Blogging as myself or under a pseudonym?

Hey all,

I was wondering, which approach do you think would be best to approach building a personal, authoritative brand would be?

I'm a 16 year old student, but want to portray myself as a professional. Would it be too much of a turnoff if I do present myself as a 16 year old, as people would not trust a teenager? Or would it be better to portray myself as a late 20s-early 30s man, therefore more trustworthiness, experience and thus authority?

I want to start a blog in the IM/MMO niche, a niche in which I believe preeminence is a crucial pillar in building trust, but have had so many second-thoughts about choosing which persona to blog as. I thought that if I did decide to blog as myself, I could create a sense of "if a 16 year old can do it, so can you" and build a brand like "oh, that teenage millionaire blogger?"

Could you please provide me with some feedback as to which approach I should take?

You have no reason to put your age out there. If you really want to, use an older age that is 25+. This is most likely increase trust for someone reading than a teenager age. My few cents.

jiungsong said:

You have no reason to put your age out there. If you really want to, use an older age that is 25+. This is most likely increase trust for someone reading than a teenager age. My few cents.

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I understand, but I look very young. If I'm going to be posting pictures/videos of myself, people will know that I'm as young as I am. This is why I thought maybe hire an actor to be my "image" online, at least for this. My only issue with this is, if I create a name for myself then I'll forever be stuck with the image of the actor, and if anything were to happen to them it could be a hassle. I guess not using my age, but using my face is the best option - any thoughts on that?

It really depends on the niche, for somethings being older gives you trust. But on the other hand their are some niches where people are more impressed when a younger person does it. You don't even really need an image of an actor your yourself photoshopped, you can just use no images at all. Which is better in the long run because if you get outed as some kind of bullshit artist its easier to recover from it since no one knows who you really are or look like.

If you can not sell themselves.

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It would be too difficult to become a teacher at a young age SEO

qazer101 said:

"if a 16 year old can do it, so can you" and build a brand like "oh, that teenage millionaire blogger?"

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For success, age doesn't matter buddy. Put more hard work and focus on a thing that you are well talented and start a blog now.
Seed your thoughts in your blog will definitely grown and give you the tasty fruits like money and become a millionaire soon.

It depends on what you want your viewers to have an impression of you for. People do prefer when you put yourself out there because it helps to build trust. If the viewer doesn't trust you, then they won't trust anything on your website.

I really think it depends on what you're comfortable with. I personally wouldn't blog as myself, but if you want to build a long-term personal brand, it might be a good idea to build a real personal brand with the person being you, so you can go to conferences, give talks and so on if you manage to become big enough. In the end everyone needs something to be recognized by and your age might be that differentiation for you. Keep in mind that being 16, you have a lot of personal development left in front of you and you might outgrow your current knowledge and content quality by so much that you would be annoyed by seeing your old stuff. Still, everybody starts somewhere, so this should not be a big deal. In the end, each option has its pros and cons and you are the only one who could give each a valuation and decide what outweighs what.

Something you could do if you feel like it, is to create a blog that is supposed to be more than just a personal one and have more than one blogger personas posting. And one of those could even be the real you and you could also list yourself as the founder if you want to. However, this would be quite insincere and being real goes a long way in blogging.