Full disclosure: I write for State LLC Service. We help creators and small-business owners form privacy-friendly LLCs in all 50 states. This article is educational content, not legal advice.
A creator we will call Mara (composite, not a single real person) ran a 180,000-subscriber cooking channel under a stage name for three years. She filmed in a rented studio kitchen. She used a P.O. box for fan mail. She thought she was careful.
One Thursday, a fan noticed a reflection in a stainless-steel mixing bowl. From that reflection, he identified the neighborhood. From the neighborhood, he cross-referenced her stage name against the state's LLC filing database (she had filed under her real name in her home state, because that is what the formation site she used told her to do). Within forty-eight hours, her home address was posted on a forum. Within seventy-two, someone was at her door.
The part that stays with me about stories like Mara's is not the stalker. Stalkers are, unfortunately, an occupational hazard for anyone whose face or voice is their brand. The part that stays with me is that the public-record piece of the puzzle was preventable. The Secretary of State filing was the bridge that got the stalker from a fan to a front door, and it did not have to be.
This article is for creators who have not yet built that bridge, or who have built it and want to take it down. YouTubers at any subscriber count, Twitch streamers at Affiliate or Partner, OnlyFans creators, TikTokers, Substack writers under pen names, podcasters, anyone whose stage name is the asset and whose legal name is the risk.
Most formation guides are written for consultants, e-commerce sellers, and small service businesses. The operating model they assume is simple: a real person with a real name runs a real company that serves real clients at a real address. Privacy is a nice-to-have. Tax optimization is the main event.
Creator businesses invert that. For a creator:
That means a creator's LLC has to be privacy-first, not tax-first. And that is the opposite of how almost every mass-market formation service is configured.
If you walk into a generic online formation service and say "I am a YouTuber, I want an LLC," they will almost always do three things that work against you.
First, they will default to your home state. Home-state formation is the right answer for most small businesses. It is the wrong answer for creators whose home state requires member disclosure on the public filing. In California, New York, Massachusetts, and several others, forming at home puts the creator's legal name, and sometimes their residence address, directly into a database that anyone with a browser can search.
Second, they will list the creator as the registered agent by default, often using the creator's home address. A registered agent address is always public. If the creator's home address is on that line, doxing becomes a thirty-second Google search.
Third, they will sell tax add-ons (S-corp elections, payroll setup, bookkeeping) before they mention privacy tooling. Those add-ons are legitimate products, but they solve a problem the creator does not have yet. The creator has a stalker-risk problem. A payroll system does not fix stalker risk.
The right structure for creators reverses the priority. Privacy-friendly state first. Commercial registered agent first. Stage-name DBA first. Tax optimization comes later, after the creator has enough revenue history to know which election actually saves money.
There are exactly three states we would put in front of a creator today. Each one is built for a different profile.
New Mexico is the quiet winner of the privacy-LLC race. Formation is a one-time $50 fee. There is no annual report, ever. Members are not disclosed on the Articles of Organization. The registered agent is public, the members are not. You can confirm this directly through the New Mexico Secretary of State Business Services portal, which publishes the filing forms and the statutory fee schedule.
The governing statute is the New Mexico Limited Liability Company Act at NMSA 1978 Chapter 53 Article 19. The formation document (Articles of Organization) requires the LLC name, the registered agent, the period of duration, and the management structure. It does not require member names or member addresses. That is the privacy hook.
For a creator whose top priority is "my legal name off the public record, at the lowest possible cost," New Mexico is, in our view, the right first move. Over a ten-year operating horizon, New Mexico's total state cost is $50. Wyoming's is around $640. That gap matters when you are a creator funding your own operation.
Wyoming is the creator option for anyone who has moved past early-stage and now owns something worth protecting. Brand deal revenue, IP (scripts, designs, trademarks), a production LLC with contractors, a merchandise side-business. Wyoming's charging-order statute at W.S. 17-29-503 is designed to be the exclusive remedy for creditors of a member's interest, which means a judgment against the creator personally does not automatically let the creditor reach the LLC's assets or force a distribution. That statutory shield is one of the deeper ones in the country.
Wyoming's formation fee is $100 and the annual report runs $60 minimum. Members are not required on the public filing. A Wyoming LLC gives the same day-one public-record privacy as New Mexico, with more case-law depth on the back-end protection side. The cost is the annual report and a slightly higher sticker price.
Delaware is on this list for one profile only: the creator whose business is going to take outside capital, convert to a C-corp, and eventually either sell or IPO. If that is the trajectory, Delaware is where investors expect you to live. The Delaware Court of Chancery, the separation of corporate and legal matters, and the market default for venture documents all point there.
Delaware is not, however, a privacy-first state for creators who are running the business themselves. The public filing profile is different from New Mexico or Wyoming, and the formality cost is higher. We mention Delaware for completeness. For most creators, it is not the answer.
