Thread

I’ve been doing freelance work for a company for the past few years and this year I want to start a website that will have my portfolio and basic info and a contact page.

I need the help of the EE community.  Please share your thought process of when you were in my shoes beginning your own business. 

What influenced you when were in your formative stages of your business?  Did the name strike you when you least expected it or did it take a few hours of being locked in your office, sitting at your desk weighing all the possible pros and cons?

Thanks to everyone for all of your help and ideas!

I can’t personally speak to any process since I’m just using my name, but I found this name generator the other day: http://www.company-name-generator.com/ could help get those creative juices flowing.

I found mine quite easily, it’s from a song name by my favourite band 😊

When looking for names I often write down a few words and phrases that describe the venture, then look through a thesaurus for each word - that can reveal some possibilities and variations of words you might not have thought of.

Hey jconner,

I can definitely relate to your quandary. I’ve operated under some different names along the way. Right now, I’m just using my own name. Whatever process you use, I would recommend trying to pick something you can live with. It’s hard to predict what you’ll be doing in 10 years, but it’s not fun changing a business name if you have registered it, or a domain name if you have been using it for a while. You could also establish a site using your own name while you are thinking out the company name, and eventually move things over to your company site, or maintain two sites.

As far as generating names, using a brainstorming stream of consciousness approach can work at least for initial ideas. Just start writing words down, and see what associations you come up with. And I mean words hopefully related to what you do in some way, or that appeal to you.

Good luck. Have fun with it.

>>What influenced you when were in your formative stages of your business?

I’m both a freelancer and own a corporation (they do very different things). My corporation for instance, I partially use industry jargon (so my audience can identify) and a word that I feel gives meaning.

>>Did the name strike you when you least expected it or did it take a few hours of being locked in your office, sitting at your desk weighing all the possible pros and cons?

I admit… it was the coffee. I was buzzing so hard I had lot of ideas. Scribble scribble scribble.

Had a bunch of ideas, but even ~ 9 years ago all the domains for them were taken.  At some point I realized I had a 6-letter domain that was catchy and allowed for some fun visuals to go with.

It also just happened to be my last name…;)

The train-ee name was just too fitting and available so there wasn’t even a plan b…

I just plugged away at my favorite domain registrar searching for open URLs. In a determined session of brainstorming. I’m sort of impatient, so it’s hard for me to wait for flashes of inspiration 😉

It was a huge factor for me to have the domain name available. (Though now I’ve seen more clever URLs for company names. e.g. company here in Denver called Ripcord has URL pullthecord.com).

The name came from my nickname and I added on to it for the company name. (Spelling was important too, the less confusing the better.)

Good luck!

http://domai.nr/

Also consider using industry keywords for SEO.  Lame example - Hippo Online/Design/Web/Whatever will be more search engine-effective than Blue Shoe/Funky Hippy, esp. considering the domain and other heavily-weighted factors where your name will appear.  We’re called Media Dog and the word Media’s helped get us more relevant traffic than Dog.

I dunno, I’ve always found my own name easy to remember and I’ve gone with that.

Thanks for your input everyone!  It was nice to hear people’s thought process.