Freelance writing - return on investment (ROI) and paid advertising

Assuming I make 20K (USD) a year as an individual freelance writer, how much should I spend on paid advertising? 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%? Last year I spent about 5% (1K) and made 4K more than in the year I didn't advertise.

ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100

So my return on investment was (4K-1K) / 1K=300%? Is my calculation correct? How much more should I spend not to overpay? Would spending 20% bring much more return?

I don't have a website and use my business name / email only. I do a small email marketing campaign with an agency working with students and buy other ads directly from websites. I don't use Google ads (too expensive for small players).

To me it all depends on how one sees the entire concept of being marketed out there. There are writers in the same industry who may attract more clients through marketing+networking (without spending any money).

I, however, also assume that it was more effective for a writer who started say five years ago. New entrants, I must say, face fiercer competition today (as established writers do too). Thus, spending money today on brand-marketing is important. But it would really be hard to come up with clear estimates to put in that equation.

It would be better if other writers can share their experiences here.

I have not spent 'anything' on marketing my name and/or services but I do have a satisfactory customer base.

But how did you start? You had to 'market' yourself somehow at the beginning?

Back in 2003 or 2004, when I was really very young and not so skilled in the ICTs, I came across a new article repository (or publishing type of business) started by an amateur US-based French young man. As I have always been interactive and willing to write, I signed up for that website and just contributed with anything I could with my then quite under-developed ESL skills.

I continued for quite some time. One day, however, the owner approached me announcing that he was closing down the business as it was unable to generate any sufficient revenues and was moving onto a another area in "student assistance". He also stated that he was impressed by my passion to write and would like to consider me on his team.

After just a few months I started writing papers for his customers who I don't know how he managed to attract.

The most important part of this entire venture was that (unlike today's trends) everything was open - I directly communicated with the students and vice versa. Now, that person is still in business but with little contact with me. I, however, have thrived since then.

I'd find a new line of work.


Yes, sort of. The math is correct. Whether or not the $4k more you made is solely the result of the $1k you spent in advertising is a much more complicated question.


No real way of knowing. If marketing worked based purely on math, the field would be very, very different.

It also depends if you have resources to complete all orders on time.


5-10% is the way to go for an individual freelance writer. Most freelancers rely on "free advertising" (spam) but it's unlikely to bring them a high ROI. If you don't have a website and rely on your name / email only it's important that you use one name/email only (otherwise you'll end up competing with African fraudsters who use a disposable email address per order).

20K (after taxes) is not bad in my book. I'd have to work 14-16hrs a day to make 30K, but I'm not so young anymore ;).


In a long term it's a waste of effort. And I'm tired of seeing `Access denied` page ;).

The longer you stay in the industry, the more widely you get known (provided that you produce the quality that can satisfy your client).

However, if you're a new entrant, relying on the "email-marketing" may not work for you. So you probably want to let go some of the 30K for marketing your name.

It's definitely a slow build initially and if you write for companies, that will be your main source of income at first. You'll get private clients here and there by participating in public forums and by putting some ads out on various websites, and if your work is good, almost all of your private clients become long-term repeats. Some of them need work only a few times a year for several years but others need much more work (like monthly or even weekly) for most of a year or more. By the time you have a few dozen regular clients, you don't really have to advertise too aggressively because all you really need is enough new clients to come in at roughly the same rate as your existing clients complete their degrees and every long-term satisfied client is usually good for at least one new referral, if not several. It also helps anytime prospective clients and writers share any public forum because, as is very evident just from reading through this forum, much of the competition can barely put together a single sentence in English without completely massacring the language, which helps clients weed them out pretty easily and find you. The only thing I'd be afraid to do now is ever take off a few months from working because then I'd have to start building up a client base all over again.

That's an excellent point. My wife keeps telling me: 'You work whenever you like and I have to get up in the morning at 7 and work in the office for 8 hrs.'

But I reply to her saying: 'At least you have a 3 week vacation time waiting for you every year' and I have to work 7 days a week, every week. I have to reply to emails even if I'm on vacation. If I don't, I would lose my existing clients.

If you're working anything close to full-time hours in this business and only making $20k/year, you're doing something wrong.

I've done both and definitely prefer this. When I worked for the government, I was up at 5:30 or 6:00 AM Mon-Fri and usually at my desk by 6:50 or 7:00. It was up to me when to come in, but I had to be there 8.5 hours and needed to leave by 3:15 or 3:30 to beat the traffic going home...or to get a full workout at the Federal Building gym and still get home in time to have some down time before rushing to go to bed to get 7 or 8 hours of sleep. After 5 days of that, I was totally wiped out and still had to spend one day of most weekends running errands like food shopping or dry cleaning, etc. It felt like I did nothing in my life but work and get ready to work again. The actual work was much easier and less intensive than this work and I never felt the least bit of pressure to make deadlines. Doing this, I sometimes have to go right from one deadline into another and often have to drop what I'm doing to squeeze in emergencies and then get right back to what I was already working on, especially during the busy seasons.

