Naming question

[Camerajunkie]

I'm finding that I'm in the need of business cards. I'm working on picking some out, etc and yet I realize I have one big problem. What the hell do I call myself? I'm a Jennifer with a very common last name. That means if I'm Googled I will have a lot of competition with being found. I've done Sunshine Photography as a previous idea but I'm reaching the point where I'm not sure I'll open my own studio or work for a company (I really like architecture photography.) I'd like to find SOMETHING that would work well and still be a "name." If that makes any sense. So how'd y'all decide what to go with, if you went with something other than your first and last name.

[umijin]

That's an interesting question. In my case, my name isn't so common, and I have academic publications. I find myself via google quite easily, and my business card is purely for an academic identity. But I've wondered if I wanted to do consulting or sell photos with nature articles if I would use a trademark name alone or in association with my name.

Do you have some sort of trademark or other way to claim "Sunshine Photography"? Would the combination with your name work well on a business card?

I'll also be interested in what folks here that sell their work do.

You might be interested in reading advice Scott Bourne gives on his Going Pro site. I mostly read his photo tips on his photofocus site, but he's been publishing his Going Pro site since March of 2010.

[K1W1]

Google these days is a paid service for businesses. It doesn't matter what name you select if a person searches on a generic term say Photography and your location the paid ads will be at the top and you will be relegated to page two or three of the results.
Our company spends tens of thousands of dollars a month to be at or near the top of listings in our industry group, it is worthwhile for the returns but it's something a small operator can't hope to match.
You are probably better to concentrate on doing advertising and and get business from locations other than Google and if you do that the name may not be so important.

[Camerajunkie]

Thanks guys. And the info about Google is very interesting.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Google these days is a paid service for businesses. It doesn't matter what name you select if a person searches on a generic term say Photography and your location the paid ads will be at the top and you will be relegated to page two or three of the results.

On the other hand reading a book from the local library on "search engine optimisation" can also do wonders for a smaller business. Google Sentimental Photos and it comes up as result one. I do not currently pay Google a cent. When you 1st start up I'd suggest at least using $50 of Google Adwords for a little while to ensure your website gets found by Google though.

Establish a site with some content,
ensure there are no broken links
use clear english
ensure subject titles and link titles reflect the key idea of the site
Don't try and trick Google, just put in the work

My business was scanning old film, I could have called myself slide scanning or some such but after a weeks thinking decided people are concerned about memories they care about, not an old slide, hence my name. Run your best few choices past other people, neighbour, friends etc to check for reasonableness.

[K1W1]

Google Sentimental Photos and it comes up as result one.

That's fine if somebody knows the name of your business and all they are doing is using Google as a de facto phone book. What happens if a prospective client Googles "Photograph" and "scanning" and "Adelaide"? (I'll give you a hint. I stopped looking after 5 pages of results)

[TwelveFour]

I've had a similar issue with a name for a photography blog and website. I've tried several over many years, but was always running into issues with people (friends, family) not remembering it. I have an uncommon last name, but hard to spell and I've never been fond of having my name be the site when its the photos that I feel should be the focus. I ended up choosing a name that uses my first name and is short and easy to remember, naturebyeric.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Understood K1W1, I should have clarified my post.

I went for a high google rank on the business name accepting I'd never get a high rank on the services. For that you need to be a big business with deep pockets as you've already intimated.

Jennifer was at the time referring to finding the business name, not her product though.

[tizeye]

That is something I am still struggling with. Ideally, keep it simple and as short as possible, and always want the .com, not one of the other - particurally if the .com is owned by a local competitor as was the case when combining city+product. Sometimes you get lucky, and I still can't belive I got OrlandoNewHomeSpecialist a year ago for my alternate/second real estate site. As a photographer, it was much more difficult as the city+product was taken as were most combinations combining my name with some form of photography. Ultimately, I settled on ImagesForRealEstate and used city and other key words in the metatags.

My preference in using a name is first name only, as it better conects with people as you are selling a service. Plus, my last name is a color which would suggest dreary photography, and, if combined with the first name, people invariably invert two letters in my last name and make them rhyme. My problem now is how I keep that theme for a specialize area of photography, and develop a general photography site. And yes, ImagesBy_____ is already taken.

While I have slacked off recently and ranking placement has decreased, I found a way to really pump up the hits for free - and occasionally get some business in the process, but not rely on it as primary. Reason for the slackoff...Photobucket shut down my account without warning as practice violated TOS (that you never read) - as it does with Flickr and other similar sites. Now have a hidden page on my websites to do the hosting of brochures which are saved as .jpg which I post on Craigslist. It makes a nice full size ad and the brochure has "click here for more information" button. In reality, it doesn't matter where they click on that picture as it will be redirected back to the web page I specified -the botton is only to suggest clicking. When setting up the ad, it only takes 2 sentences of HTML with target telling Craigslist where to pull the .jpg from, and href where to direct back to. Google and others suddenly see a lot of hits on my website. To avoid being tagged as a spammer, I use different brochures with good time spacing (ie weekly) for photography. With Real Estate, it doesn't matter as can do 3 or 4 a day as they are different houses - plus they get buried quickly in that section.

[Camerajunkie]

Well, I got a gmail account now with JenniferMyLastNamephotography as the handle part. That was promising. And most of the sites I've found have been JenMyLastNamephotography or something close to that. Unfortunately there is already a FB site with that name but in all honesty, I wouldn't put JACK on FB when it comes to images so that doesn't matter so much.

So that's where I'm at now, lol. Guess I'll just accept that I won't be a huge Google presence until I'm famous.