I believe all the major essay companies have always sold both pre-written projects and custom-written projects; and that's never changed. I believe the change to which you're referring actually occurred around 2007, as soon as Turnitin made pre-written projects all but worthless, because they could no longer be used the way many (if not most) customers used to use them. The only real changes are that they can't sell as many pre-written essays and they had to lower their prices significantly, to reflect their greatly-diminished value. Nowadays, the only real value of pre-written essays is to help students get an idea of what a project on their topic should look like. But, in most cases, this is a waste of money, simply because professors will usually provide sample essays that provide the same benefit; and those samples are much better, anyway, because there's no doubt that the professor considered those samples to be good, which may or may not be the case with pre-written projects purchased elsewhere. At best, it's a complete waste of money; at worst, the pre-written commercial essay isn't even any good.


I don't think pre-written essays are very useful for that, largely because plagiarism scanners also scan reference pages. Even if the substantive content of an essay is sufficiently original to pass the scan, any essay that lists more than one or two references from any pre-written project will get flagged. I've even had customers tell me that the custom essays they purchased from an essay company failed, because the company writer apparently re-used so many of the references from a previous project that it was obvious that the new project was derived from a pre-written essay. Many students (and some inexperienced writers) don't even realize that citing sources from another source without crediting the source where you found those sources is also academic plagiarism, notwithstanding that the content of the essay itself might actually be all-original.

The writer to whom you're referring left this industry to take a full-time writing (marketing) job at a large law firm. Then, after he realized that he was at least as smart as most of the lawyers at that firm, he enrolled in law school, himself, and is now an associate attorney at a law firm.

I don't think anybody here was ever denying his right to pursue whatever career he chose; and nothing I said (especially) had anything to do with his country of origin. (I've had a very mutually-respectful professional friendship with two different ESL writers here, both of whom have left testimonials for me in various threads on this forum over the years, despite the fact that we've always been direct competitors.) However, I do think it's relevant if someone who's actually been reasonably successful doing this kind of work for about as much as you could possibly consider it a career, full-time for more than 15 years says, in good faith, that he obviously doesn't have the requisite skill set for it. Someone who makes multiple elementary mistakes of the kind that he made in his very short informal forum posts wouldn't even be able to compose a coherent resume or cover letter for himself in English, let alone write them for someone else for money. It doesn't matter to me what the reason is for his English Language writing skill level; but in his case, it's attributable to the fact that English isn't his first language and he just can't write in English sufficiently well to write academic projects for native English speakers. He still has the right to try to do whatever he wants, obviously.

It's also possible that he could write substantively good projects in some academic areas; but I have no idea how smart he is or how much he knows or how well he finds and digests academic literature to write projects in related academic fields. If he wrote good academic projects for himself in his native language, he could probably have done the same in English for anybody whose own English skills were roughly similar to his, which would mean that he might have been realistic to aspire to make a career out of academic writing for ESL customers when he started this thread. It would be interesting to know what happened to him since he posted this in 2011.

Sure. I take Western Union cash payments, once in a while; usually, it's from hyper-cautious clients who want to remain completely anonymous, which is fine with me. In fact, I just took a WU payment yesterday that I haven't retrieved yet. I've also had a few clients actually mail me cash over the years. From the client's perspective, the only price of that anonymity is that there's absolutely no buyer protection, obviously.


Realistically, no client who very deliberately takes the precaution of paying cash is likely ever to use the writer's ID info to sue the writer. That's simply because if the client valued his or her anonymity enough to forgo buyer protection in the first place, the last thing that client ever wants is a permanent record of a court case documenting that he sued an academic writer or essay company while he was in college, for obvious reasons. Court records are searchable and the background investigations that employers do on prospective employees often include both criminal and civil cases.

When new clients tell me that they've already been ripped off by a scam company, it's usually one with a very flashy website and all sorts of supposed testimonials and satisfaction "guarantees" about refunds and/or unlimited free revisions. Unfortunately, many of them don't start Googling "essay" and "scam" until after they've been scammed once or twice.

@almostbradpitt
That info will be very helpful to anybody else who Googles those companies before doing business with them. All too often, victims of scams come here to complain and/or to ask for advice, but without ever divulging the names of the entities that scammed them. By providing this kind of info, you're helping future would-be victims avoid being victimized.

Yes. Just name the company right here.

I actually contacted the first one through a private message and initiated an email exchange. He was so panicked that he was talking about contacting his school, himself, preemptively, to admit his guilt and plead for their assistance. I told him that was like burning down his own house, first, because someone was blackmailing him and threatening to burn it down unless he paid. In any case, the school would have taken action against him based on his confession (even if they'd have ignored the report from the writer); and they'd have just advised him to call the police and/or hire a lawyer. According to his last email to me, he ended up taking my advice to block all forms of contact from the blackmailer and not to do anything like contacting his school to confess. He also shared that it wasn't actually a writer "on" this forum, but a scammer who'd previously been mentioned on this forum in connection with a similar blackmailing scheme that he, apparently, has been perpetrating for years, through various social media, where he finds his victims.

This is probably nothing but their attempt to steer all prospective customers away from any freelance writers because we compete for the same clients. There used to be a very prolific poster on this forum who regularly did the exact same thing, often warning customers never to trust any freelancer, even though his/her company was 100% dependent on the work of us freelance writers and despite knowing that his/her 3 or 4 best writers were also members of this forum who maintained our own private clienteles at the same time that we wrote for his/her essay company.

