If the "established companies" feel threatened by three writers who have no interest in "beating" them in the first place, then they're boxing with shadows. Especially if those few writers are, in your view, sorely overpricing their work. Only someone operating at scale would pose a competitive threat to a company.


That is correct. A writer charges what the market will bear. I would never say, "Well, I was going to charge you $XX per page, but I'm not a very good web designer and my sales skills are weak, so I shall give you a 30 percent discount."

This is simply not true. I know at least three other American writers. Plus yours truly. All of us charge private clients more than that. When you are your own sales, customer service, writing and, perhaps, collections department, you have to or it's not worth it. Everybody I know stays booked solid and works ridiculous, wretched hours trying to get it all done. I know based on some specific interactions with freelancewriter that what he says about his rates and overall business is true.

In the company/individual writer debate I can see both sides. Yes, it is easy to get scammed by anonymous individuals posing as writers. It is also easy to get taken by rock-bottom companies, and the average student doesn't have a reliable way to know which are good and which aren't. If people want to go to companies, good for them. I couldn't write all of the papers in the world anyway, so it's no threat to me. People who take private clients deal with a lot of repeat customers and word of mouth, so for most of us, the discussion is largely academic. Pun intended. HA! (I need some sleep.)

Try a free ad on essaychat. It seems to work very well. If the clients are happy with your work, they always seem to come back for a repeat performance.

Any company has a right to charge extra for a "premium" level of product or service. Choosing the specific writer (or barber, or airline seat) you want could require a little more logistical effort on the firm's part, and it's reasonable to charge for it.

Agree. I just don't know what it is.

-As another poster said, if the quality isn't there, the students won't stick with them, as many of the international students are rich and not price-sensitive, anyway.

-People will tell you that any business is "oversaturated," especially if they'd prefer you not get into it. If I said I was going to start a hot dog stand in my town, I guarantee you someone would say the hot dog market's saturated. And then someone with less self-doubt would start a stand and make all the hot dog money that I was supposed to make. In the case of essays, despite the proliferation of services, I get the sense that the problem is one of demand, not supply.

-I'm leaning toward this one. I would not be the least bit surprised if someone in one of the larger Asian countries known for "extensive use of model essays" has a new generation of software out that's ruining us. There has always been a tendency for the international students to find a paper in their own language and run it through Google Translate. The problem was that the results were rotten. If someone has tidied up the process a bit, we may need to find a new career.

All indications that I've seen are that U.S. enrollments from China are still on the rise.

I sense a slowdown but also cannot put my finger on the reason. I wonder if instructors are assigning fewer papers or if overall enrollments are down or something. As another poster said, it's best to be diversified with several types of writing going on. The problem is, when essay season hits its peak (in a good year) it's hard to stay diversified, as the essays have away of consuming every hour of every day.

Pretty sure it was Manila.

It is common for essay-writing in British universities to be a more iterative process.

The original academic paper submission will be ripped to shreds by the student's "tutor" and will be gotten into shape through several revisions.

So companies specializing in British work tend to charge with this in mind, expecting to work on several revisions with the student.

They might charge twice the price -- and earn every penny.

The US and the UK are both based on common-law, rule of law (as opposed to rule by law) systems.

In fact, the US system is basically an extension of English common law.

Citation styles, references, and precedent may differ, but the basic framework is similar enough... plus, as pheelyks notes, the world is much smaller now, when it comes to accessing the necessary info.

Fecals ... tee hee ...

Are you sure you're giving the devil its due without equivocation?

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Sounds a little high. As astute businessman like Bubba Tolstoy would never go as high as $3.

studyluck
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Just put up a free announcement of your services at essaychat.com.

I have landed some fantastic clients on the occasions that I've advertised there.

You cannot use it as delivered. These are example papers and you just use it as a guide to your own work. It is like Cliffs Notes.

In my case, alcohol and prostitutes mostly -- say 90 percent. And if there's anything left after that, I usually just waste it.

There are native speakers in this industry?

Yes. There used to be a guy named Barack Obama who would advertise, and he never got any customers. I told him to change his name to Barry Oberman, but I don't know that he did. Last I heard he had changed careers.

But aren't they called "Best Dissertation"? You just can't trust anything these days. Next you'll tell me that Milwaukee's Best is not the best beer in Greater Milwaukee, either. Sigh ... buyer beware. I would say that such awkward phrasing as "Congrats with the beginning of studies" on the website should be a dead giveaway as to the quality, but I guess the target customers aren't in position to catch such things.

Why? Get some private clients.

