Amazon Seller Name Ideas and Guidelines

Your seller name is one of the most important choices you’ll have to make as an Amazon business. Not only should the name be appealing and memorable to your target buyers, but it needs to be a name you can actually use without being sued, and that you can own as a registered trademark. 

The consequences of choosing the wrong name can be serious. Another Amazon seller could kick you off of the platform for trademark infringement, or a large company could send you a cease-and-desist letter because your name supposedly resembles theirs. 

Both of these situations happen to my trademark clients frequently and they almost always have to change their seller name and file a new trademark application to get Amazon Brand Registry access. Even if these extreme scenarios are avoided, there are plenty of other consequences for picking a bad Amazon seller name.

But it’s hard to come up with a good brand name. The name-choosing process can be very discouraging. It always seems like every good brand name is taken. And every good domain name. 

A Random String of Characters as Your Amazon Seller Name?

After finding out that your first, second, third, and fourth choice of name are all taken, it can be tempting to go the route commonly taken by Amazon sellers based in China: picking a random string of letters that can’t even be pronounced out loud. After all, Amazon customers won’t really care what your name is, as long as you have good reviews. 

But picking a random string of letters as your name is a very short-sighted choice for an Amazon seller that will cause regret later. First, it might still be confusingly similar to somebody’s trademark registration. If you apply for a trademark for XYDFIEIH and somebody already owns a similar trademark like ZIDFIEH for related products, your trademark application will likely be rejected because it’s the “phonetic equivalent” of an existing trademark. 

Effects of Trademark Rejection for Amazon Sellers

If your trademark application is rejected, the growth and success of your business will be severely limited. You won’t be able to stop other people from opening online stores with the same name, which will ruin your SEO (search engine optimization). You won’t be able to kick listing hijackers and counterfeiters off of Amazon. Even worse, somebody might kick you off of Amazon or Instagram because your name is too similar to theirs. 

Those are just a few of the potential consequences of failing to properly register your brand name as a trademark. Among other problems, you may also experience issues with U.S. Customs for your product shipments, or with the factories manufacturing your goods. If your legitimacy comes into question at any point in your supply chain, or if somebody else tries to copy you, a trademark registration is often the only way to fix things.

And what about Amazon seller aggregators or roll-up firms like Thrasio? Most of my Amazon clients dream of having their Amazon accounts acquired for seven figures by an aggregator. While Amazon aggregators may not strictly require that you have a registered trademark, your brand’s value is certainly reduced if you’re vulnerable to copycats, counterfeiters, and lawsuits from competitors. Owning a registered trademark is an important box for any entrepreneur to check off if they want their business to be acquired, including an Amazon seller.

Amazon Seller Names Must Be Memorable and Distinguishable

But what if you succeed at reaching registration for your unpronounceable string of letters? Are you in the clear then? No. If your name is unpronounceable, then it’s almost certainly unmemorable and indistinguishable to consumers. 

While the quality and quantity of a seller’s reviews is probably the main way most customers choose products on Amazon, it’s certainly not the only way. As somebody who buys on Amazon and represents hundreds of Amazon sellers, I constantly recommend my favorite sellers and products to my friends in casual conversation. 

But there’s no way I can recommend a seller with a name like XYDFIEIH to somebody at my local coffeeshop. Even if I could pronounce it out loud, there’s no way I’d remember how to spell it. And if I want to recommend the brand by email, I probably won’t feel like taking the extra step of scrolling through my past orders to find the name that I can’t remember.

Avoid Words That Are Common in Your Industry; Be Distinguishable.

It’s not just unpronounceable names that I can’t remember, either. I also can’t remember Amazon seller names that are too similar to the names of their competitors. If your seller name contains certain words that are very common in your industry, I’m going to have trouble distinguishing it from your competitors’ names. Even worse, I might mix you up with somebody else and accidentally recommend one of your rivals!