Here's only a partial history of the most recent series of unprovoked attacks against me, which should suffice for any objective reader to decide whether my characterizations of attribution are "delusional" or well-supported by a wealth of circumstantial evidence. I'll refrain from making any specific characterizations or from offering any of my own conclusions about what IDs might be related to the same individuals and/or other IDs. Readers can draw their own conclusions from the objective evidence:

On April 16th, a (real) client of mine posted a genuine review of my services, here: https://essayscam.org/forum/es/experience-nycfreelancewriter-6683/

That post included some pricing information about the project that Admin removed, at my request. Apparently, that (real) client's positive review of my services provoked UKLawEssays to initiate an all-out attack, accusing me of having used a phony ID to author a fake testimonial. That attack featured various negative comments about my website, the fact that I prefer not to publicize a pricing chart, or a phone #, along with pejorative comments about my having worked as a US Federal Government writer, my grammar, and about what he characterized as my "self-publicity machine," coincidentally, all favorite characterizations of someone who also used to initiate totally unprovoked vicious attacks against me years ago, under the IDs RustyIronChains and Editor75. He also accused Noted and me of being the same person using two IDs and accused me of trying to "pass myself off" as the individual whose (very obvious) stock photo appears on my website, along with all of the other (equally-obvious) stock photos:


*[The word you're looking for here is implied, not "inferred," Mr. Grammarian. Writers and speakers imply; only readers and listeners ever "infer."]

That attack prompted Noted to say the following in Posts #15 & 17, respectively:



Then, "OrchidGoblin" chimes in with equally nasty unprovoked attacks, also commenting pejoratively about my having worked for the government and refers to my posts as "hacky" "run-on" "drivel," all favorite lines of attack from RustyIronChains and Editor75, years ago, before both of those IDs were banned.

In Post #15 of this thread, Editor75 admits, both, to having been a "fraudster" (his own words) and to being the same person as RustyIronChains: https://essayscam.org/forum/ot/editor-pathetic-idiot-5123/



In Post # 24 of this thread, OrchidGoblin introduces himself as "Ed75":
https://essayscam.org/forum/es/genuine-companies-outsource-esl-writers-personal-473/#msg85600


LawEssaysUK was suspended on May 16, 2022 and last posted on that same date. Here's the profile info: https://essayscam.org/forum/index.php?action=userinfo&user=8520

Then, on the exact same day that LawEssaysUK was banned, a brand new member, EssayScrutiny, registered and immediately complained about posters being banned for "pointing out bullies [sic] shortcomings" as that new identity's very first and only post before also getting suspended. The link to that thread is here: https://essayscam.org/forum/ot/random-discussion-5233/36/#msg85773

The link to EssayScrutiny's profile, created on the same day that UKLawEssays got suspended, is right here: https://essayscam.org/forum/index.php?action=userinfo&user=13668

Then, exactly one day later, "Jeannie" showed up, on May 17th, and in her very first post on (supposedly) a brand new forum for "Jeannie," "she" proceeded immediately to this thread here, to pick right up where both OrchidGoblin and UKLawEssays had both been obsessing about my website, my writing ability, and my phone #. Here's "Jeanie's" profile displaying "her" join date of May 17, 2022; and here's "her" first post (supposedly) on a brand new forum for "her" attacking me about my phone # not being displayed on my website, in the same thread where both UKLawEssays and OrchidGoblin had been tag-teaming me about the exact same issues right before those IDs were both banned.

Jeannie's ID was also banned, on June 9th. Then, five days after Jeannie's ban, another new ID ("a1writer") pops up on June 14th, and immediately starts making obvious insulting references to me:

https://essayscam.org/forum/index.php?action=userinfo&user=13671


https://essayscam.org/forum/index.php?action=userposts&user=13696&page=2


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/takes-lot-competent-writer-3261/#msg86043

Incidentally, that Dental client just left the following review on my Review thread a few days ago, in connection with the project referenced by a1writer in one of his very first posts 5 days after Jeannie's ID was suspended:


[The full quote is viewable on my Review thread; it had to be edited for length to be quoted here.]

https://essayscam.org/freelance-writers/FreelanceWriter/

Finally, I'd also suggest that readers review and come to your own conclusions about the profile and posting history of all of the following now-suspended/banned IDs: cruciandiem, mitsubishipier, writerUK, essayscrutiny, masonaid, greencarpet, maltedbickle, grammartarian, ninjawarrior, and wildsquirrel.

I haven't taken a single order from any essay company since 2013 and I can't even imagine anything that I've posted recently that would suggest that I'm "pointing students toward" ANY essay company (other than towards my own sole proprietorship) through my authorized advertisements on this forum. Kindly quote anything I've posted anywhere recently to the contrary.


This "presumption" is so nonsensical on its face that nobody even needs to trust my refutation. Your premise here seems to be that my advertising and self-promotional efforts here have been unsuccessful. Therefore, precisely because I've been so unsuccessful at marketing my own services, I've switched to using those exact same promotional efforts to steer customers towards an essay company for which I used to work, and with the goal of allowing me to take orders from that essay company and to get paid approximately half as much per page as I earn from direct clients. Does that sound the least bit sensible to you? Why would my indirect efforts to steer clients towards a commercial essay company be any more successful than my very direct efforts to advertise and steer customers towards my own essay company?


I'm not "attacking" you; but I do know what "presume" doesn't mean: it doesn't mean making nonsensical things up out of whole cloth.


First, by definition, every freelancer (and company) here is a direct competitor of every other freelancer (and company) here. Second, I have a very long history on this forum of competing only fairly and above board and without ever resorting to criticizing, much less defaming any other legitimate service provider here. Before they retired, Professor Verb and Pheelyks and I always competed against one another without resorting to attempting to undermine, disparage, or post negative comments about one another. The same applies to my competitive relationship with Meokhan, and ResearchPro, before he died in 2015. Both Professor Verb and ResearchPro referred to me as the best writer in the business, because all of us shared the same approach to competing against other legitimate writers only ethically and fairly.

