Premium names
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Reading Level: Advanced/College Student
Reading Time: 6 minutes
What are premium names? Are they important? Does owning a specific name affect sales as a creator?
When a user signs up for IMVU, they are required to choose a username that will become the account name with which they log in. It’s also the name displayed in chat rooms, in the discussions section, groups, profile pages. If the username chosen is taken, the user is not notified, however random number characters will be added to the username. For example, if user X creates an account and names it “Anna” because the actual username is taken, the user will be given a username such as “Anna52385” and their alias will be by default Anna. This confuses new people quite a bit and it is a marketing strategy by IMVU.
In the past, when you would choose the username, if it were already taken, the username field would become red, and registering the account would be blocked until a unique username was chosen. For a few years now, the red field is no longer present and the creation of the account is successful, but the username is given random characters.
Username vs Alias
On IMVU’s feed, users have the ability to change their names to whatever they want to, either single words, multiple words, or character combinations, as well as special ASCII characters (hearts, dots, stars, etc.). This change is known as an alias.
The username is the actual name of the account, the one you use to log in on IMVU (besides the email address associated with the account). On the default IMVU website, in the discussions, groups and in the default shop, the name that appears for a user is the username of the account, not the alias.
In the image below, you can see which one is the alias and which one is the actual username of the account.
Important note: when someone asks you for your IMVU name/IMVU account, they are always referring to the username because that’s how they can identify you, by your unique username.
Premium names
What exactly are premium names? Premium names are short, easy-to-remember words or names. These words do not have extra characters (such as unneeded numbers or characters).
Examples of premium names are short, medium, or sometimes long nouns, adjectives or verbs usually, as well as female/male names and geographical names, such as:
Baby
Love
Paris
Luna
Red
Blue
Kitty
Night
Fierce
Inna
Cutie
Beautiful
Laura
While the words above are part of the elite premium ones (mostly one syllable), names such as “Redd”, “Babyy”, “Nightz”, etc. are still considered premium, whereas “Redd23” is far from being considered premium because it has a total of 3 characters that are deviations of the base word “red” which might be hard to remember.
There are also short, unique combinations that are not necessarily English words or worldwide known words (such as pizza, taco, tutu, etc.).
Many users and known creators have opted for multiple words in their names and very rarely will you come across a popular creator that has a very complex name that is hard to remember, the reason for this is because there is some marketing psychology that affects user behavior.
The idea behind a premium name is that a user is much more likely to remember a short word than a long one. This is crucial for returning customers, as the more customers return to your shop, the more sales you get and the higher the chances your product becomes hot selling and reaches the top pages of the shop.
Word association
Not every short word is easy to remember when users search through hundreds of creators in the shop, that is why some people have opted for words that can be associated with other popular words. Not only this, but really popular words like the list mentioned previously are ghost accounts, meaning that the names are taken, but the owners of the accounts do not use IMVU and/or do not create IMVU products. Thus, many people opt for short words that users can associate with other words: Lune, Loev, Bby, etc.
Why choose a premium name?
Premium names are important for two reasons:
- They are crucial for creating a brand and a name as a creator. It’s easier for customers to remember the name of the shop they want to visit and thus, having an easy-to-remember name brings in more sales.
- They are recognized as a status on IMVU. Users treat you more respectfully when you own a premium name, and by that, I mean that you will not be considered someone new when joining chat rooms and talking to other people. And because premium names are common among popular creators, there is a socialite aura surrounding every premium name out there because owning a unique name can be expensive.
Premium names sound fancy, but they have a price.
As most common English words have already been taken, IMVU has found a way to make some money out of short names and they invented the Premium Names category where you can buy a name for 150,000cr or 300,000cr (for the 2 and 3 letter words).
The list of premium names available in the IMVU shop is quite big, some of which aren’t very memory-friendly, however, if the name you want is on the list, you cannot change your name to the chosen username, unless you purchase the name from the Premium Names shop.
Note: It has been statistically proven that people who have easy-to-remember names are much more likely to hold CEO positions and other types of highly important/better-paid jobs.*
I made a Q&A for common questions and misconceptions:
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Unless you plan on starting to create products for the IMVU shop, there’s no need to change your name to a premium one.
Some people just like the socialite status a premium name adds, but having a premium name does not change the basics IMVU provides: chatting, meeting new people, dressing up your avatar and room, etc.
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No. If you are already making over 500 daily sales from various products, you are starting to become quite known and any changes might drop your sales by 90%.fill in.
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It’s not mandatory. There are a few creators out there with very long names with extra characters that have made a name for themselves as is. There are not many creators like that, however, do keep in mind that having an easy-to-remember name has much more benefits than a regular username with random characters in it.
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That depends solely on how many sales you get. If you get less than 100 every day, then you can take the risk and swap the names, but if either of the two accounts is popular and you swap names, direct sales of both accounts will be heavily affected.
I don’t want my username to be similar to every other creator’s. Is there something I could do?
Yes! Creativity is unique and although the focus was on one-word usernames, the point of a premium name is to have a word or a combination that is either easy to remember or easier to remember than your previous username. For example, if you are SamSmith2563, changing your name to SamSmith is an improvement and it still has a premium vibe to it.
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You can manually visit the webpage of the account by browsing to avatars.imvu.com/USERNAME where “username” is the name you replace with the ones you want to check. If the webpage redirects you to the index webpage of IMVU, that could either mean that the username is available or that the username is a premium name on IMVU, in which case you would have to buy it.
You can also see whether the name is available on the register page of IMVU and after typing in the username you want, make sure the name does not change after you switch to a different field.
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As shop searches filter by username and also show the alias, there shouldn’t be any concern. However, changing your name to a word or a phrase should enhance your shop and not contribute negatively to it.
For example, some people choose to change their alias to “Shop USERNAME”.
Having negative words, phrases or references in your name can negatively influence potential customers, so you need to be more careful with the alias you choose when you are a creator that wants to earn money on IMVU.
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Conclusion
Having an easy-to-remember username helps customers return to your shop and thus it helps increase sales.
Premium names are highly popular among creators: unique words, one, two, three-syllable words, names, geographical places, celebrity names, etc.
Owning a premium name is considered a luxury among regular users, whereas, for shop owners, it’s one of the highest predictors for long-term success, as there is embedded psychology in owning short names.
*Research links for short names and success rates in corporate environments:
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