Relationship between an Essay website's appearance and the quality of work it delivers

There is a notion that the fancier an essay website looks,the poorer the quality of work it produces and the less qualified and experienced their writers are.As much as this belief can't be absolute,are there some elements in it to support what it suggests?

As far as I know, Google likes fancy sites, and by fancy here I mean the ones that look trustworthy and intuitive to access. So if the team working on an essay site wants it to rank well in Google, they will try to do a good job with the design. This rule applies to all sites, not just essay services.

If the site looks good, this does not necessarily guarantee that the writers will do a good job with your paper. But you must agree that you'll be more likely to trust the service with a site that looks trustworthy and has a good navigation.

That's an interesting question (and assumption). I don't believe a 'fancy website' equals a 'better writing service' though. It's quite often the opposite - writers or companies that deliver what they promise don't NEED to have a fancy website because their high-quality products/services speak for themselves. A lot of fancy websites miss the point and by adding more bells-and-whistles they make the site less efficient and more confusing. In the 'academic research business' it's even more exposed because for foreign owners of such services creating a fancy website is essential in their overall strategy; their writers cannot compete with English native speakers, so instead they *try* to compete in a better web design. Even the most successful freelance writers (still) use an email address to conduct 100% of their freelance writing services because this is all they need to make it efficient and long-lasting.

Regarding search engines, they don't necessarily prefer fancy sites (look how 'fancy' their own homepages are).

Agreed. Some of the nicest-looking commercial websites out there are nothing but smoke screens for scammers. Their business models are based upon scamming an endless supply of inexperienced customers and on investing their resources into their customer portals instead of on hiring good writers to produce quality work for their customers. Most of the time, it's the atrocious web copy that makes it obvious that nobody in those organizations is capable of composing a grammatically-correct English sentence. However, there are also some of them whose web copy is well written even though there's not one writer in their organization who can produce a high-quality product for customers. As mentioned already, the "professional" appearance and functionality of their sites is specifically designed as their marketing strategy.


Correct. I used only my AOL email address until 2009 or 2010 when I created a simple intuit page that functioned mainly to help me avoid having to type out the same basic information repeatedly in response to new inquiries. I created a second email address posted on that page just so that I'd know how many new clients came to me after reading that page. That site had no functionality and couldn't be found on its own except to the extent it was permitted to be publicized here in my "signature" and on Essay Chat. Still, most of my new inquiries came through my main email that I've used since 1999 or 2000 and I just responded to inquiries with a link to that site where prospective clients could find the answer to most of their FAQs.

Until a few months ago, I still used only those two email addresses and that informational page for my business: and I directed any new clients who came through the newer email to my main email as soon as they became clients. I was perfectly fine doing business that way except for the fact that some people who are principals (and/or have financial interests) in large commercial essay companies continually post on this forum that writers who use their regular email addresses aren't as trustworthy as commercial essay companies with websites, and without any acknowledgement whatsoever (such as Major's above) that some of us writers who still use our email addresses for our work are some of the best writers in the business and that we're also some of the very same writers who have also been the top writers at some of the very best essay companies, including theirs. In some cases, it was their essay companies who originally asked some of us to register here years ago to help defend their companies against the false accusations against them by the scam companies that were trying to discredit them to steal their business.

After the most recent thread ( a few months ago) in which one or more undisclosed essay-company reps and/or principals again refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of some of us good and honest writers who, for whatever reason, still use our emails for business, I decided to invest the time creating a new domain so that the continual insinuations that students shouldn't trust any writer who uses an ordinary email without a website wouldn't hurt my business.

But for those continual blanket warnings without any acknowledgment of obvious exceptions to the general caution about anonymous emails, I'd never have had to bother to create a searchable domain name. In my case, it was strictly a necessary response to all of those deliberately overbroad warnings, in effect, about all writers using their email addresses for business instead of website domains.