Before settling on your seller name, make sure it doesn’t have a word that will make you blend in too much. I know many business owners think they want to blend in. It’s very tempting to pick a non-distinguishable, “legitimate” seeming brand name in order to make customers trust you faster. But it doesn’t really make them trust you faster; it just makes you look like you have something to hide. 

A good product doesn’t need the camouflage of a forgettable name. 

Why are you trying to hide yourself among your competitors if you offer a good product and good customer service? An Amazon seller name should stand out to customers so they can keep coming back to it. 

One example that always comes to mind is the dietary supplements industry. It feels like every Amazon client of mine in the vitamin industry wants to include the word “well,” “vita,” or “life” in their brand name. If they could, they would all call their brand “VitaLife” or “LiveWell.”

Your trademark may be able to reach registration for some combination of words like that if nobody owns it yet. But what’s the point? Nobody is going to remember whether your brand is called “VitaLife” or “WellVita” or “LiveWell.”

Make a Connection with Your Amazon Customers. Avoid Being Commoditized.

An Amazon seller with a non-memorable brand name is losing dozens if not hundreds of valuable leads each month by eliminating word-of-mouth clients. Your happy customers can’t recommend your brand if they can’t remember you. This means that choosing gibberish or very common wording for your brand name will likely cost you tens of thousands of dollars, if you even manage to register it as a trademark successfully.

Amazon wants sellers to be forgettable because then it’s easier for Amazon to commoditize sellers. When sellers are commoditized, customers have no loyalty to them. Amazon simply wants customers to pick the first listing that Amazon recommends, which often means either a paid ad or a product manufactured by Amazon itself.

If you as a seller don’t want to have to run paid ads forever to keep getting sales, and you don’t want Amazon Basics to outcompete you, then you need to be memorable to your buyers so they see you as more than just one of hundreds of sellers. 

Additionally, if you ever want your customers to go off-platform and buy your products directly through your website (you should want this), then you need to be memorable to them. Customers can’t be loyal to a brand they can’t remember. Right now you may not want to host your own online store, especially when your shipping is fulfilled by Amazon. But when you’re more successful and you have some goodwill built with your repeat customers, you’ll want to monetize that goodwill, which means making some of your sales off of Amazon’s platform.

If your name is forgettable, then Amazon wins. You’ll have to spend more money on Amazon’s ads and you’ll always have to pay Amazon’s platform fees for every sale.

Amazon Seller Names Should Be “Googleable”

As I mentioned above, your name should be designed with the idea that customers might want to find your website outside of Amazon, or recommend you to their friends. If a customer can search on Google for your name plus your products and you’re the first result to show up, that’s good. For example, if you sell power tools and your name is “HandySpark,” then you’re doing reasonably well if your website is the first Google result for the term “HandySpark power tools.” 

However, if a customer can search for your name by itself and you’re the first result to show up, that’s much better. If customers can search for “HandySpark” and you’re the first result to show up, then you’ve made it as easy as possible for people to buy directly from you or recommend you to their friends without getting distracted or frustrated first.

That’s why you should factor in the Googlability of your choice when you pick an Amazon seller name, even though your initial customers will be finding you through Amazon, not Google. Eventually you’ll be glad you chose a name that customers can find on their own, without looking through their past orders on Amazon every time. 

Obviously when you first choose your name, it probably won’t be the number 1 result on Google, unless you’re buying an existing brand name that comes with a domain name. But you can estimate how Googleable your brand name is by seeing what comes up when you Google it. 

Are there already established companies that come up when you search for the proposed name? Then it will probably be hard, maybe impossible, to become the first Google result for your name. 

Perhaps Google will try to autocorrect your name to a more common word. This is actually a good thing because it’s a strong indicator that you will be the only company with that brand name. Eventually Google will stop autocorrecting people’s queries when it sees that they’re trying to reach your website.

When I chose the name Communer, almost all of the top results on Google were dictionary definitions of the word “communer.” It’s a real English word, but it’s almost never used in modern parlance, which makes it ideal for a brand name. The only other top result was a self-published fantasy novel containing the word in its name with 14 reviews on GoodReads.

