A Writer's Name Is His Personal Brand: Trust of the Highest Value

Freelance writing isn't for the faint of Heart. This business is cut-throat. Writer's need to outshine one another in order to win bids and contracts. For a freelance writer each bid that he wins signifies an additional trust factor to his name. It is this trust that, over time, he can capitalize on to build a client base that now comes to him instead of the other way around. That is why a writer must care for the integrity of his name. Just like all other service providers, he will find that there is one reason why his client base keeps growing and he has repeat clientele, all these people trust his name. They put their trust in the fact that this unseen person always delivers when required to. That is why a writer's name becomes his brand. It signifies the highest value a person can place on his work, trust.

Why Should a Freelance Writer Turn a Name into a Brand?

Freelance writers need to stand out from the pack to win jobs. As such the writer needs to make sure that there is something that becomes memorable about him. Maybe it is a screenname, or the way business is conducted with clients. Whatever it is, the writer knows that there are many benefits to turning his name into a brand:

1. A unique name creates instant recall;
2. It helps with self-promotion;
3. It creates a professional image for the writer

A Personal Name Brand Helps Create the Writer's Reputation

Freelance writers are branded depending upon the way they deal with their clients. Those who seem distracted by too many projects that he can't even pick up the phone to talk to the client or respond to an email is doing his brand and professional reputation a disservice as the image of unprofessionalism is what will stick with a client. A freelance writer must understand that his name is part of his business presence and as such, can be destroyed by his ill-conceived actions in relation to a potential or existing client.

The reputation of a writer is built by the way he deals with his clients far more than the quality of his writing. It is this client-writer relationship that is built upon the trust of a client in the name of his writer. That is why a writer just starting out in the business needs to make sure that he will choose an online username that clearly depicts what he stands for as a writer. This will be the brand by which his work will be judged by and remembered by many. Pick a brand / name that will stand the test of time and be easily understandable and remembered by the client.

The Brand Name Says It All

The Kardashians got it right when they chose to brand themselves with simply their last names. The family established who they wanted to be and how they wanted to be known over a period of time. Their last name became synonymous with the image they would eventually be associated with as a clan. The same goes for freelance writers.

Establishing a personal brand through the quality of your product or image creation helps future clients find you. Sure, your name won't mean anything when you first start out. That's why the brand of the writer needs to be remembered for the following things:

1. A track record as a writer
2. At least 5 years consistently working as a writer
3. Quality of work
4. Strong client-writer relationships
5. Above board business dealings

By having a personal brand, the writer will be able to build all of these as part of his reputation over time and allow him to create his own unique corner in the ever-changing freelance writing world.

Marketing Online Services and Promotional Tools

Your name has just become your business card and company logo. This is the name that you carry for yourself as a freelance writer across all social media platforms to create a promotable online presence.

Create a logo to associate with your name that signifies something about you as a writer. It isn't enough to just have a flashy business card these days. Those things can easily get lost, but a trending social media account will bring in clients who never had your calling card.

Having a respectable looking social media representation will be enough to at least gain a potential client's attention and could result in a service inquiry for the writer. Using the same name across the web will also help establish not only a social media presence, but a trust in the name since it is static and constantly refers to only one writer all over the networked web.

Remember, a freelance writer needs the brand to create a professional presence online. Without one, he will not be able to compete due to a lack of trust in his name, image, and work policies. In this world, a writer's name is his bond.

Reference: https://EssayBrand.com

Obviously, writers need to respond promptly to client emails. Other than that, the quality of the work actually provided is, by far, the most important factor in any writer's reputation. My emails are short and sometimes blunt, simply because I'm busy writing projects. Friendly and more engaging emails might be more effective in getting new business from first-time clients; but once clients receive their first projects and know they're always going to get high-quality work delivered on time, they couldn't care less about anything else. For the same reason, I'd much rather take my car to a mechanic who's too busy for long conversations but whose work is always reliable and completed on time than take my car to a mechanic with a great personality who spends more time talking to me and offers me coffee but whose repairs are unreliable and/or not completed by the time promised.

In fact, that's not even just a hypothetical analogy: it's exactly the choice I've made. The Toyota dealership has a very nice waiting area and friendly staff and they provide coffee for customers; but half the time, my car isn't ready by the time they promised and I end up having to take it back in because they forgot to take care of something or because the problem for which I brought it in wasn't fixed properly. Meanwhile, the guy whose little shop in Queens I've used for almost 20 years never has any time for any discussion beyond the quickest possible explanation of the problem and there isn't even anywhere for customers to sit down, but his repairs are always good. The dealership's style of customer service is definitely much more "reassuring" for new customers, but the reason my independent mechanic has kept customers just like me for so many years is precisely because the quality of the work performed is infinitely more important to us than how fuzzy and warm customers feel from our conversations with him. Precisely the same is true when it comes to this business.

Ditto and then some. I generally spend more time communicating with a new client because, like most in this forum, they are leery of using a new writer. I totally get that. I spend time helping them feel comfortable, knowing I am a real person who writes for a living. I am available via email anytime for all my clients, but the extend of communication after the relationship is established significantly changes. It's the same for most customers, too. They'll email a lot at first but once they're more comfortable and know they can rely on me, they relax and let me do the job I have been hired to do. :)

Dogs in the moonlight. Bat-faced girls. I can be your long-lost pal. Just don't call me late for dinner. Honestly, just keep a song around and you'll be fine. Call me "Al." Get dressed to the Nutcracker and you'll do fine. Love you guys -- even you Sarah Hang in there.