Using a free account is bad. Using a paid domain is bad (most new hosts offer some type of custom web-builder, which is what I used to make mine) if it looks too good or too new. I think someone (too lazy to go find out who) had a very nice discussion about site age recently. The jist of it was - if the site is new, it's bad. Interesting, don't you think?

However, I do agree that some of the best companies in the industry operate with completely antiquated sites. Painting the fence once in a while is not a bad thing though.

FreelanceWriter I'm sure you're not suggesting that the risk of placing an order through a well established company adds up the same as doing so through a random anonymous email address.True,there are several trustworthy and competent individuals using their personal email addresses,such as yourself,but they are so few as to render leaning towards their side of that argument an exercise in futility.And as much as you may be the best writer in the business,the concern regarding personal email addresses is mainly one of trust,with competence coming second.Ask any student who's been to EssayChat about personal email addresses....its a scam bonanza going on over there

That's how it is. Ask Google - they won't give high authority to a new website, either. A new website = (risk) OR (risk + baggage from the unknown past).

Again, by "fancy" I meant trustworthy-looking and easy to navigate.


I agree with painting the fence once in a while - if the site looks too old, I wouldn't like to order anything on it, whether it's an essay or a book or a new pair of shoes.

Then perhaps you should ask yourself whether it is attitudes such as yours that misdirect innocent clients into falling for the fancy dressing being referred to here on this thread

Of course not, partly because that's an apple-to-oranges comparison. You have well-established companies and well-established freelance writers who happen to use their emails instead of websites; and you have scam websites and "random anonymous" freelancers. Obviously, well-established essay companies and well-established freelance writers can both be good choices. There are also some potential advantages and disadvantages of both that I've previously detailed in similar discussions.

I'm not leaning toward anybody and I still routinely refer clients to one of the reputable essay companies for whom I've done a lot of work even though I haven't written anything on my company account for almost 2 years. I've said many times that there's enough business in this industry for reputable essay companies and reputable freelance writers to coexist peacefully and to recognize that we're not enemies, because the real enemies are the scammers, irrespective of whether they run scam essay companies or much smaller-scale operations as solo scammers using emails.

What I resent are undisclosed principals of reputable websites who deliberately lump all freelance writers together here with the anonymous scammers, including those of us they've known for many years because we're also writers for their essay companies and they know that we've always used the exact same user names on the forum that we've always used as our writer IDs on their websites. They repeatedly warn customers never to trust any writer using AOL, for example; and they never mention that they know there are exceptions to that generally-valid proviso, despite the fact that their own companies have always communicated with us via those same AOL emails by which they know us in their company systems.

You, by contrast, are new here and know nothing about me except what you've read on this forum and you already acknowledge in your post that I'm probably a legitimate writer who's very good at what he does for a living. By contrast, there's at least one undisclosed principal of one of the essay companies that has sold thousands of essays that I wrote under the company-writer user name "FreelanceWriter" and who knows with 100% certainty that I'm the same person but still absolutely refuses to stop making blanket statements about writers who use their AOL emails and never acknowledges that those characterizations don't apply to me, or to at least 3 other writers on this forum who have also written thousands of essays for that same company and who also post here under their company user names.


One unintended consequence of this forum and Essay Chat is that they've provided a platform for some anonymous scamming writers to advertise. Previously, a scammer would have had to create a website because there were no real opportunities to advertise just an email address the way they've been doing on Essay Chat.

The other thing that you need to understand is that this forum and Essay Chat were both created by essay companies (as mentioned on the Disclosure/TOS page); and that the purpose of their existence is to retrieve some of the business that they were losing to the scam essay companies flooding the industry. Nobody who posts here does so as an altruistic exercise for the benefit of students; writers post here to help establish a good reputation and to publicize themselves in permissible ways; and essay-company owners post here to help identify as many scam companies as possible to stem the flow of customers that those scam companies can continue stealing from them.