As I write this, we are currently the fifth Google result for the word “Communer” in the U.S. after being in business for about 16 months. The four results above us are all dictionary entries, so nobody is going to confuse them for my business. Five months ago we were more like #8, and eight months ago we weren’t on the first page at all, so at some point we’ll climb to #1.

I know I’ll have the #1 spot on Google at some point because I picked a name that nobody else, in any industry, was using. When you choose a brand name that’s truly unique, you make things much easier for yourself in the long run by not having to worry about how your customers will find you when they Google your name.

Plus you don’t have to worry about stepping on anybody’s toes if you expand into other industries that you might not have envisioned when you first started your company. Apple is a good example of a company whose name became a serious problem when they expanded beyond computers into other industries like music.

What Are Some Good Amazon Seller Name Ideas?

So far I’ve only told you what types of names to avoid as an Amazon seller, but I haven’t given you any good ideas. First, you might want to read my blog post about how to come up with a good brand name. It’s meant for all types of businesses, but the concepts are relevant for Amazon sellers.

Trying to come up with a good brand name has its own pitfalls as well. No brand name is guaranteed to be “trademarkable” on its face. So even when you think you’ve chosen a great name, you’ll still need to pay for an attorney to perform a search, give you a legal opinion, and file your trademark application if the legal opinion is positive. And you’ll still have to wait at least a year to see whether you’re going to reach registration or be rejected. 

Alternatively, you could buy an existing brand name for about the same cost as attempting to register a new one.

Amazon Brand Names for Sale

If you’re really looking for name ideas, we have over 200 Amazon seller names to choose from. Every name for sale on our marketplace will not only qualify you for near-instant Amazon Brand Registry access, but it will also ensure that you’ll be able to keep Amazon Brand Registry access for years to come. 

Here are a few brand names in particular that I like, all of which you could buy right now and start using in a few days. But even if you’re not interested in one of these names, it’s important to understand why they’re good Amazon seller names.

Poychi ($2,550 USD)

Registered for all furniture goods, along with pillows, some decor goods, and some pet and baby goods. Poychi is great because it’s very distinctive, evokes calm, and has an Eastern, calming sound to it. It’s also only six letters long and is easy to spell, pronounce, and remember.

Second Sky ($4,999 USD)

Registered for candles, lubricants, and various energy products. What a great name. Rather than directly describe the product, it hints at the power to improve the environment around you, whether through candles or through renewable energy. It’s certainly memorable and it’s easy to spell and pronounce. This is truly a special brand name and would immediately add an impression of legitimacy to an Amazon seller’s product lineup.

Croxam and Croxam.com domain name ($2,340 USD)

Registered for a variety of sporting goods, fitness products, and toys, including pet toys. This six-letter name is easy to spell, pronounce, and remember, which makes it a great brand name for somebody looking to grow large over time and stand out from other brands. It also comes with a matching six-letter .com domain name.

You may think you don’t need a good domain name, but as I mentioned earlier, every good Amazon brand has a good standalone website as well. Many of your loyal customers will want to buy from you directly in order to support your business, and you need to have a website that’s easy for them to find and remember.

Need More Seller Name Ideas?

If you’re looking for ideas, don’t go to a “brand name marketplace” that only has domain names for sale. Domain names are not brand names.

It might be fun to browse domain marketplaces, but it’s not a good way to come up with an Amazon seller name. You don’t want to sink your business before it starts by coughing up $5,000 for a domain name only to find out you can’t use it to sell your goods.

If you want to browse brand names, browse ones you can actually buy and use for your business without any risk of having to rebrand later.

Scroll through some names on our brand name marketplace where the prices are comparable to those of domain names, often with domain names included at no additional cost. You can filter for your desired products, for names that come with logos, or for names that come with domain names.

Why would you look for Amazon seller name ideas anywhere else?