Probably the best example is that when someone posted this thread to try to ruin his business "Pheelyks Versus Freelance Writer: A comparative analysis" https://essayscam.org/forum/es/pheelyks-versus-freelance-writer-comparative-analysis-3051/ , I could have simply remained silent to allow him to absorb as much damage as possible, because he and were direct competitors, at the time. Instead, I was the first person to defend him, because I knew him well enough to know that what was being said about him just wasn't true. I doubt there's a better example anywhere on this forum refuting your claim that I don't believe in "fair play" and "fair competition."

You, yourself, posted many times about my hard-earned reputation for delivering only the highest-quality work to my clients:


essayscam.org/forum/gt/good-paper-1546/#msg85332


And:


essayscam.org/forum/es/genuine-companies-outsource-esl-writers-personal-473/#msg85609


essayscam.org/forum/gt/original-papers-1618/#msg85389

Then, all because I made a very polite (complimentary) reference to the fact that your English is excellent for an ESL speaker/writer, you seem to have completely reversed your statements about me, because you took that as a horrible insult, even though it wasn't intended as one. What I can "presume" from that is that you're incredibly-thin-skinned and extremely defensive about your English Language skills, and that you were terribly insulted at the notion that your writing, although excellent for ESL, is still recognizable as ESL, which it is. You then responded as follows:


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/takes-lot-competent-writer-3261/2/

As I mentioned in that thread, I wasn't trying to insult you or to "discredit" you in any way; but ever since that comment, you've been scraping the barrel to accuse me of "lying," mainly because I said that approximately half of my clients were from the UK. I then searched for something that I could upload to prove what I'd said; but the only record I found that I could post was from a month where I did roughly $10K in business, from 26 clients, 17 of whom were from the US, 8 of whom were from the UK, and 1 of whom was from Australia, and 75% of whom were repeat clients. In conjunction with uploading that document, I acknowledged that only about one-third of those clients were from the UK. Ever since, you and your tag-team buddy here have been trying to portray me as a "liar" who can't be trusted about anything that I've ever posted in 14 years on this forum.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mx5jnc791qxbag2/30%20Days%20Customers.docx?dl=0

https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/takes-lot-competent-writer-3261/2/

Likewise, when your new friend here (who previously accused you and me of being the same person under fake duplicate IDs) claimed that I couldn't possibly be qualified to write UK Law projects competently, I provided proof to the contrary. First, I demonstrated that I'm honest and careful about taking on any projects that I can't take on with confidence, by quoting a UK Law client whose work I turned down (in 2011), precisely because I never take projects unless I'm confident that I can do them well.


https://essayscam.org/forum/es/amons-2176/#msg84449

Then, in Post #17 of this thread linked below, I updated my history with that same client. He decided to use me a few months after I declined his first project; and he was sufficiently happy with the result that he became a regular client, using me for numerous subsequent UK Law (and other) projects for several years (and then again, for non-academic work, in 2020). To prove that (because anytime I say anything, one or both of you call me a "liar"), I posted evidence of our email history, after very carefully redacting all but 2 letters in a very long email address to protect that client's anonymity. In response to that, you two started claiming that I'd violated various laws about "Internet privacy, " and, later, that I "don't respect" my clients' privacy, both of which accusations are patently ridiculous.

https://essayscam.org/forum/es/academic-writing-providers-orders-refunds-2897/#msg85797


Between the three of us, I'm actually the only one who's completely honest about what I'm doing on this forum: I pay to advertise here very openly and I have earned a 14-year reputation on this forum for delivering only the highest-quality projects; and my reputation as an honest reliable writer beyond this forum goes back 22 years. When I wrote for essay companies from 2003 to 2013, I also defended them against any accusations that I knew could not be true. I haven't defended, promoted, or had any association with or interest in any commercial essay company (other than my own) since at least 2013.

There are no disinterested individuals on this forum who don't earn a living from this business or who don't hope to find a reliable essay provider: there are only prospective customers hoping to avoid scams, disappointed customers who've already been scammed, writers and disclosed company reps who advertise and/or represent themselves openly and honestly, and undisclosed dishonest writers and company reps just pretending to be here for some "other" altruistic reasons, and, purposely, without ever admitting that they're really writers or company reps. There are no altruists or humanitarians here, spending many hours of their lives researching and posting about essay companies. Anybody who actively posts here who isn't a customer is someone earning a living from this industry in one way or another; and the more time anybody spends posting here, the more dependent he or she undoubtedly is on this forum for business.


There aren't any "retired" writers here, either. You know who really are "retired" writers? Professor Verb and Pheelyks. You know how anybody can be sure that's true? Because neither of them has ever bothered to come back here even once to waste even a minute of his retirement posting about this industry since (really) retiring from this field. Nobody sane "retires" from this business but still wastes any part of his life posting about essay companies, much less lying about, viciously attacking, disparaging, and defaming legitimate writers with whom he "isn't" competing for business, and in the most dishonest, unethical, creepy and shadiest way possible.

"Checking out" is hardly synonymous with stalking like an obsessed jealous psychopath.


You know what's "unseemly and unprofessional"? Obsessively stalking a competitor and constantly instigating vicious totally unprovoked one-sided attacks full of totally disingenuous purported criticism and outright lies. Given that you've obviously spent more time on my website in the past six months than I have, you undoubtedly already know that I never "haggle" over prices, at all, ever. My FAQs specifically state that I never negotiate prices; it says that I provide a price quote for projects and that whatever price I quote is going to be the price of any project ordered from me.


Obviously, my customers know the cost of their projects before ordering, because they're always prepaid in full. My only clients who don't know the price of projects before ordering are those who have already used me for so many regular projects that they trust me enough to hold onto their lump-sum prepayments from which I just bill off their projects as I do them, and to just let them know, on delivery, what the price of that project is and how much credit they still have remaining for their future projects.

