Advise on securing a name?

[Bootlegger0173]

OK, I didn't see where this had been covered so I wanted to post about it.

I've been using "Photos by Keith A. Williams", and that has worked well enough, but I am seriously considering taking a few more progressive moves into doing this full time. Also considering the POSSIBILITY of working with another shooter on a regular basis.

To accompany the new advertising and such, I was thinking about a more catchy name. I have one in mind, but haven't a clue how to find out if the name is available or not, or how to secure it- if it is.

I know that there are ways, but have never had to deal with this before.

Also, a guy that I was speaking to told me not to get too serious about name searching until I was ready to secure the name, as it was not unusual for a prospective name to get "flagged", once it was searched for, and then not be there when you came back for it.

I'm not sure if he knew any more than I do about the subject, so I figured to ask the experts.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm afraid that I don't know much about running a business, and that this will be quite slow going as I figure things out.

Thanks in advance,

KAW.

[tracknut]

I'm no expert, but here's my input...

You may be talking about a corporation name or a DBA, in which case the secretary of state in NC is probably the place you might look. Many of these are online and searchable, so Google for "business name search NC" and see what comes up (http://www.secretary.state.nc.us/corporations/).

You may also be talking about an internet domain name, in which case you could use http://www.domaintools.com/ to search for available names.

Dave

[Dennis_Hammer]

You can secure by just going to your local town/city hall and register it there. They will start taxing you for your equipment then and you may want to also get a federal tax number etc etc. And then you can always move on to incorporating or LLC. Which by the way you can do pretty cheaply at places like legalzoom.com or some other similiar site.

[Bootlegger0173]

Thanks folks.