Using A Female Alias For Your Campaigns...

A woman might be a wiser choice, but it depends how comfortable you are with representing yourself as someone you aren't (that's what false personalities/biographies/pictures/names are intended to do). There's no clear-cut line here, but I personally am not comfortable representing myself as a male online. The closest I'd go to that is adopting a gender-neutral name.

Well, if you can't present yourself as knowledgeable and authoritative on the problem without pretending to be someone you're not, maybe that isn't the best niche for you to be in. There are more profitable niches than you'll ever have time to dabble in, so I'm not sure why anyone would want to choose a niche where they have to be deceptive in the first place.

To turn it around, if a woman tells me about a cure for jock itch, I absolutely don't care if she's a woman, I care if she has information that can help me cure my jock itch. I think women are just as capable as rational thinking as I am, perhaps even more so in this example because most are used to male doctors.

That doesn't even get into any possible legal ramifications of misrepresenting yourself. The FTC crackdown on endorsements, affiliate disclosures, testimonials, and reviews may just be the beginning of taming the online wild west show. Who knows what the next wave will bring? The government is deeply in debt and looking at every way possible to raise money. That's why, according to a March 18 report from House Ways & Means Committee, it's been estimated the IRS will hire between 11,800 and 16,500 new agents.

Whether it's right or wrong is up to each person's own moral code, I never said it was wrong, I simply said it didn't think it was a good business practice. There's a big difference.

Nope, I cook from scratch with my family's recipes.

Seriously though, I understand your point. Writers through the ages have used pen names in order to conceal their gender. I'm just unsure how comfortable I am with trusting people at a one-to-one level who won't use their real name/gender. It's one of those issues I've been back and forth on, but never fully comfortable either way, and I don't accept the "it's part of the IM world" excuse to justify it.

It could be just me, but if I needed any articles written from a man's perspective and name, I'd outsource to a male writer. Maybe I'm odd that way. :p

Edited: Actually, thanks to Dennis' well-articulated responses, I know which way I'm leaning for good.

Yup, it's definitely noticeable. I've found a number of people claiming to be the other gender in my forum-admin/mod/membership history, but I usually just keep it to myself. No point in stirring up that ruckus.

I'm not sure if you're addressing me, but I think there's a difference between using appealing wording and saying you are a 70-year-old grandmother when you're a 20-year-old guy. If it were reversed (a 70-year-old guy claiming to be a 20-year-old girl) and in a different situation, such deception would be called wrong by nearly everyone in this thread who supports using another persona to appeal to people to buy. I'm not saying everyone should look down on it, just that I couldn't get my sleep at night from doing as such. I have no real problem with those who do, I just don't trust them not to be lying about other things (like having used the female products they're reviewing when they're physically incapable of doing so), too.

There are literally over a dozen people on this forum who are guys posing as girls promoting their writing services.

Dennis,

I'm speaking from experience. I haven't done the 10 000 split tests required to be 100% scientifically accurate; but I can tell you that I get paid a lot to write sales pages... and that I make my clients a lot of money.

I've seen great things in markets like "weight loss" in which changing the author to a female (and editing some minor points in the copy to support that) nearly doubled sales. The sex market is similar as well.

Bodybuilding niches work a lot better with men as the author.

Having said that, both men and women are interested in all 3 of these subjects. But at the end of the day, we buy from people who we resonate with... and having the same gender often helps.

EVERY niche depends on your gender, how you're perceived, and how you can use that perception. Some more than others, admittedly.

You're welcome to your opinion but the fact of the matter is that perception matters, and gender is a part of that perception.

No matter how we try and pretend otherwise we are a very prejudiced society, and a smart marketer will use that to his/her advantage rather than ignoring it.

So when it comes to comments like: "I weigh what a person says based on their words, nothing else. Your words have value, or they don't."...

...you're not being completely honest.

I'm not saying you're lying intentionally. But EVERYONE has some prejudice in some way, good or bad - and ignoring that it's there is naiive at best.

-Dan

I think Dennis gives you a heads up. If you read my post, I simply
said I didn't want to look like an idiot, and that for my marketing,
I would rather partner with the opposite sex.

I think my success would be greater. If you do as Dennis asked,
I think you will see we gave you opinions just as you asked for.

i read somewhere that 70-80% of the money on the net is spent by females?...not sure if this is true or not but if it is true you stand a better chance of creating "congruence" by posing as a female...

being scammy/dishonest is one thing but providing good and valuable expert info and just changing your gender for conversion sake is not underhand IMO...

a really good example is bodybuilding products...i really know a lot about this and in my "expert" opinion: good luck trying to sell a BB product as a woman to a male audience...this niche is very very prejudiced ...also a man selling fitness and BB products to a female audience is also bound to have less conversions simply because women have extreme prejudice against looking like "muscular land monsters" like some of the male BB authors...

i dont mean to insult the BB folks but the average "IQ" is generally lower than in the IM crowd...sure the high IQ BB folks may not care whether their info comes from a male or a female but this is only a small portion of the market...the average joe or jane do not feel this way...even i would feel odd taking advice from a female on BB/diet/workouts...no disrespect to women i just cant pick what i feel: it is what it is...

another thing...i come from an "unpopular" 3rd world country...if i used my real name and info this would simply reflect negatively on my product...it would make me seem like less of an expert in the field than somebody who is from the USA or EU...prejudice is everywhere on the internet...

another thing..my real name is "Aleksa" this is an ancient biblical name meaning "Protector" or "Brave" but in some EU and mostly in the USA its a girls name...using my real name in the BB scene is financial suicide to say the least...so i use "Alex"...

in my opinion if you offer good honest information you should be able to call yourself what you wish it should make no difference to the buyer and if he/she is happy with the product this is all that should matter...

whether this is "legal" or not i dont know...what i do know is: i cant afford to use my real name,nationality and even gender for some of my products...

That's why one should be careful about making 1st person claims about products, period. It's the safest solution all around. Whether you use your own real persona or not, you shouldn't say that you used a product that you didn't. That has absolutely nothing about whether you use a male persona, female persona, transgender persona, martian persona, or whatever.

As for looking it up, well, it was pretty well ingrained after 3 years of law school and passing bar exams in 2 states. But hey, I guess they teach law in other places too. Being able to quote a legal term here and there does not mean one actually understands the law.