Technically speaking, I don't think it'd be unreasonable to scare up this amount of work through much of the busy season. Summer, I'm not sure. But for me, writing that amount at a quality I'd feel comfortable charging a good rate for would take a toll on the mind, the body and any semblance of a personal life. How long before you get wrist problems or a bulging disk at that rate? Who's remembering to pay the utilities? What are you eating other than Beanie Weenies?

Also, that number of pages as a private writer means you have more administrative tasks -- dealing with customer emails, keeping your books, etc.

That comment might have been derisive, but it contains an important market truth. There are a lot of hacks, and if they fail, that's probably why. All the nice websites and quality customer service in the world aren't going to help if you suck. There are a lot of people who will tell you the market is "saturated," and they tend to be either hacks who can't compete or company owners who don't want you to compete. All in all, if you are truly good at this work, I doubt you'll fail as a writer.

Major, I don't know if most of them want to scale up the business or not. In my experience, the freelancer and the company-builder are two different personality types, with some crossover. Scaling it up takes such a different skill set from writing essays that this transition is probably where a lot of failure occurs.

I think both posters have hit the nail on the head.

To expand on one point, some writers see the world entirely in terms of web search. On this forum I've seen people say many times that it would be very hard to get a good position in a Google search. Therefore they don't think it's worth putting up a site and being an independent freelancer. They fail to understand that, as a solo operation, they shouldn't be playing that game at all. If by some miracle they edged above custompapers, SNR sites, Ukrainians, etc. in search results, how would they handle the volume? I have no idea how many orders those sites get per day, but I'm sure it's not one or two! The freelancer website serves other purposes, but, on it's own, it's not going to bring in much business.

Major, not the case, because I more or less know their rates, and each page is buying them a night out for two at the movies, with some left for snacks and drinks.

Every private freelancer I know, which is several, stays too busy to even pour a bowl of Corn Flakes during the high season and turns down work regularly. Maybe a lot fail, too, but the ones I know are doing pretty well.

In a similar vein, rock and roll is just ... rock and roll ...

Oh yeah? You ask Bubba Tolstoy if I'm a "failed writer." For your information, I just made premium writer status and am making significantly more than his regular writers. How's that for failure?

Yes. These people are called "customers."

If I'm a native-English-speaking student, and I get a paper full of errors than can ONLY have been committed by an ESL speaker, then what good is it to me as a model essay? I'd get more value by printing it out and making paper airplanes.

Furthermore, it's not just the writing, but also the reading. If the writer's English level is not up to par, then how can I be sure that the individual is fully understanding the journal articles that form the basis of the research? Some of the journal writing I've seen lately makes me want to stick a butterknife in my eye. How is an ESL writer going to comprehend it?

I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but in my case, I wouldn't want to mess with it, and it's precisely because I wouldn't want to be on the hook for work that wasn't my own. In the busy season, I'm not looking to create more pages for myself. The issues are reputation and efficiency.

These are the things I'd worry about:

-The five pages were plagiarized. Student spreads the word that I'm a plagiarizer.
-The five pages were horrible. Student spreads the word that I suck.
-The five pages need extensive revision. Student thinks it's totally unfair to be asked to pay extra for revisions on a paper that I, for the most part, wrote.

-The five pages are below mediocre and it proves to be harder to incorporate them than it would have been to write from scratch.*

*Most likely scenario.

I wouldn't want to pick it up from the middle like that for fear that if those first five pages somehow were problematic, I'd be blamed.

I don't see how stirring the pot helps anybody. If you're so good, then get writing and make plenty of money. There's high demand for that type of thing. If you can deliver the goods, I doubt people will care if your passport was issued by Kenya, Canada, or Krypton. Why waste time posting nonsense on here?

EXACTLY. This is how I operate and it's why I maintain friendly relationships with other writers. I hope they get more work, not less.

Yes, were you communicating directly with the customers when you weren't supposed to be? That would make them wary as hell.

The majority of companies are very small, their customer service reps are probably owners, they probably don't exactly have a PhD in employee relations or in business management. They are probably not the pinnacle of interpersonal communications. They're just trying to get the orders covered, keep themselves in the clear, and make a buck. When the season kicks in and they're covered in orders again, all will be forgotten and they'll probably be asking you to take on more work than you can handle.

I thing FW just explained that grammar and spelling mistakes are not the only, or necessarily the primary, problem.

It hurts my feelings when you say that. They did promise to keep my resume on file in case a suitable position arises in the future.

I've also received word that at least one of them has been spotted at Finish Line buying Nike LeBron X PS Elite+ basketball shoes, not on sale. Certain of them are also known to maintain extensive collections of vintage Air Jordans.

Masochism.

Definitely sounds like he knows in great deal how such a process would work ...