My only problem with any of those undisclosed essay-company owners is that they never acknowledge that they know that some of us freelance writers are talented legitimate writers; instead, they continually treat all of us as though we're stealing "their" business because they don't seem to appreciate that we have the exact same right to earn an honest living writing essays as they have selling essays, including many essays that they know we've actually written for their companies. In my opinion, they should simply avoid making deliberately-overbroad statements and warnings about anonymous writers that they know are as damaging to those of us they know to be legitimate freelancers as they are to the anonymous scammers exploiting the anonymity of emails to perpetrate their scams.

I've finally switched from relying mainly on my 16 year-old email address by creating a website; but the point is that I wouldn't have had to do that but for the continual warnings that failed to acknowledge any difference between established freelance writers and totally anonymous writers. If you can author a post fairly distinguishing legitimate freelance writers using email accounts from the scammers doing so to exploit that anonymity, they could have done the same in fairness to honest freelancers and prospective customers alike.

I tried to post an ad using a fake email, but it doesn't work, maybe it worked this way previously but now it's required to have an established account.


If there are several genuine freelance writers with an @aol account and 10,000 fake or unprofessional ones, the statement is close to 100% valid.

Understood. This forum and Essay Chat are apparently doing their best to close loopholes that have previously allowed scammers to exploit their anonymity on those platforms.


The proportion of genuine writers using AOL and other similar emails as a subset of fake writers doing the same is probably not much different from the proportion of legitimate essay companies as a subset of the thousands of legitimate-looking essay companies that are just fronts for scammers. It wouldn't take very much effort (or anything beyond fairness and good-faith intellectual honesty) for anybody posting about the dangers of anonymous solo writers to say something along the lines of "While there are certainly some good writers using their anonymous emails, customers should obviously be very wary of writers about whom they know nothing other than their email addresses." Whenever I refer to scam essay companies, I am very careful to distinguish those frauds from the legitimate companies; it would just be nice if people who have their own self-interests in promoting essay companies in general acknowledged the same about the existence of legitimate freelance writers, exactly the way you and Emilia have in this thread, especially in this relatively small community in which the individuals posting those warnings, in fact, know that some of the writers here are the same writers whose essays their companies sell.

Well, yes, of course, which is my point. Certain writers seem to forget that this forum was designed to protect customers from SCAMS. The burden is not on me to provide caveats about a handful of writers who refuse to get with the times. If they would put half as much effort into setting up a legitimate website and/or corporation as they do complaining about my lack of caveats, they would find that their business would improve AND customers wouldn't have to roll the dice.

The primary responsibility of the members you refer to is to protect innocent students from being scammed. I doubt they will be posing every few lines during posting to acknowledge and distinguish you from the thousands of thieves using email addresses. I'm also not sure if it is fair to expect them to. Not in this forum.

I'm a genuine academic writer and I work hard. I've never had trouble getting clients and now most of my income comes from repeat clients. I'm sure that will come to an end once they graduate, and I'll need to build up my base of regulars again. Anyway, I digress. I used to operate solely from an e-mail address and that went fine for some time, but I read a lot of bad press about writers who do that. So, I built a professional website and created a dedicated e-mail account linked to that site. I'm sure the website helps me draw more clients, and I receive numerous compliments in relation to how it looks in comparison to others. However, I'm sure there are plenty of great writers without websites or with websites that don't look so great, as well as scammers with websites that look great or otherwise. There is no real formula to be followed here, but if I were a student, I'm pretty certain that I'd trust a writer with a decent looking website over one without.

If I was in the buying business, I think I would actually prefer to work with someone who only had an email address and a recommendation from a friend.

That's how most of us get business....happy clients recommending us to their friends (at least those writers I know, including myself; can't speak for everybody). Marketing helps a bit, but mostly to fill the gaps during cycle changes.

True. Does anyone else find that clients who come to you as the result of recommendations can still be wary even though they've been told that you're trustworthy and capable of producing good work? The paranoia and wariness of clients in such instances has always confused me a little.

