I had one of those “forehead slapping” moments the other day. You know the feeling… the big “ohhhh” that washes over you when some big pieces fit together in your mind.

Here’s the story (some details are removed for reasons I won’t get into here):

While conducting some testing on one of my websites the other day, I watched a visitor do something incredibly strange. They moused around my sales page a bit, clicking on every link, picture, text box, Paypal logo… everything!

What the hell? Why is this person clicking absolutely everything?

Short answer… who knows. And who cares? Because what happened next hit me like a ton of bricks.

My visitor suddenly highlighted the pseudonym (fake name) at the signature part of my sales letter. Right click, copy, paste in Google…

This guy was Googling my pretend name!

Some of you might be thinking, why are you using a fake name in the first place? Well, lots of marketers use pseudonyms for lots of different reasons. I won’t get into it here, but suffice it to say – sometimes you want to write as anybody but yourself! It’s just good business in some situations.

Regardless of my reasons for using the name, it made me think. What would my customers find if they search for this pretend name on the web? Turns out, Google pulls up half of my damn websites that feature this same pseudonym! Almost all unrelated products, in different niches, marketed differently, meant for different audiences.

Is this a bad thing? YOU BET IT IS.

That customer, armed with knowledge of your multiple personalities, has a HUGE reason NOT to buy from you. Goodbye sale!

How often does this sort of thing happen? Probably not too often, but I saw it on my first day of testing. So it was a big time clue for me to change some things up.

So here’s the moral of the story:

Be careful what fake names you use, and how many products you use them for. Those additional personas can catch up with you in a bad way if you aren’t smart about it.

Let your thoughts chomp on that food for a while, and have a great weekend!

All the best,

Reuben D. Rock (aka – the web’s latest schizomarketer!)

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