Name No-No’s

Whether your business is a work at home Internet business or
staffs several hundred in a downtown skyscraper you’re going
to be online to succeed, and you’re going to have to come up
with a good business name and a good domain name. Here are
some things to avoid in naming your work at home online
business prior to setting up your Internet site.

The first mistake many new work at home online business
owners make is to ask for too much input on Internet site
and business name, from 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 or
the jargon involved in that business. The second reason to
avoid this 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 perhaps even
insult.

It is far better to kick off 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 integral management part of your venture. You
might pull these folks together and have a brainstorming
session which you all feed off each other’s ideas. That way
when the end results in a name each will feel like they’ve
been a part of giving you that idea.

Another entrepreneurial business naming error is to tack and
adjective together with a noun to come up with one word
former with a middle of the word capital letter. If, for
instance, your work at home Internet business were to offer
online sale of luggage at discount prices you might be
tempted to call it something like EconoPack. It’s 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? The other disadvantage is that the domain name may
turn out to be econopack.com or .net. Which, without a
capital P is even fussier. Luggage for Less would be a much
clearer name.

If you think of the new (in the last five years) work at
home Internet business start ups that have grown online to
become household names, you’ll see that they all took zingy,
snappy, lively names that differentiated themselves from
others and weren’t likely to be copied. They didn’t take
boring names that could be forgotten or worse yet, confused
with other companies. Yahoo is one example. It could have
been World Wide Search Engine instead. Google is another.
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. All
these started out as work at home Internet business projects
by unknown online entrepreneurs. Their choice of business
and Web site names paid a large part in their ability to
brand themselves and thus to succeed.