There are quite a few Joomla ‘shops’ out there that have named their ‘company’ or brand after Joomla, the CMS they’re working with. Joomla Templates, Joomla Code Gurus, Joomla Hosting. If you can think of a subgenre of Joomla related services, someone has slapped the Joomla brand on it to make it his own. But is that really a good idea?
the advantage
It’s obviously clear what kind of services you’re offering. A site called “Pretty Good Joomla Templates” offers Joomla templates. You expect them to be knowledgeable of Joomla stuff.
the downside
On the other side of the medal: Congratulations: you’ve just pigeon holed yourself into the niche of Joomla [insert products]. Whenever someone reads your brand name, they’ll assume that you’re focused on Joomla only. Not just Joomla – but a subcategory of Joomla services. While it’s nice to carve out a part of a niche market (and with a 10% market share, you can still call Joomla a niche) this will also mean it’ll be hard to move on if you want to sell other products.
Of course, some develpers are convinced that once they start making stuff for their favorite CMS they’ll never want to move on. Drupal is for nerds, WordPress is for plebs, Ghosts are scary and Kirby is the pink dude in Nintendo games, right?
But the reality is that, someday, you might want to move on as your skills expand. Even Akeeba, best known for it’s Joomla tools, has expanded in the WordPress realm where they’re offering a backup solution. Akeeba could do this without any problems. Know why? Because they’re Akeeba, not JoomlaBackupSolution. They can easily offer more products and services, and they’re still a big name in the Joomla community.
The truth is, although it’s tempting to slap the Joomla name onto your brand, in most cases it’s smarter to develop your own brand. Whether it’s because you want to explore new CMS’es or want to do completely different after a while.