How to check your business name availability

Business name availability is going to frustrate you at some point, if it’s not bitten already. You’re starting your own business and you’ve reached the challenging topic of naming your new baby!

I’m going to quickly show you the key things you need to consider and help you reduce the pain.

This is more complex that you might think as there are multiple factors – so read on!

So what do you need to consider:

The name itself

To be honest naming a business is really hard because you’re hopefully going to be stuck with it for a long time. It’s also a very personal issue for many. So you need to find something that communicates to your customers and that you personally like.I’ll go into more detail about this another time.

It’s strange how some people make really awful and ultimately funny choices.  A few miles from our offices in Berkeley is a great example. There’s a hair salon called “Style 2000″. This might have been a wonderful idea in 1990. But in 2010, it sounds dated, just like the whole frontage. I put up a photo to give you an idea. Angelique reckons that in 20 years it will be retro and back in fashion! So be careful!

Trademarks

You may want to trademark your name. So you’ll need to know if anyone else own the trademark. The best service here is the search facility at the US Trademark office.

You’re now on your way to understanding your business name availability. When you search for trademarks don’t be put off by someone having the same name. Trademarks are filed by different business areas. So for example a music publisher can be called Apple and so can a computer maker.

Your URL

Yup, your online address may be a problem. This area causes the most frustration as companies have acquired literally millions of URL’s and just sit on them waiting for you to come along and pay them for ownership.

In 2004 Angelique and I launched a website for women that now has over 6.1 million users. Finding the URL took many late nights of frustration as great idea after great idea was shot down by people sitting on them doing nothing and then asking for exorbitant fees. There’s a reason that companies like Go Daddy can afford Superbowl ads. We finally found a blogger who owned a URL we liked and did a deal with him! To see if your name is available you can use Go Daddy or Register.com to perform easy searches that will let you know.

So business name availability has several components after you’ve decided that it works for your customers and you like it.  You’ll need to think about a trademark and finally the hardest of all, a URL.