A freelance writer started her own essay website. Sharing my bittersweet experience ;-)

I've been a lurker for a couple of years now. After continuous disappointments with model research sites (payment delays, deductions, unreasonable sales people, etc.) I thought it'd be a good idea to go on my own. I read somewhere on this forum that's a good and smart long-term way to supplement my income (ie. working both for myself and for a few companies at the same time).

So I hired an off-shore web developer (found him on odesk.com; also tried elance.com and scriptlance.com). He created a basic but functional website, ie. Home / About / Services / Faqs / Privacy / Terms / Articles / Blog / Contact. I should mention that when I started I was illiterate about web design and programming (still am ; ).

I paid about $700 and had my website up and running within two weeks. I added content, designed my own logo (on paper at least ; ) and was good to go.

Overall, the process was not as complex and time-consuming as I had initially thought. The programmer was helpful and taught me how to update content myself, if needed.

The problem started when I had my website ready. How do I get potential clients to find me? LoL! My hosting company offered a free Google Adwords coupon for $100. I signed up and used it. I had about 200 visits... and one order. A SEO person (ie. the web designer at the same time ; ) told me on average out of 200 people only 1-5 may actually order something. "That's the standard for online merchants," he said. That's fine, I thought. I made about $200 on the order so it wasn't that bad after all.

My main concern, though, how do I keep doing it? What if out of 200 visitors NOBODY orders anything? In that case I lose $100... Has anybody here tried it? How can I increase my chances of getting clients? Should I use another "SEO expert" or it's just a waste of money? After talking to my husband, we concluded it'd be too risky to use Adwords or other forms of pay-per-click ads all the time. Maybe big companies can afford it, but not us. I'm still thinking about paid options, ie. advertising on certain sites, posting essay coupons, etc. But it sounds like a lot of work. Lol.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my story. I don't want to break the rules and advertise my site here. Just my 2 cents. Maybe some other essay freelancer has some ideas or tricks on how to become more independent with my own website. If it doesn't work, I lose $700 but gain invaluable experience :- ).

Cheers!

Joanna

Adwords can work but you need person who know what hes doing. Dont use general terms like 'essays' or 'term paper writer' but try unique terms, 5 words or even more. Then you pay less per click. Other options, write some guest article (free), spam some sites, buy some ad if you have money and you good to go. lolz Important is use same theme site, essay related. Not site about cook recepie coz that can hurt your site. Only writing/essay related if you want to get links.

use essaychat.com as others writers too

I checked essaychat and it's good because it's free! I'll post something soon, not now ;-). Maybe I'll read more about Adwords; some experts claim it could work in the long term. It would be best to have more than $100 trial period *.

I would suggest you google how SEO works. There is unfathomable information available on the Internet about it. Giving a few hours will be worth it. I am sure you can do a better SEO on your website.

I know individuals who have developed their websites without any professional help.

That's actually a good idea. The designer suggested to set up a Wordpress blog and post content there. At first I didn't know the reason but later found out Google likes a lot of content. The negative is that blogging is time consuming. Positive - people visiting the site know you can write in English ;-).

Overall, doing stuff yourself may save you a lot of money. But, again, I'd prefer to write rather than compete with SEO experts Lol!

If you do not want to go for SEO but attract clients that actually place orders to you, then you might want to try other means of getting clients. Google search can help you here too.

Sorry for late reply; I have a new order ; -). I know SEO is important, but concluded there are too many people who call themselves "SEO experts."


For example? :) One of my colleagues tried to advertise at her college campus, but it didn't bring the desired results (ie. many students liked the idea of professionally written example essays, but most of them didn't want to pay for that :(.

1- You can add the URL of your page to essay directories.
2- You might want to do the same for website directories. Google the best directories and submit your URL once a week.
3- You may ask your acquaintances, friends, colleagues (who have their own websites/blogs) to paste a banner, link of your page onto theirs.

Amongst other things, this is what SEO experts also do. Try it if you want.

Meo Khan.... I think you are the only person on this forum who seems to be serious about his/her work.

What's your email or website?

Thanks for the compliment. I am happy though that with this comment your posts have come to a total of 15. Nice work.

@gmail

I do not have a website, and publishing email address on this forum is against its rules.

How do I then contact the students whom I feel can really help them. I am confident to providing them much better quality then some of the scam websites.

You should visit EssayChat and other similar forums.

Apart from Essay Chat are their any other similar forums?

Yes, there are so many of them.

The world is big. The major essay sites are generalists. They spend a lot of money in order to reach everyone. You won't be able to compete in that game. Determine a niche and market to it. There are several groups of people who buy lots of papers. Choose one or two target markets, figure out where they are, and go to them. You may need to do this in the physical world, not online.

Also consider this. Someone made this point on another thread. If you were successful at SEO and got your site ont he first page of Google results, you would get FAR more orders than you could fill, as in hundreds per day. You need another route.

How does blogging exactly help in increasing the clicks for the site ?

There are quite a few methods around and about blogging that help one improve SEO for a parent site. Google can return a lot of results for this question.

Do you think this guy was really asking a genuine question? I don't think anybody who can find essayscam.org online can fail to understand how blogging can improve search engine rankings or net visibility.

Google rewards fresh content in its search results, and blogs give a constant supply of new content.

And it is one of the many important strategies for SEO with Google.

Learning & Sharing

Hi All, I am new to this forum. I am a freelance research writer and want to learn about the academic writing industry and its best practices so that I can excel in the craft. Please help me in taking my passion forward. Thank You!

@Uddipta I am not really convinced that you are a freelance writer and researcher. The reason you cannot convince me at this point is because you say that you want to "learn about the academic writing industry and its best practices". Being an experienced freelance researcher and writer, you should already have an idea of what these are and do not need to learn from us anymore. All you should be experiencing here is an expanded discussion of what you already know. That way you can participate and add to the knowledge of others. Maybe you just did not phrase your statement properly. It is easily seen through your written words that you are not an ENL but an ESL instead. I also can't understand what you mean by asking us to help you "take my passion forward." That is something that only you can do for yourself. By actively participating and gaining new knowledge, instead of just starting to learn (as implied by your statement) in this forum, you will already be taking your passion forward.

While paying Google is a good way to gain heightened promotion, it isn't as good as using your YT channel to promote your writing company through veiled "writing tutorials" which end with a reference to your site. That is one of the best ways to advertise, without having to spend. Create a YT video, promote it on your social media sites, watch the number of viewers grow. You should get about 10 inquiries and 4-6 orders per new video that you post. They will try to leave comments in the hopes of contacting you so make sure to respond to all the comments left. You never know who might place an order. It will be hard for the first year or so, but it should get easier as your channel gains subscribers and popularity.

Since students do not rely so much on website listing anymore for their search needs, they tend to turn to social media searches much more these days, it is no longer advisable to open a website for your business needs. If you already have an existing one, then congratulations and keep it up. These days though, writers are more easily found and negotiated with via social media sites. So you need to develop your brand instead of your website these days. Get creative and use the likes of Insta, FB, and X to advertise your essay writing services.

That's unfortunate for them, because using a writer whose only online presence is on social media greatly increases their chances of getting scammed and/or blackmailed.