There are very few industries where the reputation of the service provider is as crucial and central as academic writing. The very nature of the business makes it uniquely sensitive to brand image in a manner very different from most other businesses. Renowned corporations like Amazon and Netflix get dozens of negative reviews daily yet they still continue to thrive in spite of them. An academic service provider can lose all credibility based on just a handful of negative reviews.

There are several causes of this high sensitivity to negative feedback.

First is the reality that an academic writer is intrinsically wholly responsible for and identified by the work they produce. It is not like a restaurant or an online retail store where any one of the several people involved in the distribution chain can affect delivery and client satisfaction. A writer has no excuse for a dissatisfied customer who bears no valid blame.

Another reason why students place so much value on a writer's reputation is the belief that one complaint or negative review represents tens of non-voiced others. A writer with two complaining clients has around 20 unsatisfied students. As much as there is nothing to back this ratio, it is true that very many students would swallow their losses and accept a pathetically written paper or move on to try a different writer rather than share a disappointing experience.

Lastly, the industry's bleak and tense environment, coupled with the apprehensive nature of the interaction between the main players in various forums exponentially magnifies any negative mentions, however trivial and regardless of the merits.

It takes years of hard work to build a name, but it's well worth the effort. It's difficult to do in almost every profession, but even more so in essay writing due to its specific nature. And once you have built a name, you have to safeguard it from all sorts of malicious attacks - from scams and false reviews, to crooked competitors trying to cheat you of your work and your money.

It is because a writer's name becomes his brand that he must do everything to safeguard it from others who would like to ride on the reputation and business excellence of a well-known name in the business. My company once had a problem with a cyber-squatter who bought a domain name highly similar to my own writer's identity, which also happened to be my company name.

Mistyping my company URL would send the student to my competitor, whose associates were more than willing to help con the client. Normally, the client did not realize the mistake until it was too late. I was really glad when that competitor of mine eventually bit the dust. I made sure to protect my company name from then on by buying all possible domain names and sound alikes, which all directed to my official company website. By completing that method of protecting my company name, I found I was able to better protect my personal brand as well.

Branding is definitely important in this business. That is why the scam companies try to use several brand names for their company to their advantage. By using different names, they hope to be able to create an eventual brand name of trust among the students. The students do not know that the companies have several identities online and, up until recently, I thought that independent writers had only one identity online as well.

I have used my name across several work platforms and social media consistently for the past decade. So, when I came across an independent writer who has 6 different names on various social media accounts and job platforms, I knew he was trouble. Upon further investigation, I found out that his work quality and cost depended upon the identity that the client hired him ask. He had a high - end profile, a mid-range profile, and a low-range profile. All designed to allow him to earn the most out of his clients, depending upon their actual student abilities.

I consider that independent writer to be a scumbag and I have spent a lot of time blowing his cover wherever I find him. That is why I think student's should still be careful of the writer they hire, regardless of his name brand. You never really know...

That's why the safest option is always to use a provider who is willing to disclose his full name, exact location, and a local landline phone # to prospective clients on request, so that you can confirm that information independently, using public information searches, just to make sure that you're dealing with a real person who can never hide behind the cloak of anonymity typically associated with online transactions.

Would you be willing to submit a government issued ID, say your driver's license, to a potential client if he asks for proof of the information you have disclosed to them? I am asking because it is very easy to make up a name, rent a virtual address, and pay for a rented landline phone number. You can get any service you want or need online to make yourself sound and look legit. A government issued ID is usually the most reliable form of confirming all of your data. Are you open to such requests from the students who may be interested in hiring your services?

I've already done that several times for very skittish clients who were already ripped off by a company or a bad writer by the time they decided to try me.

That's very good to know. It shows that you are willing to build the trust factor with the students in any way that they wish to. It also gives the students peace of mind knowing that you are on the level with them to that extent. There would be no reason for them not to hire you other than the price consideration I think. If they can afford you or not becomes the vital question in the end.

It might only be very easy to make up a new name that's entirely devoid of any residential history capable of being verified independently. That's why I have always made very clear that it's important to confirm any ID information provided by a writer independently, using public information searches:


It would actually be impossible for someone to make up a name, especially a very unusual name, and also to create a fake retroactive history of addresses and phone numbers associated with that newly made-up fake name, going back decades. Just about any search of my full name will immediately generate my current street address, as well as my landline, where I can be reached. Furthermore, it would also be completely impossible for someone to hack into the US Department of Health & Human Services Inspector General's public website, to fraudulently insert my name as the "Writer/Editor" on the Acknowledgement page of HHS-OIG reports that were published 15+ years ago. The same goes for hacking into the US Patent and Trademark Office to fake anything about my 1992 patent for reusable hockey tape under my name in the publicly searchable USPTO database. Finally, I don't believe it's possible to obtain a new landline in NYC (especially with an old 212 # vs. a new 646 #) without proof of occupancy at the exact physical address associated with that landline, or under the name of any person other than the person associated with the proof of occupancy on that new account. Phone numbers can also be searched very easily, nowadays, with those search results providing the entire history of landlines; in my case, the (independently) verifiable history of the landline where I can still be reached today goes back many decades.

So, without trusting a single word from me as to the truth about my identity, anybody can simply do his own quick completely independent search of public databases to cross-reference and verify my full name, my long-term NYC address associated with it, my long-term landline associated with it, as well as the irrefutable evidence that I obviously really worked as a Writer/Editor for the US Federal Government at 26 Federal Plaza, in Manhattan.