I'm sure there is a relationship between higher levels of education and better academic writing in a very general sense. However, I think it's overemphasized. The more important indicator is probably the bachelor's degree, as that's the point where you can assume the writer has at least basic abilities. But more on this in a moment.

If i were advising a student on finding a good writer, I would tell the student not to be assured by the letters MA, MS, or PhD after a name. I have seen some papers produced by U.S.-born advanced-degree holders that were purely wretched.

You have to consider: Someone with an advanced degree will have written several graduate-level papers and probably one thesis or dissertation. An experienced professional, no matter the education level, will have written thousands of papers and dozens of theses/dissertations. Who's going to know the keys to success?

In truth, the percentage of people you can trust to produce a decent paper is very low, no matter if they have a bachelor's, master's, or doctorate; no matter if they come from the same country as you; and no matter if they share your major. The people you can trust are those with extensive practice with academic writing conventions and enough experience to have previously come across the kind of assignment you're dealing with. In other words, you can trust the people who do this every day and seem to be making a living. There is a loose relationship with education level and a tight relationship with aptitude and experience. Academic writing is a style and a practice, and one that some people, by nature, pick up much more readily than others.

All other things being equal, a graduate degree is an advantage, especially for graduate-level work. However, advanced degrees are something that many ESL writers and domestic hacks use as a marketing tool, a proxy for being a good academic writer. They are not a substitute for actually being a good academic writer.

The standard advice holds: When you find a seemingly legitimate and capable writer or company, place a small order and see how it goes. This test will tell you much more than a resume or CV ever could. If it works out, start placing larger orders.

Something about the way the sentence is setup makes me think the implication is "and it's not worth it." But if you take it purely at face value, the sentiment is true enough.

Without a doubt, working directly with clients exposes you to several types of risk and hassle. The biggest thing is that you have to spend time marketing and handling the administrative tasks.

There are also the occasional troublesome clients, and you have to deal with them directly whereas a company could be a buffer and sometimes play "bad cop" for you.

The one thing I would quibble with is that idea that not getting paid is a major risk of working alone. If you require payment up front, as the companies do, then you don't face significantly different risk. If you are working for some of the foreign outfits, you do face payment-related risk, since they tend to have onerous penalties if they determine that you messed something up. American companies are known to offer writers fairer conditions.

However, the large one that is often talked up has stated publicly that it isn't hiring. The well-known company that I believe owns this site might be, but I don't know much about it. I am not sure how many options there are for getting a legitimate "company's backing" at this point. I'm sure there are a few, but I don't think it's a large number.

As for whether working independently is worth it, that's up to the writer. All of the ones I know take as many independent assignments as possible. But it's definitely not for everybody.

Why don't you post an image of that receipt, Anne? Just black out the parts with personal information.

If you have a system that's that easily gamed, then you don't have any system to speak of. If you don't want your customers to know your writers' identities, then you'd better design a system that doesn't allow for easy workarounds. Many are honest, but if you value your top and bottom lines, you'd better not make that assumption a foundation of your business model. It's not going to do you any good to come to essayscam and complain that writers, who can likely make twice as much per page on private clients, aren't being honest. I do not think that any of the writers mentioned here are "poaching" clients, and I would not do so myself. But it is a given that if you have a system subject to breaches, and you have hundreds of writers, then some will take the opportunity.

What is with "them" and "their"? I thought an individual was being discussed. Is there some kind of group?

Aren't you kind of generalizing about other forum members?

Don't go being drastic! Some of us have bills to pay.

$2 is enough. You should not be greedy. They have overhead and taxes, and also families to feed. Do an honest page's work for an honest $2 and stop complaining. It's one of the Seven Deadly Sins, you know.

I don't know, but I went to their Facebook page again and looked more closely. In a comment on March 7, they told two posters there: "we are not currently hiring any new writers at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience and will let you know if this changes in the near future."

facebook.com/pages/Student-Network-Resources-Inc/206114442732786

Because the amounts that have been mentioned are in the small-claims-court range.

The TSA patting is about the only joy I get from life anymore ...

Not sure these are any better. I have evidence that only rarely in this forum do these result in oral-anogenital contact or eternal damnation.

I think you ask for that as "full service" ...