Typically (but not always), these are very busy professional nurses pursuing advanced degrees who need numerous small projects, such as class forum posts and short responses to their classmates' posts, projects whose length is assigned as a range rather than as an exact page count, projects for which the written page count doesn't accurately reflect the amount of work and time involved, and larger projects that must be submitted in very small weekly increments. They know me well enough to trust that my pricing after the fact isn't going to vary at all from pricing in advance and that I'm never going to take advantage of their trust. It's much like a "retainer," except that nothing is ever billed off their pending credit until it's for a new project; nevertheless, it saves us both time emailing about every project one at a time. Currently, I have only one (MBA) academic client who is doing this, replenishing her account with $500 - $1,000 payments whenever her account credit dips below a couple of hundred dollars, and one professional client who does the same for his promotional materials and client communications.


As I've explained before, there are several very good reasons that I don't include prices on my website:

1. Because I work alone and don't have a staff of writers, I price projects (partly) on how much time and work they're likely to involve for me. Likewise, because I'm much busier at some times than at other times, I also price projects (partly) on how much I need to take them at the particular time that they're needed. The busier I am, the more I might charge for projects that would require me to squeeze them onto my calendar and/or to rearrange (or cancel) elements of my non-work life to fit them in. Essay companies with many writers don't have to worry about that, because if some of their writers are too busy to take the project, plenty of others might take it off the assignment board.

2. Many times, when clients, especially new clients, email me for the first time about a project, the only information they provide is something like "Hi. I need a 5-page college History paper due in a week. How much?" This is simply insufficient information for me to price it. I always need to see the exact topic, and the exact specs, and any and all sources or other materials they'll be sharing for the project. There's just no way that I'd want to try to automate that process. After I review the topic, specs, and any sources or materials that the client will be providing, I respond with an exact price. If this were done through an automated process, sometimes, I'd have to contact the client after placement of the order to explain that a 5-pg essay critically analyzing a 30,000-word source cannot be done for the price of an ordinary 5-page essay. The same goes for projects whose specs greatly increase their difficulty and/or the time that they'd require. If I allowed customers to place (or even just price) their orders automatically, some of them might accuse me of a "bait and switch" after I informed them that their projects would cost more than indicated on some general pay chart. I don't need that.

3. Sometimes, the deadlines about which clients originally inquire turn out to be either completely arbitrary rather than reflecting the exact due date on the client's end of things, or they include a week-long deadline cushion on the client's end. Plenty of times, I get requests about projects with a very short proposed due date for which I'd charge much more than for the same project with a longer due date. During the busy seasons, especially, there are (initial) deadline requests that either just can't be accommodated because of how booked up I am, already, or for which I'd charge substantially less with a longer deadline, also based on how booked up I am and how inconvenient it would be for me to add that much shorter deadline to my calendar. Sometimes, the client has no wiggle room on that initial deadline request; however, much more often than not, when I respond indicating what the price would be for the original deadline vs. the price for delivery a few days later, clients immediately respond that they'll take the longer deadline. None of that is anything that could be executed through automated pricing.

These are only a few of the very good reasons that I don't advertise prices. I review every project inquiry, ask whatever questions I need to ask, and then, I provide the price of the project. None of my clients has ever complained about this, either. The only pejorative comments about this have been from my competitors scraping the barrel to disparage me publicly on this forum by implying that there's something "shady" or "unprofessional" about this. There isn't.

If it's someone on this forum, you should just name him, immediately.


Agree 100%.

Well, that's obviously a worse situation, but you still shouldn't pay blackmailers. Send them one last message saying that you already paid for the project and if they contact your school, you will post all of their emails and the details of how they blackmailed you on this forum, so that future Google searches of their company will lead to this information about how they blackmail their customers. Then, immediately block their emails and don't reply to anything else they send you.

1. Don't contact your school.
2. Don't contact your school.
3. Don't contact your school.

4. If you're going to contact anybody, just contact the company to let them know that their writer is blackmailing you for more money after you already paid the company in full for the project.

5. If the company is in on the scam or doesn't help you, definitely let us know the name of the company.

6. If you want to protect yourself against retaliation by the writer (or company), just don't use the project at all. You haven't violated any school rules until the moment that you actually submit the project for credit. If he actually reports you to your school, there's no action thay can take against you if the project that you actually submit is completely different from any work the writer provided. In the unlikely event that your school does ask you about it, you purchased the work as a model to help you understand how to do the project properly and then you wrote your own project that you submitted for credit.

My post was in response to the suggestion that the best and most experienced writers who are good enough writers to find other types of writing jobs should get out of this business to make room for all of the new writers who are now crowding the field. I happen to prefer this type of work to a traditional writing job; and after doing it for 20+ years, I'm very good at it. So, I'm not going to consider leaving it, especially for the purpose of making room for novice writers because the field is getting more "crowded," to whatever extent that observation might be accurate.


Obviously, clients may hire whomever they want to hire. However, if clients want to be sure that they're going to get high-quality work for their money, they should use the most experienced writers who've been doing this for decades rather than complete novices. The vast majority of novice writers who enter this field don't actually continue doing this for more than a few years; many of them do it for only a few months. As is the case in any other field, anybody who has been doing this work for decades and who has already written (literally) thousands of projects is much better at it than someone who just decided, a few months or a few days ago, to try this kind of work for the first time, often mainly because they can't find a traditional job and/or just to earn some money while they're trying their best to find a traditional job. Frankly, even those of us who have been doing this forever and who were already very good writers when we started would never compare our own "novice" projects to the projects that we produce nowadays, myself included. If that's true of the best and most experienced writers, just imagine the difference between our current work and the work of novices who don't actually end up doing this for more than a few months. Aside from not being as good as very experienced writers who have been doing this full time for many years, most novice writers don't have as much at stake in terms of establishing and maintaining an impeccable reputation for always delivering work of the highest quality as do writers who've been doing business under the same ID and email address for decades. When clients hire a novice writer, they're doing business with someone with much less to lose by providing bad work, and the odds very strongly suggest that they're doing business with someone who won't even still be doing this kind of work for a living a year or two from now.

