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 […]
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 […]
How to Buy a Trademark
Many business owners are interested in creating a brand new name for a business and then trademarking that name, but you can in fact buy an existing trademark from another entity. It’s not very common, but it is possible. You can buy a trademark if you want to use it for the same goods/services (class) […]
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 […]
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 […]
Brand Names for Sale? Not at Domain Marketplaces.
Do you remember when Apple bought Beats by Dre for $3 billion in 2014? Why do you think Beats was worth $3 billion to Apple? Was it because Apple wanted the beatsbydre.com domain name? No, Apple was primarily paying for the Beats brand, which essentially means they were paying for the Beats trademark. The single […]
What To Do When Your Idea Is Stolen
Stolen ideas are hardly a new trend in the business world. Whether it’s a stolen song lyric, software feature, or clothing design, many companies have seen competitors profit from stolen products or ideas. Although intellectual property theft may seem intangible, there is plenty of risk and loss involved, especially for small businesses. Even in one […]