Lots of options:

-Cry
-Make a frowny face, with no actual tears
-Smile on the outside but cry on the inside
-Take a frown and turn it upside down
-Report the student to the university, which might serve the gods of justice but does nothing for your PayPal account, which leads us back to the crying

-Cry (did I already mention that one?)
-Adopt payment policies that prevent scamming

I don't think any of the companies interview writers in person, do they? I doubt that many of them have any significant number of non-owner employees, either. Probably either zero, one, or two employees for a domestic company. You hear about foreign operations with massive bricks-and-mortar operations and employed writers and custimer-service staffs. Kind of shows you the economics at play.

I have seen this work.

A while back they did say on their Facebook page, in response to someone's query, that they weren't hiring new writers at this time. Does not seem to be there anymore, though.

Sounds like every other insurance company. They only want to cover the low-risk stuff. It's called cherry-picking.

No commercial interests, eh? If there's any poster here with "no commercial interests in the industry," with the exception of the occasional student who wanders by, I'd be shocked. It's an essay-industry site, after all. I can think of potential counterxamples, of course: Maybe a retired essay professional would sign up for old times' sake, or maybe a professor would come to learn how the industry works and take measures against it. But realistically? I think it's all pros.

They only do example hits, though. You should use their hit as a guide to carrying out your own hit.

I think the "point" has a lot to do with what is going to come up in Google searches.

Not everyone in the essay industry is a writer. As in other industries, there are layers of producers, brokers, owners, etc.

That is called a seizure, PV. Get it checked out.

I totally agree, Major. You can't sit around worrying that some companies are paying too low. The essay business, being largely unregulated and highly globalized, is a case where the free market reigns with particular authority. Page 7 of that rhetorical analysis is worth exactly as much as you can get someone to pay you for it. If that happens to be $2, then either you suck, or you haven't connected with the right buyer. Either way, the solution is not to complain that the company needs to pay more than $2. It's probably not "right" for them to operate the way they do, but I can't save the world. I'm not some conservative who believes that this could or should be the case for every industry. But for essays, unrestrained capitalism it is.

I don't think that's a safe assumption. It's just an equation that includes cost of the ads, effectiveness of the ads, labor costs, other expenses, etc. In many cases, I suspect they're quite profitable with a business model heavy on promotion, first-time/last-time customers, and 75-cents-a-page ESL dreck. Given their locations, I doubt they're budgeting much for taxes, insurance, etc., either.

Seems the universities have done a good enough job of this themselves.

Essay writers are like betta fish. Sure, we're beautiful, but we have to be kept in separate bowls or else it's constant conflict.

I do not agree. A lot of people have to turn work away during the busy months, and I am severely sleep-deprived even as I type this. That is the perspective of a writer. I can't speak to whether the market is "saturated" in terms of companies, because then you're talking about competing for Google hits and such. But demand is very high, and while there are plenty of scammers and hacks in this business, there are not necessarily plenty of capable writers.

This may appear to be true on the surface, but scammers and hacks play rough because they have to. The legit writers are cordial to each other, from what I've seen.

By the time you've paid American writers and then paid an editor, plus all your other overheads, hard to imagine there'd be much profit left.

Do you ever worry that your private clients will all graduate and new ones won't fill their places? Do the older students tend to pass the word down to younger students at a given university?

They seem like a bunch of punk rockers and acid-heads to me.

Except Professor Verb. I heard he's goth.

Going to be dealing with a lot of bull either way.

Yeah.

Editor, I guess you are alluding to the mystique that the word "writer" has in terms of people thinking it means novels, biographies, and other heavy stuff? I think that writers of all types feel that unease with the word "writer." I mean, people who write computer manuals probably deal with the same thing at cocktail parties. "Oh, you're a writer? What do you write, historical fiction?" Nope, laptop specs.

You can just say you're a freelance writer. That's what the term was invented for. It's a catch-all, and you can provide as much or as little detail as you like, depending on how deep you feel like getting into it. A lot of people probably have at least one other type of writing that they do, whether it's web content, content writing, or journalistic stuff. "Freelance writer, eh? So what do you write?" Oh, all sorts of stuff.

They are working mostly for private clients, so they get higher rates.

Has anyone on the forum made this claim, in terms this broad? Off the top of my head, I don't recall seeing it, except maybe from Queen Sheba. I could be wrong.

Regardless, people would be naive to come into an essay-industry forum and expect to find lifelong nonparticipants who just happen to know all about it. The forum rules say as much.

I do not see how these are related.

There is non-native English on the site. If you're truly a student, then know that you're not dealing with Americans, even though the site says it is U.S.-based. If you're actually a shill for the site, then I guess you can take this as free advice: You need an editor.