The vast majority of my clients are repeat customers and their friends. New clients are always trickling in, but, admittedly, at a faster rate since I created a website with my own domain.

I definitely think that it helps to underline credibility, but unfortunately it means that scammers can offer a false sense of security :(

You're welcome.

Was it your suggestion writers2beware that FreelanceWriter do that?

See post #13 above.

He had/s criticized me repeatedly for posting 100% valid warnings against trusting anonymous, freelance writers who use Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and other free email providers as their only means of interaction and identification. The vast majority of such "writers" are shameless, ESL con artists from third-world countries who use anonymous email accounts and fake names as their tools of fraud. Since FreelanceWriter chose to use only an AOL address to conduct his business, he actually expected me to post a caveat about him, individually, every time I addressed the issue.

Noted. I was just curious about the "You're welcome."

That's strictly your interpretation and not what I ever said. I objected to your blanket statements that seemed to me to be deliberately overbroad and meant to raise doubts about all freelance writers, including those you know for a fact as totally legitimate writers and as some of the best, most prolific, and most reliable writers who ever wrote for the top essay companies, including the very large American company that you say you don't own or work for but have previously mentioned having access to their internal admin screens.

I objected to your refusal to acknowledge that some of the very best writers in this industry still relied on their regular emails and that there's a big difference between unknown writers with anonymous emails who are totally new to the scene and writers who have been using the same email for more than a decade and also posting openly on this board for many years under IDs obviously and intentionally derived from those email addresses, as well as using those same IDs as their company writer user names at companies to which you have referred as the best of the best. I objected to the way that you seemed to be deliberately steering all potential customers to essay companies and away from any freelance writers in general, by refusing to ever acknowledge, even once, that there were any obvious exceptions to your general warnings about dealing with writers identified only by their email addresses. Any qualification, such as "while there are some exceptions..." or "although there are some legit writers who still choose to do business under their old emails..." would have been appreciated, even without having mentioned any of us specifically.

I'd been chugging along just fine that way and only shifted to using my own domain because I knew that your statements would be harmful to the business of all of us legit freelancers; and I believed that you made no effort to distinguish us from the rip-off artists about whom you were warning people because steering business away from us as well as from the rip-off artists was intentional and beneficial to you.

Weak, very weak. First of all, if you're going to make claims about statements that I have supposedly made, you need to quote them. Secondly, please tell me: do I own and/or work for the Ukrainians at essaywriters.net.DND? Since I've posted screen captures of their admins in the past, I surely must, right?

Oh, yeah . . . please also reference a post in which I state that "every writer who uses an anonymous email address is fraudulent." That would be helpful in proving that your complaint has any validity whatsoever. Again, you need to remember the purpose of this forum.

BTW, do you deny that the vast majority of writers who use anonymous email addresses are scammers?

You routinely make blanket statements that are very obviously designed to steer customers toward essay companies and away from any and all freelance writers. You warn customers "never" to trust "anyone" who uses just an email address without any hint that you know for a fact that there are exceptions to that general rule, such as in the form of several long-term forum members who have built up a decade or more of goodwill in our email addresses and who have used those same email addresses as essay-company writers at the companies to which you have referred as the best in the business.

Likewise, you've given the following advice despite your knowledge that several of the best writers in this business advertise our services on EssayChat and that your statements are very detrimental to our business:


and


both in this thread: https://essayscam.org/forum/es/emails-deceptive-anonymous-writers-gmail-yahoo-826/2/


Of course not. But I believe that you know that your blanket statements are equally harmful to legitimate freelance writers who (for whatever reason) have chosen to continue doing business under their long-time email addresses and that with very little effort, you could use qualifiers like "most" instead of making statements that are obviously as damaging to some very good and reliable freelance writers as they are to the scammers. I believe that you write well enough that you'd use appropriate qualifiers (just for the sake of accuracy, if nothing else) if you didn't also consider good freelance writers to be your competitors and if it weren't in your financial interests to steer all potential clients to essay companies partly by disparaging all freelancers with intentionally over-broad blanket statements that you know as well as anybody don't apply to some of us at all.

