[erni]

Hello, everyone!

I was wondering if anyone here could help me with a business name. I plan to start my own Virtual Assistant business, and I cannot think of a name. I have been trying for over a week now and am stumped!

I plan to offer a wide variety of administrative support services. However, I anticipate making my niche in real estate (supporting Realtors and maybe other companies involved in the real estate transactions, like smaller mortgage companies, appraisers, etc.)

I am not sure if I want to include the word "virtual" in my company name. I want something that sounds strong and reliable, but will not preclude me from pursuing other clients that are not real estate related.

Any ideas? I would really, really appreciate any help, ideas, insight or inspiration!!!

Thank you in advance!

Erin

[mxer210]

essistant or eAssistant? Letters like e or i are good for online companies like yours. Maybe placing a prefix infront of some words like Intelli, or digi are also common now. I'll let you know if I come up with anything else.

[erni]

Thank you! I'll check on those - I think a lot of those are already taken, though. I really like your suggestion for "Intelli-" Let me see what I can pair that with. As far as "e" and "i", I wanted to stay away from those because they may become dated with time. I've been reading articles about business names and they say to stay away from things that may become dated. Or, as one article stated, you don't want to end up with the "bell-bottoms" of company names. LOL.

Thank you though!! Any help is appreciated... more than you'll ever know! I just need to get past this naming issue so I can proceed with other areas, like my website, marketing, forms, etc.

~Erin

[mxer210]

Cool. Intelli is a good one because it gives customers the feeling that they are making a good choice.

About i an e, I think they will always be popular because of apple.
iPod
iTunes
iMac
iLife, etc.

Apple creates their own style and following them isn't a bad idea.

[erni]

That is a good point. I did not take them into consideration.

~Erin

[erni]

Does anyone else have any ideas? I would really, really appreciate it! A lot of names I come up with are already taken. So, I need something really original.

Thanks,
Erin

[mxer210]

Yeah I had to really dig deep to find my name. I feel your pain. I went through atleast 70 different domain names until I found a hot spot of free names, like my current one.

How I came up with my current name was...
1) think of keywords related to my store
- I wanted the name to show that I was strictly audio, so I tried like audioatrium.com, audiohaven, audiovilla.com, pureaudio.com, audioshopper.com, etc. Everythig I tried was taken, so I inserted the number 'five' into pureaudio.com (which I wanted bad butw as taken) and got purefiveaudio.com

If you list some keywords related to your business, we could help you alot more with coming up with names.

[erni]

Maybe a better idea of what I will be doing may help.

General Administrative - correspondence & word processing, forms creation, phone calls, customer service related calls/emails, data entry, database creaton/management, reminder services, PowerPoint presentations, desktop publishing (business cards, letterhead, brochures, etc), internet research, etc.

Realtor Support - newsletters, flyers, postcards, web commercials/virtual tours, email campaigns, drip campaigns, etc.

Some of the words that come to mind are -
versatile
off-site support/services
companion/partner
proficient/pro-active/efficient
specialist
alternative/option/choice/solution
reliable/dependable/resourceful

I want the name to appeal to my clients and make them feel that they can trust me to handle the administrative tasks so they have the time to do what they do best - grow their business. Sort of like one less worry.

Anyway, I hope this helps!

Thanks,
Erin

[mxer210]

So like how could you describe your service in one or two words?

live assistance
help center
secretary squad
etc.

You mightwant to get creative and try some branding. example, kinkos. Even though the founder named it kinkos because of his kinky hair that was his knickname, it has no relation to the service they provide. Virgin, sony, etc.

it has its advantages adn disadvantages.

It's really hard to find a good available domain name, so you'll have to get realy creative/unique.

A good idea would be to use the .biz extension. I've found that it's gaining popularity because most of the .com's are taken by companies and domain farms who mass purchase them.

[malachi69]

As a rule of thumb for making business names I have always been taught two things form my professors. You should make your business name catchy, preferably two words that start with the same letter.

For example:
Concord Copyright(copyrighting company)
Puppy Paws(dog food company)
Krispy Kremes(donut company)

As for online companies I guess since it is online you could always do use the infamous eblah. Everything online is always "e", something.