When I was a complete novice at this particular kind of work, 22 years ago, I was already a very good writer; and it was on the basis of my writing samples and my law degree that the first company that hired me departed from their usual hiring practices (for the very first time, according to what they told me back then) by agreeing to start me out at their highest pay rate instead of at their usual pay rate for all of their new writers. In doing so, they also made it explicitly clear to me that my pay rate would only continue to be at their highest level if all of my work turned out to be as good as was expected of me. After only a few weeks, and after almost all of my company clients started requesting me for their subsequent orders, the company started offering me bonuses to take on some of the most difficult projects that were lingering on the assignment board; they also started offering me bonuses to take on some private projects for their family members without ever posting them publicly on the assignment board. My own "novice" work was much better than that of my peers at the time, because I was already a very good writer. Nevertheless, it still doesn't compare that well to my projects, now; and I'm someone who did actually end up doing this full time for more than two decades, which, by itself, is an extreme rarity. If my own novice projects don't compare very well to my current work, just imagine the comparison between my current work and the work of complete novices today, especially when a much worse current economy and many fewer employment options likely motivated those new novice writers to explore this field, now, for the very first time.

I don't know that the academic writing field is necessarily getting more crowded, but to whatever extent that might be true, it would be because there are more totally inexperienced new entrants to the field, many of whom probably aren't even qualified to do it very well. I'd never suggest that highly-experienced academic writers --some of whom have been doing this pretty successfully for more than two decades -- should vacate their long-time field of employment just to make room for brand new entrants, many of whom aren't likely to make a long-term career of it. That's not doing customers any favors, either, because customers are best served by highly experienced writers with extensive project portfolios of thousands of projects in hundreds of different academic areas.

I greatly reduced my work in this field, briefly, to take a much more "professional" legitimate job writing for the US Federal Government and that work was actually much easier than professional academic writing, and my paycheck was constant, even though there were many months of the year where I had almost no work to do at all. Still, just having to get up every morning at 6:00 AM and get my workouts in after work and rush to get to bed by 11:00 PM 5 days a week was sucking the life out of me. It left me with almost no life, with most of my weekends dedicated to just running errands like food shopping, doing my laundry, and preparing my clothes and meals for the next week of work. I actually "work" 10x more doing this for a living, but I almost never have to wake up to an alarm clock, and I can workout 5x a week and play hockey several times a week, and lie out to get sun on nice days, none of which I could ever do working a regular traditional job. Doing this for a living allows me to have a life that I can enjoy outside of my work. I've ghostwritten for lawyers, produced white papers and speeches for corporate clients, and I've had various other professional clients, such as veterinary clinics and hospitals that hired me to write patient-education materials and website copy. Unfortunately, those types of gigs come along very irregularly and it just wouldn't be possible for me to earn a decent living doing that stuff full-time.

If I were a customer in this industry, I'd much rather use a writer who's been doing this for decades and who fully intends to continue doing it until retirement than some brand new "writer" or some totally untested wannabe writer who just decided this year to try give this kind of work a shot for the time being.

In my experience, the only thing they often change is the expected length of the project. They'll sometimes try to save money by sending me instructions clearly intended for a much longer project, asking for it to be done in only a few pages, which is utterly impossible, just based on the project specs..

I've actually had several clients ask me for this over the years. Two or three times, it was a client ordering two versions of the same project; and once, it was a client ordering three versions of the same project.

I've mentioned before that neither of the two strongest influences on my writing skills was born in an English-speaking country: my father and my 10th-Grade English teacher, both of whom learned English as a second (or third or fourth) language. However, they both became bona fide English grammarians who spoke the language better and had much more extensive vocabularies than 99.9% of the native English-speaking population. So, I'd agree that it's not about country of origin, at all. However, neither of them ever made any kinds of grammar, word-use, or idiomatic mistakes at all, especially mistakes of the type only made by ESL speakers and never made by native English speakers.

I'm just curious, because it's always surprising to me when customers start searching "scam" (etc.), leading them here, but only after getting ripped off, first, by some company they assumed is legit.

Did you do anything to research them before placing your order (such as on this forum), or only after things went bad?

@Ellan
Just out of curiosity, how did you find that company in the first place and what convinced you to use them instead of all of the other options out there?

You sure do. Two consecutive characters in the middle of a very long email address that consists of approximately 15 characters (not even including the server/domain) is not considered "private information" under any privacy laws, anywhere, especially when neither of those characters is part of anybody's first or last name. No privacy law anywhere regulates the publication of anything that cannot possibly be used to identify a specific individual. The only thing that the screen shot of my heavily-redacted (sent) emails shows is that all of those emails were sent from me to the same person's email address and that all of them had files attached and subject fields that identified them as having been related to UK Law projects. It also demonstrates that the UK Law student was happy enough with my work to use me for many subsequent projects for several years; and that when he needed an unrelated application years later, he came right back to me, because of his positive experience using me when he was a UK Law student.