I guess the bottom line is that students don't 'have time' / 'are too lazy' to do detailed research on who is legitimate or not; the fact is that out of 10 anonymous writers 8 ARE either scammers or lie about their location/credentials. (not saying you are anonymous, just in general) Those who have more time to research will find out you are in the 20% category. I don't understand your frustration - nobody is here to attack you personally (it seems whenever someone mentions the keywords: 'writer' / 'freelance writer' / 'independent writer' you assume they are talking about you).

First, thank you. Second, my only frustration is over the words "any," "all," "anyone," and "never" instead of "most" or "majority." I believe you'd agree that in the universe of all essay companies in existence, very many if not most of them are either outright rip-offs or producers of horrible essays written by people who have no business calling themselves "writers," especially writers in the English language. But I believe that you and Writers2Beware would both flip your lids if any freelance writer posted advice here telling customers "never" to trust "any" essay company.

I don't even disagree that 20% is probably a much higher percentage than the actual proportion of legitimate writers in the universe of all writers using only their email addresses to do business. Likewise, you probably agree that the vast majority of all essay companies advertising online should not be trusted, either; but you wouldn't appreciate it if a freelancer posted that customers should "never" trust "any" essay company because they're "all" unreliable.

My most recent contribution to this thread had been a very benign post about the beneficial effect of having recently shifted to using my own domain. Then W2B posted an inaccurate and sarcastic subjective interpretation of my position claiming that I expected to be excepted "individually" each and every time the issue of writers with anonymous emails is discussed, which is absolutely untrue. All I expect here is the more accurate and fair use of language instead of deliberately over-broad warnings whose obvious intent seems to be to disparage all members of a group instead of an admittedly very large subgroup. I have tried to make the argument many times that legitimate essay companies and legitimate freelance writers should both recognize that we are all on the same side against scammers of both varieties and that neither should disparage the other (especially intentionally) in the fight against bad or scamming writers and bad or scamming essay companies.

I don't need you to do that. Why? I've already stated -- numerous times -- that the vast majority of essay sites are fraudulent. The only qualifier that I have employed is that old, verifiably American companies are safer to use for various reasons.

Qualifier is the only thing FW is asking for, rather than the blanket statements you use. The majority is not the same as all, is it? You're constantly pushing one double labeled button and hoping we're all to dumb to notice what's written under the second label.......He never asked that you caveat him personally, just to stop giving blanket statements. That's the same thing I asked a while back. All I got in response were the same antithetical claims you're giving him now. I will urge, once again, that we all stand together against our true enemies - the ones this site was made to fight.

Wordsies, I must remind both of you that there is absolutely no way for a potential customer to legitimately vet an anonymous email address for age, geographical location, or corporate standing. Web sites are more transparent, as I have proven on countless occasions. Companies are even more transparent, as corporate records are accessible to the public.

BTW, how, exactly, would using your "qualifiers" and preferred wording/phrasing in any way enlighten/protect potential customers (i.e., victims) and lessen their chances of being scammed by an anonymous email address? Again, you must remember that specifying your (or anyone else's) email address or username is not allowed. So, by not using absolutes, I would be increasing the liklihood that potential customers (i.e., victims) will role the dice. Based strictly on numbers/percentages, the likelihood that a customer's dice comes to rest on your email address is minuscule.

Well for one thing, you know very well that (and I exclude myself from this completely, just trying to make a point) at least three highly qualified, native American writers with a long history in this industry advertise on EC. Are they cheaters? Do they defraud clients?

When you say "don't trust ANYONE" on EC, what possible interpretation could that have? That's all I'm arguing. You are perfectly justified in almost everything you say on ES, and I really do consider you one of the top contributors. But you cannot dismiss the little good there is for the sake of weeding out the bad. It doesn't work.

