Picking an Etsy or Ebay Store Name

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It’s a tough decision picking a name for your store, or at least it was for me. I knew I wanted to sell children’s jewelry (Bling for the little people!) but kept changing my products so the name couldn’t be too specific. Plus what if a few years from now I wanted to sell something completely different so the name had to be fun, kind of generic, hopefully memorable, fancy and boutique-ish. So when I would think of a name I would Google it and see if anyone else had that name or anything close to it that people would confuse the two. I went through SOOOOO many. One of my very favourite names that I thought of was Elephant Shoe, which when most of us were little were our code way of saying “I love you” but it was funnier. I was so excited and thought that I was brilliant for thinking of it… there’s no way anyone’s taken THAT name yet! So I looked it up. Yep. Taken. When I looked at the elephantshoe.ca website, I realized that I had seen it before and loved the name then and thought they were brilliant for thinking of it. Damn.

So since the company name had to reflect me, I started to think of my favourite things. I really don’t have too many favourite things. How sad is that? My favourite singer/band of all time is Prince (I was a child of the 80’s). My favourite colour is red. I love the fall. The colours, the weather, going for walks. But I love spring too… it has a certain smell in the air, buds are on the trees, robin’s start to come out (my grandma always said that that was her first sign of spring). Let’s face it. All of my favourite things are BORING! But wait! My favourite flower is a Snapdragon! If nothing else, the name is cool but sounds kind of harsh… snap… dragon… need something to soften it… design house just kinda came out because I design my products and adding the “house” makes the whole thing sounds boutique-ish feeling I was going for.d

But some people say that it’s not good to have a name that starts with a letter that’s towards the end of the alphabet. I think that’s true for a phone book but on the internet, it may not be so bad. Because I think the more hits your site gets, don’t you go up in the search engine ranking? Not sure… I’ve got to research that one. I’ve had a lot of compliments on my name but is it memorable? Then they also say not to add an “S” to the end of your name because when you tell people your company name, they don’t hear the “S” most of the time.

What I’m battling with right now is should I invest money into my own website and sell from there? Should I stick with eBay and Etsy to sell through? I kinda want to have my own site just to say that I have one because I think people have a certain perception of selling on eBay. Most people that I’ve talked to that say they’re looking for a specific thing but can’t find it, I tell them to look on eBay and so many have the same answer… “I don’t want a USED one!”. USED?? So many people have stores through eBay that pay their mortgages and feed their family with the NEW products they sell! One friend of mine is 32 years old. She is a MAJOR shopaholic (and has the money to do so). She’s also a MAJOR tanner. She buys the bottle of tanning gunk at the salon and pays $100 for it (that alone made me throw up a little in my mouth). I got the brand name and size of the bottle from her and found the exact same thing (brand new & unopened) for $30. I’ve converted one person… only a few more to go. Then there’s Etsy. All hand made items straight from the creative brilliant minds all over the world. Find items from $1 to thousands of dollars. The photography is brilliant, the fashion is unlike anything you’ll find anywhere and you may even find your wedding dress! Yes, this one IS from Etsy.

Seller:

JOAN SHUM BRIDES

Move over Vera Wang!

So far in my experience, it’s not so much your name as the tags you use and all of the key words you use in your descriptions that matter most. If a new customer is looking for a nursing necklace, that’s what they’re going to search for and if someone has found me and likes my product, they bookmark me for next time.

Next is the logo, which I must admit I don’t know too much about. Trying to think of a logo for Snapdragon Design House has been a tricky thing. It’s always at the back of my mind but I’ve never been happy with anything that I’ve come up with. Oddly enough one of my customers (a very sweet lady named Pam) told me she had an idea for a logo and drew one up for me. The drawing she showed me was absolutely perfect. I didn’t have to get her to change a single thing. No, I’m not telling you what it is yet. You’ll have to wait for the unveiling! The struggle for me now is what colours to use! Ugh! Again, Pam sent me a ton of colour combinations to pick from but I just can’t decide. I think it’ll be like a wedding dress… when you find the right one, you just know.

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Tags: bridal, colors, colours, company, design, ebay, etsy, gowns, handmade, house, logo, name, snapdragon