I wasn't "forced" to do anything. I (do still) believe that "approximately 50%" of my clients are in the UK. When you expressed shock at this, I simply took a quick look at my tax documents to see whether I had anything from my payment processors that might show the geographical breakdown of my clients. Unfortunately, PayPal no longer displays or provides any of those types of graphic merchant reports, at all; so I couldn't generate anything (now) documenting any client geographic breakdowns. The last annual earnings report that I downloaded and saved for tax purposes just happened (also) to display the graphic geographic breakdown of the most recent 30-days for the prior month (December) below the annual earnings report portion that I intended to generate at that time. Unfortunately, the graphic portion below the numerical earnings report section defaulted to 1 prior month. Had I checked the box for the entire year, it would have displayed the exact geographic breakdown of all of my clients for the year; but the only thing I needed when I downloaded that file was the numerical display of my annual earnings. So, I simply provided the only documentation that I have showing that at LEAST one-third of my clients from that month were from the UK and that 75% of those clients were repeat clients who were obviously happy with my work. My inability to provide proof to you of how many of my clients were from the UK for an entire year doesn't mean that "approximately 50%" of my clients aren't from the UK, as you're trying to imply. It simply means that I don't have the records necessary to establish exactly how many of my clients are from the UK readily available to me.


I am not a practicing lawyer; I'm a writer by profession who happens to have a law degree. Nobody needs to practice law or to have a law degree to know that 2 random consecutive characters in the middle of a very long email address is not something covered by any "privacy laws" because it can't be used to identify any person. That's just Logic 101, not law.


The only "file" that I uploaded here was a screen shot of my sent emails with approximately 13 of approximately 15 characters of the recipient totally blacked out, leaving only 2 random consecutive characters, very deliberately chosen from the middle of the email address so that there was no possible way that anybody could ever associate those 2 characters with any complete email address, much less with any specific person, anywhere.


You don't need to "wonder," at least not if you trust the company that runs this forum. They know my full name, because I pay them to advertise here; and all that anybody needs to do to confirm that I was a Writer/Editor (GS-1082) for the US Federal Government is simply Google my name + "OIG" to display some of my old agency reports still posted on the agency's public website. As far as my law degree goes, if the forum administrators would like to play the role of neutral arbitrator, I can provide them with the information necessary to confirm my law degree. Obviously, if I just post a scan of my law degree and Alumni Association card with my own last name blacked out, my detractors will just accuse me of having downloaded some generic documents belonging to someone else whose first name is Charles (or of having fabricated them, altogether); but if the forum Admin would like to agree to publicly confirm that I've supplied them with un-redacted documents and other means by which they were able to confirm my degree, definitively, once and for all, and entirely independently, I'll be more than happy to do so.

The client referenced in this thread wasn't my first NZ client. I've done dozens of NZ projects, including several postgrad projects for this client in between March and May of 2011:


https://essayscam.org/forum/index.php?action=userposts&user=4676
https://essayscam.org/forum/es/admissions-revision-wonderful-research-2203/
If anybody doubts me, I can print out and scan my sent-email screen from March through May of 2011, displaying all of my projects for this client, including the references to NZ in some of the subject fields, just as I did right in this thread (in Post # 17) when someone questioned my statement that "Lazy Skeptic" had ordered many UK Law (and other UK) projects from me in between 2011 and 2020: https://essayscam.org/forum/es/academic-writing-providers-orders-refunds-2897/#msg85797

It's even easier for me to do in this case, because this particular client used an email consisting of his exact forum ID; so I don't have to be as careful about manually redacting most of his email address, as I had to do to protect Lazy Skeptic's anonymity.


Just by asking this question, you seem to be buying into the argument that one needs a UK or NZ education to write good projects for UK and NZ clients, respectively. You don't; and the fact that so many of my UK (especially UK law) and NZ clients continue using my services again and again constitutes objective evidence that a good, experienced American writer can take on these types of projects with good enough results to earn many subsequent orders from those customers. That argument, made ad nauseum, recently, is nothing but one detractor's attempt to steer prospective clients away from me and to the UK company for which he, apparently, now works.

Prior to the first UK Law projects that I started taking on in 2011, shortly after I initially declined Lazy Skeptic's projects, I erred very much on the conservative side, simply out of an abundance of caution, because I'd never done any UK Law projects and I never take on any projects unless I'm very confident that I can do them well, because I don't ever want any disappointed clients. The truth is that UK (and all Euro schools) do grade much more strictly than typical US schools; but a writer whose work usually qualifies for an A in the US shouldn't have much difficulty satisfying UK/Euro grading standards on any project within the same academic fields that he or she handles for US clients. It's really just a matter of learning some terminology, and following instructions and exemplars very carefully. The only other issue is that some projects for foreign programs might be harder to find high-quality usable sources; but if that's the case, clients can usually provide their course materials and other sources for those projects.

I never contacted her; but she ended up contacting me and becoming a client. She posted about my work several times, afterwards, right here: essayscam.org/forum/index.php?action=userposts&user=6985


and


and

I have never tried to "discredit" you. On a few occasions where you commented on ESL vs. native English speakers and writers, I simply pointed out that even very proficient ESL writers who speak English fluently still make characteristic mistakes that are unique to ESL writing and that make even very good ESL writing recognizable as ESL, especially to educators. Nothing in my post in this thread (or in any post in which I referenced your proficiency in English) was meant as an insult to you; in fact, I actually complimented your English skills in this thread, partly because (I believe) it was the first time that you ever acknowledged that you're an ESL speaker.