Wordsies, please carefully read my previous post again. It appears that you are not absorbing the realities and my extremely sound reasoning. Is it really your position that the existence of "at least 3 legit writers" justifies countless, potential customers rolling the dice against a pool that also includes literally thousands of frauds?

BTW, FreelanceWriter admits that his business has increased since outwardly legitimizing his operation (i.e., making him more "accountable" and trustworthy in prospective customers' eyes) by establishing his own Web site. Maybe you should take my advice, too, instead of expecting customers to take completely blind, unnecessary risks?

I had a website with a registered domain for a long time. I made it shortly after I started working independently and it works well for me. That's just business 101. But, you probably know this already. I am not arguing that having a website is bad, of course it's not. It can only bring more clients. But I do think you (especially you) and others here HAVE a duty to point out that there are legitimate writers out there, even those who use only their email.

I do the same thing for companies, even those I'm not affiliated with, whenever someone asks me (and I get those kinds of emails from time to time). And I really don't have any interest (financial anyway) in promoting companies, now do I? But, if a client comes and asks me about a company, I think it is my duty to inform clients about their options, to stop them from getting scammed.

That's why I joined this forum, and I'll always hold that position.

P.S - I never implied you should stop advising students. I simply said, you need to include qualifiers, just like you do when you talk about American or other legitimate companies.

You are missing a critical point: the ability to verify. Again, "there is absolutely no way for a potential customer to legitimately vet an anonymous email address for age, geographical location, or corporate standing. Web sites are more transparent, as I have proven on countless occasions. Companies are even more transparent, as corporate records are accessible to the public." Until you come up with a way to similarly verify anonymous email addresses, you're comparing apples to oranges. How, for example, would you instruct a potential customer to verify an "old, American email address"? What steps should he/she take? What tools should he/she use to gather the third-party, trustworthy data?

EssayScam, for one. That's the purpose of this site, is it not? After all, if someone claims to be in business since, say, 2005, and has an account on EssayScam that is 2 days old, that's a good sign that that person is either daft or a liar. For example, I started working solo in 2013. Before going into this, I did a review of all sites that had a connection with this industry. I reckon that every legitimate writer/company did/does the same, so that's a verfiable metric, correct? Age of the domain is not the only metric, because people can buy, sell, trade, hack domains. Same goes for companies, altought not in the same way - but, for example, shares can be sold to a new owner, which is often not as transparent as it should be. By your logic, no metric is safe.

Actually, my business hasn't increased compared to what it was before you started hammering away here that customers should "never" trust "any" writer using an AOL (or other plain) email address to do business or "any" writer who advertises on Essay Chat. I'd already purchased several domains 4 or 5 years ago but never got around to doing anything with any of them because I already had almost more than enough business relying only on my email address. In general, I'm slow to adopt changes unless there's a need: I'm perfectly happy using my wife's old Motorola Razr phone and I still play hockey in vintage equipment from the 1980s just because I like it better.

I no longer really had any choice but to shift to a website with my own domain, just to escape from underneath that intentionally very broad blanket of doubt and suspicion that you cast here over "any" and "all" freelance writers using generic emails. Since shifting to my website, my business has returned to roughly where it was before. Previously, my AOL email address, my forum S/N, and the goodwill and reputation that I'd established for my work over many years were the only "branding" that I ever really needed and I was no less "accountable" or trustworthy operating that way for more than a decade than I am now with a better website.

Utterly false. Again, you're either not reading closely or you're choosing to cherry-pick.


Do you see the progression there?

That's what I'm trying to show you, there are ways in which sites and companies can be assessed - although those ways need not be completely safe (nothing is 100% safe after all). The same can be applied to private writers, if one only chooses to apply the same logic. We're saying the same thing, but I'm looking at two sides of the coin, whereas you have a coin with only one side.