There is a lot of talk online about Delaware being the best state for incorporation. This is true if you are seeking outside financing, and most angels/VC's want to see a Delaware C Corp prior to investing. However, if you are going to raise investment, you need to have a lawyer anyway. So at the point you take investment, your lawyer can handle doing an incorporation in Delaware. No one should be filing for C-corporation status by themselves, with no background in the legal requirements.
In the meantime, if you are a startup who wants to put out a product for public use, or need to bring aboard paying customers of any kind, you should probably have an LLC. These are relatively cheap to create (and dissolve) and you can generally find law firms who will do pro bono work for startups in filing the appropriate paperwork (I have found several). Even LLCs require operating agreements and other paperwork before they are considered true legal entities. Any decent law firm does this all the time, and has the appropriate documents on file. Doing this yourself is again asking for trouble. For example, if you do business on behalf of your LLC as the "CEO", "President", or "General Manager", and have not specified that title in an operating agreement, you may be at risk of having the veil pierced (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil), because you are transacting business on behalf of the company in a role that does not legally exist.
In most states, if you have an owner run LLC, your official title is "Member". However, most people don't want to represent their company as "Member", as this sounds weird, and is not a commonly used term. So in practice, you call yourself something else, like General Manager. If your operating agreement says that you can run the company under the title of "General Manager", or anything else you want to call yourself, then you are totally cool. If not, then you will be in trouble if a customer ever takes you to court.