1) This is a Minion download so you can't make the zip the way you did, it has to have it's own folder. See my example attached file. It needs to be in a folder with the name of the txt file. So just Crafty. Not Crafty Something - And the Rest of The Really Long Name. Just "Crafty" because it has to match the .txt file.
2) You don't need to have a long mod name. You can, do what you want but for me "CRAFTY Stocklist" is sufficient. Which you can change and it won't effect anything.
3) The
Manifest specs don't say anything about letters but I don't think that is the issue. However, if it's a beta or alpha just say so on the description page. There isn't any de-facto standard that says you need a b if it's a work in progress.
TLDR Do what you want, look at the example Zip it has to be in a folder named Crafty that matches the txt file.
Minion just extracts the file and preserves the folder, nothing fancy so make sure you always preserve the folder when you make the zip to upload to ESOUI.
Also the files from the first two downloads will be in the users Addons folder (in the root of Addons) as loose files and they could clean that up. Might be a good idea.