Getting my head around the industry

Major
If I enter this market it will happen quickly and on scale, I don't do things by halves, I'm either in and very well prepared or I'm out. If I wasn't already looking at such things I'd just be another dreamer without any skills hoping to make billions from this interweb thingy.

So what are your ideas so far? How do you hope to make it work? What are the most important things to succeed? What things can be done better?

Having been in the online business for several years you could write a thesis about it even without knowing all the details.

WHAT?

Major
I seem to be answering all of the questions, so I will pass on those 4 for now.

WritersBeware
WHAT? What? Are those terms too colloquial? Or are you questioning that I would seek to take volume in the market quickly.

No-they're too WRONG. Take some English lessons.

No. You cannot do it better than the ones who have been here for eons. The best we can do is learn from them but ACCEPT that we (especially you) won't beat them. Do you know how many years of experience they have?

Get real ...

WritersBeware
Grins, she'll be right mate, I won't be the one writing essays.

WRT
It would be interesting to know on what you are basing your assumptions.

No assumptions here; industry knowledge and experience.

Your intimate knowledge might apply to this industry, but certainly not me. I won't be accepting or conceding anything until I have sufficient information to make an informed decision on the viability of entering this industry.

If you would like to share your knowledge and suggest what they do so well I would love to read it. From what I have seen I really have to question the professionalism of some of the participants in several areas.

You should consider yourself lucky that you have not already taken a "professional" boot to the face, thief.

I can sincerely say I am not nor have I ever been a thief. I'm not certain what I have supposedly done but your childish provocation won't work on me, I subscribe to the sticks and stones theory :D

The editing an proof reading part of this job composes the tiniest fraction of the actual student clientele. Majority of the work relates to writing an original research paper from scratch, based on the given instructions of the student. While the OP is correct in assuming that the job is supposed to be just about polishing and editing, it somehow evolved into actual research work from scratch because it was much simpler to just write a new paper than try to correct the mistakes of the existing paper. There are just times when that simply cannot be done.

The writing industry has evolved from editing and polishing. These days, writers also do more than just academic writing. Which is why the freelance writers manage to keep themselves employed even when the students are out of school. It is for the non-academic writing jobs that writers often get hired to do the polishing and editing of a paper. These professional papers don't normally require the writer to write the paper from the beginning unless otherwise requested to do so. In which case, the companies are willing to pay a premium price to the writer involved in the project.

This industry was never about editing or proofreading. Before the Internet, academic ghost writing was advertised in the back pages of magazines. For roughly the first decade of the Internet age, this business was substantially about reselling "stock" essays from the thousands of essays written by writers at each company, as well as the essays that those companies purchased from writers. Some of them used to offer "subscriptions" that allowed students to download a certain number of those stock essays every month. Turnitin and comparable services destroyed the market for stock essays beginning in 2007. Since then, it's been almost exclusively about custom writing. Approximately 1 out of every 100 inquiries I get is just for editing or proofreading.

The main focus of this industry has always been to create the academic paper for the student who may not really know how to go about the development of his paper. Our main clientele are the students who need help in developing their paper. Once in a while, we get work orders from students and professionals who have already completed their papers but want it reviewed on a peer level. Others, want the paper polished, they feel that the paper is already complete, but missing something. They hire the second pair of eyes to see what else can be improved in the paper. Then, there are those who don't trust their bundled grammar checker and would like to have a human proof read their paper. There is really no foundation for this job. You have to be able to do anything the client asks. If he wants a whole paper written, consider it done. Editing? Revising? Proofreading? Done. Done. Done!

This industry was originally envisioned as a student helper. A group of dedicated academic writers who would polish the essay that the student already wrote. It was later on that the requests to write the original paper for the student came to be. That was an unexpected evolution of the occupation. Now, the writers do both, edit, revise, and finalize a paper or, depending upon the client's need, write the whole paper in an original form. These services are fast going out of style though because the students have started turning to AI for the work that we were originally hired to do. Students will pinch pennies whenever and wherever they can, without realizing they are sacrifing the quality of work they submit when they use AI for the paper completion.