How do I become a business?

TheGreatOrangePeel writes: "So, back at the end of January, I took a friend up on his offer to grab some of his unused bandwidth and started up my very first real website. It's been slow going with a false start or two and one incident where I had the joy of being hacked. All that is said and done with; I've plugged my security hole and things have been running smoothly (on my part, at least) for a few months now. Smoothly enough, in fact, I'm about to turn my first, albeit small, profit and my growth continues to exceed my minimum goals. As long as this trend continues, the idea of registering as a business next tax season becomes more and more enticing. But this drops a lot of questions out in front of me. What kind of business is appropriate for a single owner/operator? An LLC sounds like a likely choice to offer myself legal protection, but I'm really not certain what else might be more appropriate for me. There also are a lot of companies and websites out there ready to set me up as business complete with logos, trademarks and copyrights and while, to my own surprise, I feel comfortable with one of them, It wouldn't surprise me if they're some kind of scam and I'm wondering if I wouldn't do better to flip to someplace in the yellow pages. I guess my overall questions are these: At what point does it make the most sense to become a registered business, what kind of business should I be, what kind of legal service should I seek to become a business and handle any future trademarks and copyrights, how much should I be ready to spend on such services, and what am I overlooking?"