Word of mouth / Organic search / Paid advertising - essay service client profile?

If you work as a freelance writer or if you own a writing service company - do you know how many % of your clients are:

- Word of mouth
- Organic search (not paid)
- Paid advertising

How many of those are returning clients? My experience tells me that word of mouth clients are the most valuable. What's your experience?

Word of mouth (either direct or through social media) usually works best because it suggests that you or a writing service are in fact recommendable through the previous work. So the better service you provide, the more percentage of your customers will be word of mouth. It's important to note, though, that a smart student should never fully trust "indirect recommendations" from people he/she doesn't personally know. For example, it's common for a dishonest academic research provider to claim that his/her "friend" used this or that writer / service and s/he liked it.

Organic search - here the quality of your service doesn't correlate with the number of visitors your essay help website will receive. There are many writing providers that rank well in search engines, but it doesn't necceserily mean their service is worthwhile.

Paid advertising - there are two popular forms of paid advertising: time-based (a link placed on a website for an established amount of time) and click/action-based (advertiser pays every time someone clicks on a promotional link). Time-based advertising doesn't require any special monitoring and is usually worry-free. Click/action based advertising is more complex and requires more monitoring tools, but it is usually well-targeted.

Regarding the ratio of returning clients.. it seems legitimate word of mouth advertising of essay services tends to win, but since it's easy to spoof it is not very reliable these days.

Also - if you are a freelance writer, you may set up a free writer profile here; the following are the conditions / benefits of having a profile set up:

A Regular Writer profile is FREE and available through essayscam.org/freelance-writers/{your_email} and essayscam.org/freelance-writers/{username}/ (which is forwarded to the /freelance-writers/{your_email} page). As long as your forum Rating is above the established threshold (currently: 0), anyone who knows your Email or forum Username can view a summary of your public Writer Profile. This page is not indexable in search engines.

- The "Aspiring Regular Freelance Writers" Listing - up to 3 regular freelance writers who post at least 2 useful/comprehensive message/s within 48 hours in public forum discussions will have their Writer Profile listing prominently displayed on the Freelance Writers page (essayscam.org/freelance-writers/). Listing in this section is not dependent on the Rating score, so all freelance writers have a chance for free advertising. PLEASE NOTE - writers who violate the usefulness / comprehensiveness rule may have this profile listing disabled.

A Featured Writer profile requires a 3/6/12-month subscription, which can be cancelled at any time with no further commitment. It is always (regardless of your Rating) available and visible to the public through a dedicated Writer Profile page at: essayscam.org/freelance-writers/{username}/, essayscam.org/freelance-writers/{your_email} (if you choose to publicize your email), or essayscam.org/freelance-writers/profile-XXXXXX/ (if you prefer to hide your forum username and posting history). Furthermore, a Featured Writer has the word 'Featured' next to his or her username on forum profile and forum discussion pages. This page is indexable in search engines. By default, Featured Writers on essayscam.org/freelance-writers/ pages are sorted by 'Popularity' = Rating (writers with a higher Rating score appear first in the results).

- Bonus from EssayChat - academic research service ads of Featured Writers posted at essaychat.com/offered/ will NOT be automatically deleted, regardless of forum posting activity. In addition, a link to the Featured Writer Profile will be published within the 'Recommended Academic Freelance Writers' section on the EssayChat Live Chat page: essaychat.com/live/.

- A Writer Profile (both Regular and Featured) can be made Visible (available to the public) or Invisible (unavailable to the public) at any time.

- Writing services / agencies are allowed to advertise, provided they have a dedicated person (a freelance writer) with a personalized email who represents the company.

- The value of the Country field is typically important to prospective buyers / students, but it is not the most critical factor determining the writer's actual research skills, English-language level, and professionalism. We believe that through active participation in the forum, writers will have a chance to show their writing, research, and reasoning abilities in a much better way than before. However, blatant abuse - which could lead to potential confusion and uncertainty among potential buyers - will not be tolerated.

When I was first starting out in the business, most of the clients I ended up with were those whom I picked out of the database of the company. Eventually, these clients became regular clients and they began referring me to their classmates and friends. I tended to retain these clients over the semesters. I was their writer for the rest of their "academic life" you might say as I worked for them till they graduated. I would say that at the start, I had 10% of repeat clients based upon the work I did for them and others, so that would count as word of mouth. As I branched out and away from the writing companies, I began to see a pattern of students promoting me via word of mouth / referrals. That would account for 50% of my clients at that point as I was still engaged with writing companies at the time. I never paid for advertising because the word of mouth and organic search method of promoting my services worked well for me. I also did not want to blow my cover in case there were people out there taking note of freelance academic writers for reporting to universities. So I avoided paid advertising at all cost. I can proudly say that I never got a client through paid advertising. My skills spoke for me and the students acknowledged this. They promoted me without my asking.

I for one can say that all of my clients, yes, 100 percent of them, are all from word of mouth. Whether you guys believe it or not, I have been able to build up an enviable client base solely on my hard work pounding the pavement at local and not to far universities, as well as through my network of student users who keep my clients coming during the regular year. I don't have to advertise because I don't want to have an impersonal relationship with my clients. I always meet with them face to face and I also hand over the thumb drive to them each time we complete an order.

They can place their faith better in a person they have met face to face, with the person referring them to me rather than just a simple phone conversation or chat. It's the trust factor that builds up when they know that after the initial face to face, they can video call me anytime they need to as well.

This seems highly implausible. The vast majority of my clients use me many times for months or years; but direct referrals are just not that common, even from a large satisfied client base. This is probably because most students really don't want anybody (especially their classmates or anybody else at their schools) to know anything about where they got their projects. Occasionally, I've had clients refer me to 2 or 3 friends who all needed the same project written differently 2 or 3 times for the same class at the same time, as well as clients who referred me to their friends; but this just doesn't happen even remotely often enough to rely on it as a primary source of new clients. The only writers I've ever known whose primary client base came from direct referrals were still in school, themselves. Except for current students who write papers for other students at the same school, this business is almost exclusively conducted online between customers and writers who don't know one another.

If you're totally averse to any form of advertising, exactly what is it that you do when you "pound pavement" at universities? Tap total strangers on the shoulder to ask them if they're interested in having someone write their essays for them?

While I do have a high number of word of mouth clients, my organic search clients are coming in at almost the same rate. These clients come mostly from my social media sites. I tend to pay more attention to my social media promotions these days as the paid advertising method seems to be losing its touch. Most of the clients are using social media for their searches so I focus on developing my profile there most of the time. Actually, some of my word of mouth clients check out my social media sites before hiring me. So I am not sure if they classify as not paid advertising clients or, if they are word of mouth clients. Regardless, I'm just glad to have a steady stream of clients during these uncertain times.

Most of the client that I had when I was still an active writer came from word of mouth. My quality of writing and the diverse fields that I could write about were such that students felt I could work miracle for them when it came to research and opinion papers. Most of the students that were referred to me were those who were close to failing the class already and needed to pass the semester. I somehow managed to deliver for them each time, which led to them referring me to their hopeless classmates.