and earn no more than €450 per month (with the exception of semester breaks). If this does not apply to you, you cannot stay on family insurance and you will now have to switch to student health insurance in order to set up your business. You can find more detailed information about student insurance and insurance comparisons
here.
2. Create a business plan
Creating a business plan is one of the first steps to becoming self-employed and even the most important. Because you not only create the business plan for yourself so that you have an overview of your project, your goals and your finances, but it also serves as an accountability for future business partners, banks, investors and the employment agency.
But what does a business plan actually contain?
On the one hand, it contains the complete planning of your business, from the first idea to marketing. This helps you keep an overview and bring structure to your work. On the other hand, the business plan includes the SWOT analysis, i.e. an analysis of the market situation with its opportunities and risks. At the same time, it also gives you an overview of your finances and a future outlook on profits, sales and losses. Overall, you create a detailed business card that should convince investors, banks or business partners of your project.
This means that a well-structured and complete business plan is the cornerstone for the success of your business.
3. Financing self-employment as a student
Before you really get started, you should think about financing to make your business idea a reality. You will probably need outside capital - but don't panic, there are various ways to get start-up help. For example, there are many government programs, such as the
Federal Employment Agency. This agency supports you in starting a business and helps you with the start-up grant. But the university's own support is even better for students. Every university is happy to have students who are confident in their goals and provides advice centers and funding. Ask around at your university!
4. Taxes for the self-employed
Unfortunately, you can't avoid this topic and that's why we're going to help you with a little crash course. Which and how many taxes you have to pay depends on your income. The tax exemption for income tax was 9,400 euros in 2020. There is no sales tax if you register as a small business. You can do this as long as you earn less than 22,000 euros gross in the first business year and less than 50,000 euros in the subsequent year.
5. Business registration - freelance or commercial?
Whether you have to pay trade taxes depends on whether you work freelance or commercially. As long as your employment is teaching, educational, artistic or literary, you count as a freelancer and do not have to pay trade taxes and do not need a trade license. In other cases, i.e. as a business owner, you have to apply for a business license and pay trade taxes.
6. Acquire soft skills
The be-all and end-all of working independently is networking. To do this successfully, you need well-trained soft skills. Good soft skills open the doors to important business partnerships and help you successfully market your business to customers. Particularly important are:
- Presentation skills
- (digital/defensive) rhetoric
- Persuasion skills
- Emotional intelligence
- Psychological knowledge
- empathy
- self-consciousness
You can acquire these skills through experience, such as an internship or a job, or you can take specific courses to develop these skills. The online courses from
udemy for personal development are particularly recommended. There you can improve your soft skills flexibly, successfully and, thanks to the Allmaxx discount, even totally cheaply. Good soft skills enable you to create important business partnerships and help you successfully market your business to customers.
7. Create an online presence - host a domain
Creating your own website is no longer an expert topic these days. However, there are many things to consider when building an online presence. Our Allmaxx favorite OHVcloud offers you support with domain names, SSL certificates, databases, content management modules, email accounts, unlimited traffic and much more. This is about your data security, data protection and of course also about transparency and price stability, so that nothing can go wrong. Because as simple as it sounds, there are a lot of things you have to pay attention to if you want to
register and host your own domain .
A step-by-step guide to becoming self-employed.