I don't really know how one would calculate that; however, I suppose that would explain why someone who is, apparently, a UK (law) writer who has little respect for American writers, in general, said that he had already heard of my reputation way back in 2011 and respected me based on what he'd heard about me in England:


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/best-writer-2947/

However, allow me to rephrase something: I write approximately 350-400 projects every year and approximately one-third of my clients are in the UK. Since you seem skeptical, I'll attach a file here displaying a typical month of earnings for me from one of my payment processors, broken down by country. It shows exactly how many UK and US clients ordered projects from me. Perhaps more importantly, it also shows that 75% of those clients were repeat clients who were obviously very happy with my work. (Because the system prompts that the file is too large to attach here, I've uploaded it to DropBox, where it can be viewed through this link):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mx5jnc791qxbag2/30%20Days%20Customers.docx?dl=0

This is precisely why it matters to many ENL customers. If they're going to be submitting your writing -- which we all know is how many customers choose to use the projects that they purchase -- the last thing they want is writing that's obviously ESL, because that can be a disaster for them if their instructors know that they're not ESL students. Your English is excellent, actually; but as you acknowledge, yourself, it's definitely still recognizable as ESL, which is why I'd always make sure that they know that, in advance. In fact, that's more important when your English is so good that clients might not realize it just from your email communications.


It matters because clients might not realize that you're ESL just from your preliminary communications with them; and it's not as much about falsely "claiming" to be ENL as it is about simply disclosing that you're ESL, honestly. If an ESL writer is confident in his English writing, he should just disclose that he's high-level ESL and let clients make a fully-informed decision, especially if he knows that his English is good enough that clients might not realize he's ESL until they figure it out from reading their projects.

Incidentally, this is exactly how I've always responded to UK clients asking for UK writers: I immediately disclose that I'm neither located nor educated in the UK, but that I'm confident about writing their project to UK standards and in UK English. Sometimes they decide to use me and other times they don't; but I always let them make that decision. Some ENL clients might still decide to use a high-level ESL writer and others might not; so if I were an ESL writer whose English is good enough that prospective clients might not realize that I'm ESL, I'd always disclose that up front, just to avoid any misunderstandings, whether or not they ask me about it, specifically. Plenty of ENL students might still choose to use you, just as approximately 50% of my clients are UK students, every single one of whom knows that I'm both located and educated in the US.

This is very obviously true. As I explained previously, college students write dozens of essays in subject areas totally outside of their majors. Obviously, a highly-experienced writer can handle all of those essays and do them much better than most college students. I've also mentioned many times that I've had more nursing students as clients than students with any other major and that many of them have used me for years and years, from their freshman year of college through their post-graduate degrees; and several of them have used me for so long that they've actually referred their kids to me after they got to college and nursing school, themselves. I never took a single nursing course my life; but I have no problem, whatsoever, writing nursing projects, and all the way up to the PhD level, well enough that my nursing clients never looked for essays elsewhere after the first project that they received from me.

I think employers would care if they knew; but it's very difficult to imagine a realistic scenario in which they'd ever find out.

I'd agree with this. In my experience, new customers in this industry just don't realize that they're no safer going with essay companies than with independent writers, at least independent writers whose histories and reputations they can research on forums such as this one. Every reliable independent writer I've ever known either used to write for essay companies or still writes for essay companies while trying to build a private clientele, simultaneously. For every legit essay company with good writers, there are dozens of rip-off companies with atrocious writers who do nothing but copy/paste from Wikipedia, if they actually provide anything after collecting payment, at all. Even legit companies typically employ more bad and totally inexperienced writers than good, highly-experienced writers; but once you find a single reliable freelance writer who delivers high-quality projects, you know that you've found a consistent source of good writing.

I very respectfully disagree. While your English is very good for someone who is not a native speaker, you are simply not in position to know how easy it is for those of us who are native speakers to identify even very good ESL skills as, still, unmistakably ESL; and the fact of the matter is that the writing of most ESL writers is much worse than yours and much easier to identify as ESL. It's not even a matter of glaring mistakes of grammar and/or incorrect and/or awkward use of idiomatic expressions; it's more about a few subtle mistakes that even bad EFL writers never make and that even very good ESL writers typically do make, particularly in relation to when the article "the" is and isn't required. Only ESL writers ever make that particular mistake. The reason that customers care is that EFL professors can spot those mistakes very easily.

I've been writing academic essays for more than 20 years as my main source of income, except for the few years that I worked as a Writer/Editor (GS-1082) for the federal government; and I earned roughly the same at both jobs. I do pay more for health insurance now and I get clobbered on taxes for being self-employed; but I don't have to wake up to an alarm clock or commute back and forth to work at 6:00 AM and 3:30 PM five days a week, rain or shine, and I have much more free time, now. I don't really have any "dry" seasons, anymore; but there are definitely some months when I could use more work and other months when I have much more than I'd prefer to have. Before I started doing this for a living, I wrote SAT question sets for Princeton Review Books; and I've always had a few clients who are lawyers who just don't write very well, but not enough to earn a living just from that.


A large part of my government job actually consisted of copy editing, which isn't something that requires any kind of additional "training" if you're already a very good writer. Another part of my government job consisted of providing writing training to a few dozen of my coworkers (mostly criminal investigators and auditors), which was pretty much all copy editing, just with narrative explanations of my edits for the original writers.

This is just marketing spin intended to imply that they have research "specialists" and writers performing different tasks. It's just another variation of the more common nonsense of essay companies claiming that every project is "assigned" to specialists with particular expertise in the exact subject matter of the project. In reality, projects aren't "assigned" to writers; they're all just posted on an online writers' assignment bulletin-type board where any writer at the company can grab any project he chooses.

* day-to-day operations

While my writer account is still active, technically, I haven't actually written a project for any essay company since I went completely independent in 2013. Occasionally, I still refer work to their parent company when clients need advanced technical calculations or data anaylses that are beyond my capabilities. My first-hand knowledge about the day-today operations at any essay company dates back to 2013, at the latest.


That's for me, personally. I can't speak for anybody else; and there are plenty of writers (both working independently and at legit essay companies) for whom that's an unrealistic task, especially if the product is expected to be of high quality.

Finally, we're in complete agreement about at least one thing.

