Personal Branding & Pseudonyms

This is a hurdle many people have faced and overcome.

Brand your business not yourself...then you can sell the business down the road. That's one option.

Another is to create a mascot that somehow leads the viewer to pronounce your name. Copywriter Colin Theriot, for example, made an image of Stalin and a stereo--Colin Theriot, Stalin Stereo. Notably thereby stopping hordes of unwashed from pronouncing his last name "The Riot", no doubt.

Does your last name have a meaning? I worked with an Italian named Capobianco and it was easy to make a white-topped mountain logo. Then people could associate the name with the image.

I would not conceal your last name, especially since you are doing service work and not selling products. People are going to have to send you payments. Using Paypal, though, you send them an invoice and they don't have to spell your name.

Overall I think when you worry about this, you're overthinking. You have no idea how many people have wanted to turn my name Irish, plop a 'C' on the beginning, put two 'n's in the middle, etc. Whatever. When people want your services they'll figure out how to spell your name.

I would use the business name as you can name it in the way that indicates it's about marketing and differentiate from what you do in your 9-5 job, as probably some prospects might know your name and associate it with you being a developer. I'm just guessing here, but you know you situation the best. Business name can also be more professional and easier to position sometimes.

Hope this helps.

Watch out my user name and below it, is my pseudoname. If I write it as is, it's hard to read. By the way I chose my username awledd without thinking much and made it my Clickbank username. Now where should I write my pseudoname? in the location space LOL!

As others have said, if you're super worried about it, use a business name. My last name is pronounced exactly 0% of the time correctly....but I wouldn't worry about it.

In the age of Google autocorrect, there's plenty you can do to combat something like that online-

This can be two sided ! A name that is hard to spell and very unique can be a plus in a lot of regards. People with a name like John Smith is easy to remember but try finding that in the search Engines with all the other John Smiths your competing with.


Whereas if you have a unique name it will be easy to rank and easy to find you ; of course if they can remember how to spell it

So it can be kind of a tug a war scenario to grapple with.

Easy to remember and unique is the best case


- Robert Andrew

Hi, personal branding consultant here. I'd say a smart move might be to take your initials and use them + a word which describes your services. For example, my initials are ZB, and if I were a marketer I could us ZB Marketing, or ZBM.

If you have any questions regarding creativity or wish to talk more, feel free to message me!

I use my full, difficult to spell Italian last name, but tell people to visit my website at imetbrian.com. That way it's short and easier to remember, and then it just redirects them to my full name.com

I have a hard to remember last name so I go by Johnny FD.

I would 100% recommend using your real first name but plenty of authors use pen names.

My criteria for personal branding is:


1. Can people find your name?

2. Is the yourname.com avaliable?

3. Can people spell your name?

4. Does your name have any negative feelings or stereotypes towards it?


But I also own the URL for both my birth name and pen name.