Here is the piece most creators get wrong even after they form the LLC correctly. The stage name is not the LLC name. The stage name is a DBA (doing business as) owned by the LLC.
Why does this matter. Two reasons.
One, the LLC name on the public filing should be something generic and non-identifying. "Aster Holdings LLC." "Northwind Media LLC." "Brightside Studio LLC." Something that, if a stalker searches it, does not connect to the stage name that is trending on social media. If the LLC name is literally the stage name, you lose half the privacy benefit on day one.
Two, the stage name still needs to be on payment documents, brand deal contracts, and tax forms. That is what the DBA does. It creates a legal link between "Aster Holdings LLC" (the entity) and "StageName" (the brand the entity operates under). Platforms, sponsors, and payment processors can cut checks to the stage name, and the LLC can legally receive them.
DBA filing lives at either the state or the county level, depending on jurisdiction. In New Mexico, a DBA is typically filed at the county clerk's office where the LLC does business. In Wyoming, it is filed with the Secretary of State as a Trade Name. The filing fee is small (usually $25 to $100) and the process is straightforward.
If you remember one thing from this article, remember this. The registered agent address is public. Forever. On every state LLC website. Indexed by Google.
If a creator lists their home as the registered agent address, the creator has just published their home address in the exact place a motivated researcher will look first. It does not matter how private the member information is on the formation document. The registered agent line alone is enough to unravel the whole thing.
Which means the registered agent must be a commercial agent with a commercial address. Not a P.O. box (most states reject P.O. boxes for this role). Not a UPS Store address (some states accept, some do not, and platforms sometimes flag it). A real commercial registered agent with a physical office in the state of formation.
That is the single most important line item in a creator's privacy stack. Skip it and the rest of the structure does not matter.
Once the LLC and the registered agent are in place, many creators add a mail-forwarding service. The service receives business mail at the commercial address, scans it, and forwards the relevant items to the creator.
Important honesty check. Mail forwarding, as we offer it through our infrastructure, is designed for legitimate business mail. Notices from the state, correspondence from the IRS, letters from banks and payment processors, contract documents, and similar business correspondence. It is not a package-receipt service. It is not a substitute for a real shipping address for merchandise returns, signed-for deliveries, or platform verification that requires a physical residence. Those use cases need a separate solution.
Within those limits, mail forwarding does a specific useful thing. It keeps the creator's home address off the business correspondence trail. Combined with the commercial registered agent and the privacy-friendly state of formation, it creates a business footprint that points to a professional address, not a home.
Qualified language, please. Privacy LLC planning is a layer, not a wall.
When a creator opens a business bank account for the LLC, the bank is required under the 2018 Customer Due Diligence (CDD) rule to collect beneficial ownership information on anyone who owns 25 percent or more of the entity, plus one person who exercises significant control. For most creator LLCs, that is the creator.
This is not a public disclosure. The bank holds that record internally. It is not searchable on the state's LLC website. It is not posted anywhere. Bank records are confidential to the bank and to regulators.
The practical point: the creator is going to show the bank their legal ID, their Social Security number, and their home address. That is unavoidable and appropriate. What the privacy LLC structure protects is the public-facing footprint, not the private banking relationship. A good thing, because a creator trying to avoid bank identification would be running a much more complicated and legally perilous structure than anything we would recommend.
If this structure sounds right for your situation, here is the practical sequence.
Franklin wrote that those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. He was writing about colonial taxing authority in 1755, not about content creators. The structural parallel still lands. Every disclosure regime arrives with a reasonable-sounding purpose. Each one becomes the baseline the next one builds on.
For a creator, the practical version of that principle is simple. Disclose what the Constitution and statute require, to whom they require, and keep everything else out of public record. An anonymous-friendly LLC in New Mexico or Wyoming is one honest tool for doing exactly that. Not a promise, not a shield against every threat, not a substitute for broader digital hygiene. A layer. A good one, in our view.
If your stage name is your brand, and your home address is the thing you cannot afford to have on a forum, this is the structure worth knowing about before you need it.
Disclaimer. This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, accounting, or financial advice. We provide formation and registered agent services, not legal or accounting services. Privacy outcomes depend on state statute, your filing choices, and court decisions. Consult a qualified attorney, CPA, or tax professional for advice specific to your situation.
We form anonymous LLCs in New Mexico and Wyoming for content creators. Filed as organizer so your legal name stays off the public Secretary of State record. We act as your commercial registered agent, handle the stage-name DBA at the state or county layer, and add mail forwarding for business mail where you want the home address off the inbound surface too.
New Mexico or Wyoming LLC formation: starting at $229 plus state filing fee
Registered Agent service: $99 per year
Privacy tier add-on: available at checkout
Business mail forwarding: available as an add-on at checkout
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