For the benefit of (other) readers, I'm going to explain why this latest mantra that writers cannot be trusted to write excellent projects unless they actually hold a degree in the field of every project they write is patently ridiculous:

College students typically receive a degree in one and only one academic field. However, over the course of four years, every college student must write dozens of academic essays in many other fields in which they take elective course, all of which are fields in which they do not receive degrees, themselves. Biology majors write history and political science and economic essays, history majors write biology, philosophy, and psychology essays, and engineering majors write sociology, ethics, and accounting essays, etc. Someone who has the talent and ability to write academic essays for a living in the first place and who has written (literally)10,000+ academic papers over 20+ years can write a much better academic essay in every one of those fields than 99% of college students currently enrolled in undergraduate courses in all of those academic areas.

Just consider some typical philosophy assignments about Platos' Allegory of The Cave or about Kantian Deontological Ethics, or history assignments about the causes of WWII or about the Bolshevik Revolution, or sociology assignments about Structural Functionalism or comparing Merton's and Durkheim's theories, etc. Does anybody really think that the typical good college student taking any of those classes can write a better essay on any of those topics on his first attempt to write that essay than someone like me, who, in addition to having already taken all of those same courses as a student, has since written each of those essays dozens of times? Those examples are just a very tiny fraction of all of the different subjects and topics that I've written about many, many times; and, since roughly 2007, every project that I write is submitted to turnitin or other plagiarism scanners, which means I'm also an expert at writing about the same topics in unique and original ways many different times. On quite a few occasions, I've handled two of the exact same assignments in the same class and with the same deadline for classmates, when one of them ordered for both of them, and with no issues. At one point, I had three nursing students all enrolled in the same degree program at the same time, with each of them needing weekly forum posts and responses, many full-length essays, and a major dissertation-type of writing project at the end of the program.

Does that necessarily mean that I can write any project on any subject or topic, regardless of the level? Of course not. I've written (literally) hundreds of theses and dozens of dissertations in fields outside of my own degree areas; and some of those clients have left reviews for me on this forum thanking me effusively for my work. That doesn't mean that I can write a dissertation in Economics, just because I can handle just about any lower-level undergraduate economics project. On the other hand, when clients have been able to furnish me with all of the necessary source material, I've had no problem writing (good) dissertations in fields such as vocal training for singers, art history, and advanced AI and machine learning. On all of those occasions, I made very clear, in advance, that I had no prior experience in those fields and that while I can (always) guarantee the quality and originality of my writing, the substantive quality of the project depended entirely on the quality and sufficiency of the source material provided by the client.


Actually, it wasn't an "endorsement" at all; it was much better and more objective than a mere "endorsement," because the person who left that comment was a British writer who, essentially, trashed all American writers here, in general, but admitted that he'd already heard of my reputation in the UK and that he respected me based on what he'd heard about my work.

Explaining politely why a suggestion is totally illogical and that it's an obvious indication that the person offering it can't possibly already be working as an independent writer isn't "bitterness." Your suggestions make absolutely no sense and are self-contradictory; and nobody already writing for a living would ever think or suggest that payment after delivery is a workable option. I notice that you never answered my question about how honest writers can possibly protect themselves from non-paying clients if they deliver perfect projects before payment.

@Dissertation07

Welcome to the forum. However, I'd like to suggest that if you are (obviously) completely new to this industry and (obviously) have absolutely no real experience writing academic projects for a living, you shouldn't use an ID that implies that you're capable of writing "dissertations"; and you shouldn't start contributing to the forum presuming to dispense advice to others. Your ESL-English, alone, makes it completely inconceivable that you could possibly be qualified to write post-graduate projects of any kind, at least in the English language. Why not simply introduce yourself here more honestly, as a new ESL writer who hopes to become a successful writer? Aside from your English, your suggestions -- besides being completely self-contradictory -- make it more than obvious that you've never (yet) actually worked as an academic writer. If you had, you'd know -- as every legitimate writer here already knows -- that it's completely impossible to conduct this type of business by writing projects first and collecting payment later, no matter how good a writer you are and no matter how well you produce every project.


No business that provides goods or services of any kind online delivers its products or services before payment, whether it's a freelance writer, an essay company, or any other kind of business entity. At least essay providers can be vetted by researching their many-years'-long histories on forums such as this one, by Googling their websites and/or other IDs, and by reading years of comments from their previous customers and their other legitimate competitors. There is no comparable process through which a writer can check out the payment histories of prospective customers: there's no such thing as a forum called "EssayCustomerScam" where customers have an established presence discussing their practices and histories as customers. There's no comparable process for disputing and recovering non-payment the way customers can at least dispute non-delivery of a product through their credit cards and/or other payment processors. A writer who has been scammed by a client known to him only by an anonymous email address has absolutely no recourse and no way of recovering payment for his hard work. This job is already time-consuming and stressful enough with constant (often overlapping) deadlines most days of our lives, without also having to worry about whether or not a customer is actually going to pay for the work after delivery, and without the headache and wasted time of trying to pursue payments owed by clients.

With respect to your other specific suggestions:



Either you are going to give a writer "every benefit of doubt" because you're not going to "judge them too quick [sic]" and you are going to follow that approach by paying them in advance for whatever portion of the work you order from them or you're not going to follow that approach by trusting them because "some people may take it without turning in the work," which means that you do not trust them and that you're not giving them "every benefit of doubt." But you need to make up your mind, because, while you can make either argument, these two suggestions are diametrically opposite; so you cannot possibly make both of these arguments or suggestions, simultaneously. It's either one or the other.


What would your advice be for totally legitimate honest writers who just don't want to take the risk of not getting paid after writing and delivering a perfect project to a customer known to him or her only as an anonymous email address?