Using a pen name, when to use and when not to?

[Coby Wright]

Yup I agree with the above.

It really all comes down to branding and goals.

Choose which you want to brand (your name or pen name) and go crazy :-)

In my business I use my real name for IM and a pen name for any unrelated niches.

[williams williams]

******I know a lot of you won't agree with me on this one but that it ok.
There is a whole lot that is wrong here.

What someone else does and he's able to get away with might be perceived as "fraud or deceit" if someone else choose to do it.

Trust me, if that was me doing eban pagan was doing /is doing; people will be running away from me thinking /believing that i want to defraud them

Yeah, i am a person of colour so i am very careful and sensitive about this things.

But what can I say? What the heck do I know?

Good topic though!

[John Delavera]

I think I am the best LIVING EXAMPLE for his question, so here are my 2c:

I have been using a pen name for day #1, because my name was too exotic for the US IMers' Pantheon (back in 2002) so I wanted to compete with everybody on an equal basis, aka. not having people (customers and also fellow IMers) "judging" ANYTHING (my products, my habits, myself, etc.) based on my nationality.

Today IM's arena has become more flexible; one can be anywhere, be named even as Bobby Dick and sell well. Today people (customers and fellow IMers) love the sales your products can send, and the NAME, even the nationality, plays a minimal role UNLESS you are ethno-centric to your marketing approach.

However... I would not use my name if it was something like "John Loser" or "Ricardo Butterpeanut" or "Zudeistra Pomalakaterone," but again what really matters is the SALES you can send to your JV partners. NOBODY would have a problem if money was sent by John Loser, but if no sales come at all, then John verifies his name's meaning...

Building a BRAND online requires guts - some times the "self" you create online becomes the best product of yours and the real YOU stays in shadows begging you to show up. Sticking to your branding policy requires a discipline indeed.

John

[Paul Flood]

I don't have a problem using a pen name. When I move out
of my primary niches, I use one.

Inside my niches, I'm starting a product branding strategy
that carries across multiple products. It's a tie-in to my
last name that works well (my last name is Flood and
my branding is around "wave").