It also helps if you're willing to use a pseudonym.

Indeed. As he puts it:

The name of this blog is Slate Star Codex. It is almost an anagram of my own name, Scott S Alexander. It is unfortunately missing an “n”, because anagramming is hard. I have placed an extra “n” in the header image, to restore cosmic balance.

But adding or dropping letters is probably harder to get away with when you have a shorter name.