I asked for blog post ideas on Twitter and this was one that intrigued me. As far as I can remember, I’ve been involved in naming five businesses. So, without further fanfare, here are my stream of consciousness thoughts as to how I arrived at each of these names.
Professional Printing Services – This was my first business, which was launched over 20 years ago, and it operated to some extent or another until about two years ago. Basically, I was young and needed to name the business and took the easy way out. I provided color and information technology consulting to printing companies. At least the name was somewhat descriptive. I’ll argue to this day that for consulting businesses a descriptive name is beneficial. The name leaves little doubt what you do.
ColorMetrix – By the time my partner and I named this one in 1995 (or was it 1996?), I had the fancy-schmancy M.B.A. after my name and was pretty sure I could name a company better than anyone. I actually think we did pretty well. We spent the better part of a weekend working on the name. Since our business was going to be color verification software, the first part of the name was easy. We wanted the second half to be Metrics but the internet age was upon us and ColorMetrics was taken. We decided it was important enough to have our name and URL match so we got creative. In hindsight, I’m glad we did. I still like the name to this day.
JimRaffel.com – Okay, my parents get credit for this one. All I get credit for is locking up the domain name and turning it into a business that generates a few extra bucks every year through affiliate sales and speaking gigs. It’s turned into the place where my personal brand is maintained. So, of the five company names, I think it’s the most important. From here, I launch almost everything else I am involved in. It’s important to own your personal brand.
Quiet Internet Pages (operated as Qip.com until sold) – My friends who owned the Qip.com domain approached me early last year about helping them sell the domain. We did some work and figured out why the site had tens of thousands of visits a month. I won’t lie. The name we picked was designed to capitalize on that traffic and push us above someone else in the search rankings. It worked, and they paid handsomely for the domain last December. We picked the name to make money and there is nothing wrong with that.
InformationProductsSelling.com – Based upon the success with Qip.com, I decided to try my hand at this whole niche site marketing business I’ve been reading about so much. With very little work, I have a site ranking above the page one fold on Google searches for “Information Products Selling.” Will I be able to capitalize on that? For sure. I just need to set aside some time to put a bit more work into the project. So, again I picked the business name to make money and there is still nothing wrong with that.
Back over to you: How did you pick the name for your business?
I picked the name of my business translating into Peak in Spanish. But overall I see your approach and I might take a more descriptive way in any future business ventures.
Having to explain what your Company name is defeats the purpose of getting it recognized. 🙂
Color Metrix explains itself.
Raul,
There’s no right or wrong way – I’m just saying descriptive names have served me well. I can think of a few (like Google) that work as well with little description of what they do.
Jim