How to Start a Photography Business: Choosing a Business Name
How to Choose a Business Name?
When starting a photography business, one of the most important things to consider is your business name (though don’t get stuck on this for weeks; you do need to launch your business at some point). One easy name to choose is your own. For example, my first photography business was Charity Anne Photography. This name carried me through the first five years of my business before I rebranded to what my business is today: Beneath The Spruce.
When to Choose a Business Name Other Than Your Actual Name:
There are a few reasons to choose a business name that varies from your given name. A few are:
- Someone else is using that name already
- You simply don’t like your name
- You want to be able to scale your business easily in the future
How having a studio name makes it easier to scale:
Having a studio-style name (like Beneath The Spruce) can open up more opportunities to scale your photography business down the road. The main reason for this is that if your business is something like Charity Anne Photography, people will most likely assume that the person their working with is Charity. If you hope to work with associates, this won’t always be the case.
Associate Team Under One Studio Name
If you’re in the wedding or elopement world, there may come a time when your business needs an associate team to live up to its full potential. This is when it’s useful to have a brand name instead of using your own name. For example: Cassie, Sarah, Liz, and Susan could all work as photographers under the same Studio Name without anyone raising an eyebrow.
We’ll go over why you should or should not consider having an associate team in a later post.
Making Sure Your Business Name is Available:
The next most important thing to find is whether your desired name is available to use in a couple of different ways.
Check with the Secretary of State:
The first place you need to check is if your business name is available to use in your current state. To do this, you can go to your Secretary of State’s website and check whether or not there’s another business in your state that is running under your prospective name.
To find this website, look up: [your state] Secretary of State Business Search
Check Your Desired Domain Name:
Next, you’ll want to check whether your business name is available as a domain name. This is probably one of the most important places to determine whether or not you use a name or not because you don’t necessarily want to use a domain name with a .net, .photo, etc. These are less common than a simple .com or .co and often cost a little more per year to own.
My favorite site to purchase domain names is Bluehost, where you can also host your website for a lower price than with other website builders (we’ll go over this in a later post).
Check Social Media:
Finally, you’ll want to check whether or not your business name is available on Social Media. While you might not plan to use all the Social Media platforms at first, it’s good to claim your username across platforms. You might have to play around with variations of your business name, separating words with periods or dashes, but as long as it’s consistent across platforms, you’ll be fine.
What to Do Once You Choose a Business Name:
Once you choose a business name, jump on it! Claim those social media handles, buy your domain name, and even register with your Secretary of State. It’s better to spend a little money up front than to regret losing out on a name that you love.
Next, we’ll go over where to host your photography website.