I make about the same salary now (except that I pay for my own health insurance) waking up pretty much whenever I want to, not working at all a few days a week during much of the year, and working in my boxers in front of the TV or in the sun on my balcony during the summer months. On the other hand, there are times when I have to work all day and/or all night long to make deadlines; emails have to be responded to constantly; it's hard to plan more than a couple of consecutive days off at a time; and there's really no distinction between "weekdays" and "weekends." Then again, I only got 2 or 3 weeks of annual vacation from the government and my usable "weekends" were only 1 day more often than not. All in all, doing this is much better than working a 9-to-5 unless you're one of those lucky people who only needs 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. I've also worked as a bouncer in a few strip clubs, a hockey skills instructor, and a community center athletic director and this pays better than all of them, although it's a lot less fun that at least 2 of those jobs =)

I appreciate your support and your public service.


Perhaps I should open a new thread about the best way of managing clients, but in general the hardest part is to have to go online every day because clients expect you to answer as soon as possible. Some clients assume you work in all time zones. Still, you're right - we cannot complain. If we have a job, we should be happy. For someone 20K (after taxes) is not a lot of money, but it works for me. For example, I don't even have to own a car (another extra expense I don't have to deal with when working from home).

I do, actually. In my opinion, it would be much harder to earn a living doing this if you limited yourself to any normal 8-hour shift, or, for that matter, spent a lot of time outside of your house or apartment. You have to be prepared to work at all hours of the day and night, to go to sleep at 10:00 PM or midnight some nights and at 7:OO AM or 11:00 AM some mornings, and you have to be able to respond to emails basically anytime that you're awake. On one or two occasions, someone has offered me enough money to turn a project around in a few hours that I (literally) stuck my fingers down my throat to puke up an Ambien that I'd just taken before the email and agreement to pay the ridiculous amount of money that I said I'd have to have to do that project within 2 or 3 hours instead of going to bed and just doing it the next day. I have a gym in my apartment and a converted bar that works as a standing desk in that room and I'm always answering emails in between sets and sometimes writing easier stuff that I can write that way...and it goes without saying that I've stopped in the middle of a workout many times to sit down to work on emergencies dripping in sweat if the price was right or if it was a good regular client with a real emergency.

Wow ... who ever knew that teaching hockey or managing athletics could be so much fun?

Regarding online advertising.. seemingly a legitimate company like Facebook has just announced that their 'advertising reach' metrics are designed to estimate how many people in a given area are eligible to see an ad that a business might run. That's why the estimated numbers have been inflated by millions because, technically, millions of people from California could travel to Ohio to see the ad. Obviously, the more potential 'reach,' the higher per-click cost. wow : )

With the changes in social media advertising over the past year, unless you're willing to invest high, your ROI will be minimal--if any at all. By investing high, I mean applying that $1,000 to 3-7 day campaign versus spreading it out over a month or longer. Even still, the algorithms of SM ads make it a hit or miss for every ad you place. I have found it is better to reach out in your local area (university students, etc.) than to spend that money advertising online. If you offer more than just academic writing services, then your potential customer pool is larger and you can reach out to businesses, churches, and other places in your local market. Many churches need help editing or preparing study materials. If they know someone in their area can help at a reasonable rate, they may be willing to give you a shot.

A note on @Major's point of "potential reach," potentialis the key word here. Social media isn't promising you will reach that market; they are saying it's possible(though unlikely). ;)

I have always believed in casting a wide net when it comes to advertising. I invest heavily in my social media presence because that is where the crowd is. Students will not know about you if you are not found on social media, have a sizeable number of followers in your list, and if you do not have a modern venue by which they can reach you. They seem to prefer the DM trend these days and respond greatly to my animated ads on the social media accounts. When your advertising is something eye catching and relatable to the crowd you are seeking, the AI eventually catches up when it comes to matching your ads to a specific crowd. So even if my profile appears on an unrelated page, I still have a slim chance of getting that person to click on my ad. It's better than not having a chance to get a click directing the reader to my site.

There was a time early this year when writing companies and individual writers were spending a premium on advertising through social media sites. The high priced and demographic aimed advertising was their way of trying to stave off the threat that AI was bringing on at the time. They were doing their best to keep students in the human writer field but, things just did not work out as expected. AI seems to have won that battle. I still refuse to believe that Ai has won the war because AI is still reliant on humans to make it work properly. For everything the Ai can accomplish as a writer, there is a human writer behind that algorithm.

I would not spend a premium on advertising my services these days, if I were still an active writer. Instead, I would invest more in a word of mouth campaign to get students back to using human beings as their writer of choice. Let's face it, the only reason AI got better at writing is because humans began training it to do so.