I can share my opinion, as an author who already made this (mistake
)
In 2013, when I signed up on Envato, I had to choose a username. I had no idea what to choose, I never thought the usename would help me one way or another. I was, at that time, in a difficult moment of my life and I wanted to choose a username to express positivity and things that can be done. My choice was “greenline”, meaning a line that can be crossed, a green that means “go ahead, it’s your turn, it’s a line you can cross, it’s a new start”.
I love green, I love nature and trees, my eyes are green, my favorite color is green … and this username was so easy to pronounce.
Soon, I was able to publish a plugin, many people started to know me by this username. The sales were good for a single plugin at that time, $500-$1000 per month. I worked also as a freelancer, so this was quite a good income addition per month.
But… in 2016, I started to think to a better branding. My mistake. Looking for a better branding, I was soon to find out on WIPO global database branding website that “greenline” was a trademark owned by different companies around the world.
So I decided to change the name, the website, everything. I wanted to avoid legal problems related to branding. So I decided to have another Envato username, I re-created from scratch a personal website…
I must admit that I had a hard time finding a username that doesn’t have a trademark on it and has the .com domain available.
Very soon, the results appeared. People (angry people) started to ask me in private messages why I changed my username. Very soon too, the sales to that plugin started to go low.
At this moment I have for that plugin a few loyal customers (I thank them a lot) but this is it. I saw a decrease of visits in analytics, immediately after changing my username. The sales are still low now.
So my vote is for: no, don’t change your 8 years username! You will loose your loyal customers!
I know a lot of other authors who changed their usernames, maybe they can share their opinion too!