Hello

I am making steps to becoming a web developer.

I also have my own project, a website which for the sake of anonymity is called widgets.com. Also, for the sake of anonymity my name is John Smith.

I plan to monetize widgets.com creating a source of advertising revenue. Widgets.com is what I plan to spend most of my time working on.

However, I also have skills as a web developer and whilst working on widgets.com may offer my services to others.

If I register as self employed and give my trading as name as widgets, it will be completely unrelated to my web development services.

I have not yet opened a business account and as a sole trader understand I do not necessarily need one. I may simply open another current account and have all my business transactions go through there.

My question is: if I were to open a business account in a different name to my own, eg widgets, could I accept payments made to widgets and also to my actual name, John Smith for my web development services?

Also, if I opened up a business account in the name John Smith, could I change this at a later date to widgets if required?

E.g. on my first tax return form I would initially be John Smith trading as John Smith, and then change it to John Smith trading as widgets on future forms if widgets.com became my sole focus.