Who is qualified for Snack pricing?
Snack is offered only to cash-strapped, boot-strapped, non-funded entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations. First-time inventors, sole-service providers, and people starting retail stores, are examples of qualified Snack clients. Funded or pre-funded start-ups, companies launching new products, and brands that are being forced to change their name due to trademark infringement, not so much.

If big corporations pay you as much as $50K for one name, why even bother with us small potatoes?
We hate to say no to anyone, especially entrepreneurs who are going at it on their own. (We especially have a soft spot for women starting businesses.) Snack is our way of not turning anyone away and doing a fun “quickie” once in awhile. Of course we hope that after we name your business, you’ll refer us to your friends in corporate America who can easily afford our full fee service.

How can you keep your fees for Snack so low?
Unlike our full service corporate name and tagline projects that are run by our founder, Alexandra Watkins and include in-person meetings, multiple phone calls, intensive legal screenings, formal presentations, consensus building exercises, formal presentations, and mini muffins, our Snack service simply offers the steak without the sizzle. You are paying for a quick blast of our pure creativity without the icing on the cake.

Do you take credit cards and Pay Pal?
Yes – Master, Visa, Discover, PayPal, checks, wire transfers and sometimes chocolate. (See next question.)

Do you do any work “in trade”?
If you have a giftable product (e.g. tea, flowers, coffee, chocolate, massage), we may consider a partial trade for services.

What if I don’t like any of the names or taglines?
Usually the only time people may not find something they like is if they provided poor creative direction to us or a committee is involved in the decision. (We suggest you have one decision maker so that doesn’t happen.) We don’t refund your money because we perform the work and have been doing this long enough to know a great name when we come up with it. It’s up to you to trust us.

To help ensure you like the names and taglines we send you, before we start our creative exploration, we ask you to give us specific examples and rationale of names and/or taglines you COLLECTIVELY like and dislike.

Do you hold back on showing me everything you come up with so I will be forced to order a second round?
We don’t like to go back to the drawing board and we never simply stop when we get to 40 naming suggestions or 12 taglines. We will give you as many names as we come up with, which is often more than the guaranteed minimum.

Do you guarantee that the names you give me can be trademarked?
Snack does not include trademark screens of any kind, so we cannot assure that the names we create for you can be trademarked.

Do you use internet name generators?
No, nor do we use our Ouija board, Magic 8 Ball or purple bong.

Do I own all of the names and taglines on the list?
You are only entitled to one (1) name or tagline on the list for your use. Until you trademark a name, no one owns it.

What if my name isn’t available as a dot com?
The good news is that contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to own the exact domain name of your business name, even if you are a pure online business. Here’s why…. if you wanted to buy honeysuckle-scented candles (Alexandra’s favorite!) online, you would Google “honeysuckle candles” and see a bunch of results and start clicking on them. Would you care what the domain name of the business was? No. Would a business name like www.candlesonline.com or www.candlestore.biz prevent you from buying from them? No. Did we all freak out when we ran out of 800 numbers and switched to 888, 877 and 866? No. End of discussion.

The new name you came up with for me is already in use as a dot com. Does that mean I can’t use that as my business name?
If we named your new pool cleaning service Watermark, and Watermark.com is a hotel or another unrelated business, you are free to use Watermark as your name as long as it clears trademark screening. However, if we named your new pool cleaning service Watermark, and Watermark.com is already a pool-related service, don’t even go there. (We try to prevent this but don’t do Google checks on names other than our Top 5.) By the way, we named an organization “Watermark,” and since Watermark.org was in use by a church, our client chose a creative domain name instead: www.WeAreWatermark.org. Our Snack service offers creative domain name generation for $1000.

How much should I plan to spend to buy a domain name?
The days of getting domain short, whole word names for $9.95 are long gone, although it’s not impossible. Here are some domains that we have secured for $9.95 or less: BreedTrust.com, AltimeterGroup.com, GetASecondWind.com, IHaveABean.com, NailFraud.com.

Be prepared to spend $1,000 and up for a two word domain name, e.g. BrainThaw.