The business side of freelance photography.

What is your location?

Well for one thing, you need to make sure that you can run a business from your apartment. Many residential leases specifically prohibit commercial activity of the sort which involves hosting clients/customers on the premises. It isn't just the landlord being a dick either: residential properties are almost always on property which has been zoned to exclude most commercial activity which goes beyond the home office. Contact your local chamber of commerce and/or small business development corporation. Just about every small-to-medium-sized town has one, even if you've never heard of it, and they'll be more than happy to talk to you about the logistical steps involved in launching a small business. You may even be eligible for grants or other sorts of support. Seriously, these places are absolute gold mines for the budding entrepreneur. In any case, the sorts of questions you're dealing with here--business licenses, permits, business associations, taxes, etc.--can only be answered by local experts, so I'm not sure you're going to get much more than this here.

Okay, well thanks for what you've suggested, and I'm in Atlanta, GA.

http://www.georgia.gov/00/channel_title/0,2094,4802_4971,00.html, per their state gov website. Call http://www.scoreatlanta.org/ for free small business counseling and workshops.

Make sure that you get liability insurance if you have visitors to you apartment for this purpose. You can increase your protection from liability for injuries, etc. by incorporating, maybe as an LLC. Get a lawyer to advise you. You could otherwise end up liable for some child's fall or injury from art products and your entire net worth would be fair game for the suing parents. This is a worst case scenario, but you cannot ignore the possibility entirely. Good luck.

Make sure that you get liability insurance This is now required by law in GA for daycare centers; I don't know if this applies to you. Rather than running it out of your apartment, you might want to see about partnering with local community centers or schools to use their facilities and possibly expertise, or perhaps start small by helping out with their summer programs. As an example of the sort of thing I am talking about, the http://www.augustajcc.org/near my house has a number of summer camp programs as well as renting out their facility for things such as http://www.kindermusik.com/ classes. Even though we are not Jewish we have particpated in a number of these. If there is a similar organization near you you might want to talk to them about your idea.

IANYA but...Just some high level tips for the photography side, like any business, you want to keep really good records. All cash coming in and all expenditures going out. Save checks, receipts, bank statements, credit card statements etc. A seperate bank account might be good here as well as starting an LLC. Might not be a bad idea to talk to an accountant. If you dont set up a seperate company everything will go on Schedule C on your 1040.