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One of the first things you will do when signing up for etsy, and one of the most important first choices you will make, is your etsy name. Why? Because you're stuck with whatever you choose. If you ever want to change your name, you have to contact etsy support to shut down your shop, re-sign up with a new email, and re-list everything. You lose all of your favorites, feedback, and sold items. And any name recognition you built up will be gone. So, pick a good one and stick with it.

Some tips:

1. Do a search for other seller names in the search box that's at the top of most etsy pages. Try similar combinations to what you like to make sure there's nothing too close. For example, there's currently over 250 etsy names with the word "craft" in them. With so many people signing up on etsy each day, you'll never be completely unique. But you don't want buyers to confuse you with someone else, either. You may also want to see if your name is available as a .com website by looking somewhere like www.whois.com, just in case you ever want to have a website separate from etsy but want to keep the same name.
   
2. Don't box yourself in to a particular topic unnecessarily. If you will ever only sell jewelry, then a jewelry name might be fine. But if you're like most crafters, you may try cards, or sewing, or something totally different at some point once you figure out what sells best in your shop.
   
3. Use upper case if you have more than one word in your title. MyLittleFabricShop is much easier to read than mylittlefabricshop. Super-long names in general are also hard to read, even with capitalization.
   
4. Try to find something memorable. I'm not exactly sure how to do this, but probably avoid things like MegansShop. Kinda boring. I'm not a fan of people's names in general, even with the word "design" or "jewels" after it, but it works for some.
   
5. Numbers are fine for your yahoo email account, but don't work for your esty store. At least not at the end of your name. Would you buy from Leah47728? (I guess only if she had really cool stuff.)
   
6. Avoid words that are hard to spell. Plenty of people won't be able to spell patchouli or tantalizing if they're trying to find your shop. Also watch out for words that can be misheard if said out loud. There's a new restaurant in my neighborhood called "Pause." Every time someone mentions it, I think they are saying Paws. And I don't really want to eat anywhere called "Paws." Say your name out loud to make sure you won't end up repeating it over and over when someone's asks what your etsy store is called.

Don't stress about it too much. I didn't follow several of these tips when starting out, but I've learned from what I chose (no one can remember how to spell piddix, for example). There's plenty of other things more important, but putting a little thought into your name now will save you some hastles down the road.

piddix :: images for your art