Branding and your User ID…

It is amazing how many sellers of hand-crafted, hand-carved, or hand-sewn goods seem to completely ignore the basic ideas of branding. How can you ever hope to foster popularity and loyal followers if your user Ebay ID is called jibs1242? (sorry if it really is, I was just making that up).

If you are an artisan, it’s in your best interest to develop and nurture a quality brand. If you’re not sure what brand to use, just use your name. That’s much better than some poorly conceived name that is ineffective. Think Picaso.

Here are some tips related to using your Ebay (or other) user ID as part of your brand strategy:

1. If you’re going to have a ‘brand’ choose the name very carefully. Make sure it’s unique, pleasant, memorable, and most importantly available. Google it. Use that for your User ID.
2. If you’re serious about selling a good volume of items, have a user ID just for your business transactions. (if you’ve got a seasoned seller ID with good transaction history, (100% feedback), it’s best to ‘re-name’ that one and adopt it as your selling id moving forward. That gives your sewing business a jump start on the ‘credibility’ indicators. Your prior transactions will be random, but those will quickly fad as you start to rack up sales. Don’t buy car parts (or even sewing stuff) using this User ID, save it for your outfit listings.
3. The best brands are constructed of uncommon words that can ‘soak up’ the essence of who you are as a seller and a business. (More on this in the brand building blog posts).
4. If you make yourself sound like the category, “Dollwigsgal” expect to be completely and totally forgotten, even by your happy customers. Because you’ve decided to promote the category more than yourself. That’s a mistake.
5. Have a reason for the name and share your complete, and well written story in your ’About Me’ page. Create deeper meaning and a reason to bond to you through this small part of your