Communer Sales Doubled in 2024. Why?
Communer has never been my full-time job, and often it’s not even a part-time job. Some weeks I’ll spend 15 hours on it, and other weeks I’ll put in one or two hours. In the months leading up to the birth of my second kid in January, I focused what time I could on automating […]
Lessons From Launching Our First Web App (with Python)
A long time ago, in middle school, I used to make games on my TI-83+ graphing calculator. They were just text-based RPGs, but they were pretty fun, and by making them in the TI-Basic programming language, I learned a lot of the fundamentals of software development. I continued on this path by taking computer programming […]
How We Passed Last Year’s Total Sales in June This Year
On June 28 we passed last year’s total sales of $83,000.00, ending the first half of 2024 with just over $85,000 in sales. This growth was a surprise to me because we’ve never doubled our sales in a year before and I had no reason to believe we’d do it this year. I was fine […]
Bootstrapping Our Marketplace Startup: Year 3
Communer has now been around for three years, having launched in February of 2021. If you have your own bootstrapped startup, you might glean something useful from my account of our existence so far. My First Bootstrapped Business: Successful, But Not Quite a Startup My business experience before founding Communer mainly involved my online trademark […]
5 BrandBucket Names That Could Get You Sued Part II
In my previous post, I detailed some of the ways BrandBucket conflates domain names with brand names. In other words, they pretend they’re a marketplace for brand names when they’re really a marketplace for internet addresses. As a branding expert, here is my response to this idea, which you’ll see a lot if you read […]
5 BrandBucket Names That Could Get You Sued Part I
BrandBucket, a website where you can buy domain names, describes itself as a “brand name marketplace.” Their success depends on convincing entrepreneurs that buying a domain name for your new business is the same thing as securing a brand name. Unfortunately, this is not true. Buying your desired dot-com domain does not actually give you […]
How Much Is My Trademark Worth? With Valuation Examples.
In my previous post on my law firm’s blog about appraising trademarks, I gave a very detailed explanation of my formula for determining the value of a little-used or little-known registered trademark that is not being sold in combination with a turnkey, profitable business. In this post, I want to show you how those principles […]
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 […]
Trademark Specimen Examples from Our New Guide
Though Communer’s flagship products are registered trademarks, we also sell other intangible goods including legal guides. Our first guide available is our Trademark Specimen Handbook, which I wrote myself to help people whose trademark specimens have been rejected. At 35 pages and over 9,000 words, it’s a comprehensive resource for anybody trying to file their […]