Posts Tagged ‘naming your business’

PICKING A NAME FOR YOUR NEW BUSINESS

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

If your business is a work at home online Internet business, or staffs several hundred in a downtown skyscraper offline, you are going to be able to increase your low cost effective marketing, promotion and company image online to succeed.

To not use online promotion and exposure, in this day and age, is almost a guarantee that your business will lose sales and important recognition and emotional credits from your customers for not having a hand on the pulse of your target market for profits.

You definitely need to come up with a good keyword type business name and a good keyword type domain name so people will know exactly what you do when they are searching in any source for your business. This is an online as well as an offline necessity.

If you show people how to work at and profit from online auctions you would not have much success with, Kathy loves flowers, as your business name, right? Something to the effect of, Online Auction Trainer School would tell people what you do when they seek help to learn about online auctions.

Take the ego out of your online and offline business names. Owner ego sells nothing. Please learn this important point first. No one wants your ego. Everyone wants your useful services. This is a mountain of difference in profit or loss.

Here are some things to avoid in naming your work at home online business prior to setting up your Internet or offline site. Please learn them well.

One of the first mistakes many new work at home online business owners, and unbelievably, experienced owners and business advisers make is to ask for too much input on Internet site and business name, from way too many people. They tend to ask family and friends what their new business name should be and what domain name it should have. The problem with this is that not all will really understand the business idea, needs or jargon involved in that business.

Friends, family and many business advisers do not know squat about naming a business, per above. Ask them how many businesses they have named that succeeded that they named and you will understand exactly what I mean real fast.

The second reason to avoid this egregious consultative process is that you can only choose one name. This means that the more people you ask the more people you are going to disappoint and even insult even though they do not know what they are doing anyway.

It is far better to begin the online and other aspects of your work at home Internet business by asking the opinion and business help of those few people who have been chosen to have an important management part of your venture. You might pull these folks together and have a brainstorming session where you all feed off the ideas of each other.

That way, when the end results in a name, each will feel like they have been a part of giving you that idea. They need to know that the name must tell what the business is quickly and as much as possible in very few words.

Another entrepreneurial business naming error is to attach an adjective together with a noun to come up with one word former with a middle of the word capital letter. Getting too complicated here. If, for example, your work at home Internet or offline business were to offer online sale of luggage at discount prices you think it correct to call it something like EconoPack. This is bad for two reasons.

No one can look at that name and know what it is you offer. Is it like a UPS store that offers shipping services? Luggage for Less would be a much clearer name. Do you see the very important difference to customers and leads?

If you think of the recent work at home Internet and offline business start ups that have grown online to become household names, you will see that they all took zingy, snappy, lively names that differentiated themselves from others and were not likely to be copied. They did not take hard to understand names that could be forgotten or worse yet, confused with other companies.

Yahoo is one example that you might be looking for. It could have been World Wide Search Engine instead. This probably would have been better for the first name identification done! Google is another. This name is appropriate.

Monster is a great example of a name that is not only memorable but suggestive of high volume, strength, durability and vast reach. Monster could have been Online Job Resource. What a blah name that would have been. Customers would of found it easier to find though when they are looking for a job. See the difference?

All these started out as work at home Internet business projects by unknown entrepreneurs. Their choice of business and Web site names played a large part in their ability to brand themselves and thus to succeed. Some would of started and grown faster with more appropriate names though.

Speaking of names, the name Retailers Forum Magazine has been in the industry for almost thirty years, known as the number one magazine for wholesale merchandise. Join us monthly online and in print!

USING FICTICIOUS NAMES FOR YOUR BUSINESS AND ITS ADVANTAGES.

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

A fictitious business name is a legal term that refers to the name under which a business operates and presents itself to the public.

It is also known as “Do Business As,” trade styles, or assumed business names. A fictitious business name is distinct from the legally registered business name.

Companies with fictitious names give no indication of the business that is legally responsible for its operations.

In the US, fictitious business names are often used in conjunction with franchises. The franchisee operates under a legal name but operates its business under the franchise’s brand name.

An example would be a Mc Donald’s franchise with a legal name of “ABC Foods.”

Operating under a fictitious business name gives the company some benefits such as:

• The fictitious business name allows the use of a typical business name without the need for an LLC, corporation or partnership establishment.

• The company can use the fictitious name in its business phone listing, sales advertisements and contracts. It also allows a business to open a bank account and collect payments under the business name. It gives the business legal sanction to represent itself under a fictitious name. The filing process also notifies other companies that the business have used a particular business name for its operations.

• The business may also opt to conduct a single business concern under more than one name without setting up a separate business. This would result in a lot more savings compared to filing and maintaining multiple businesses at a time.

Most US states require businesses that use a fictitious business name for their operations to file a fictitious business name statement for consumer protection purposes.

This also reduces the likelihood that two local businesses would be operating under the same fictitious name.

One thing to remember though is that a fictitious business name statement is not a substitute for getting a trademark.

A fictitious business name statement carries no legal weight where trademarks are necessary.

Filing for a fictitious business name is very easy.

Although each state may have different requirements, generally a fictitious business name filings can be made by businesses or by individuals.

Typically, the following are applicable to a fictitious business name statement:

• Fictitious business name filings contain the name of the applicant, date of filing, the fictitious business name and address for the business.

• A name check to make sure that there is only one business with that name. The applicant must search through a database to make sure that the name has not been used.

• The form has to be filed with a fee ranging from $10 – $50.

• In California, filing for a fictitious business name also requires that a notice of the fictitious name

• Majority of banks also require for a fictitious business name to be registered before they allow transactions.

Filing for a fictitious business name statement is very simple and is an inexpensive process that allows a company to get a host of benefits for minimal costs.

For more help, consult a business attorney for assistance. This article brought to you by the leading magazine for wholesale merchandise, Retailers Forum Magazine. Contact our author at http://www.expertlosnagelesattorney.com