You should definitely have some of your "profoundly prepared and solid journalists who are the best in the market" work on some of these sentences for you before you publish this kind of atrocious writing on a website claiming to offer professional writing, editing, and proofreading in the English language:

You might want to hire some of your own "staffs that are consisted of proofreaders and professional writers" do a little proofreading of that atrocious "English" on your own homepage there, Chief. You should probably have them take a look at some of the following gems:

"...since essay is one of the most difficult tasks to ever find here on the planet"

"Despite the fact that there is a lot of essay writing services offered on the internet, we still and we proudly emphasized our services..."

"Let our staffs that are consisted of proofreaders and professional writers provide you an essay writing service."

"The efficiency and reliability of our writers are enough in handling any complexity of your essay."

"Rest assured that the moment you put your full confidentiality on us, you will be guaranteed the most. Our essay writers will get only reliability and dependability in our essay writing services."

The proliferation of sites like yours is the reason that those of us who are actually qualified to write in English can charge a premium for our services. Thank you. Keep up the great work.

British English and American English aren't good examples because its the same language. Any experienced writer in this business routinely switches back and forth between the two. The differences (including idiomatic expressions) are relatively easy to look up and learn. When it comes to non-native English speakers, it's possible to speak English quite "fluently" while still being recognizably ESL and it's very hard to eliminate all ESL traces without having lived in the US (or with Americans) for a while.

If they're just using our projects as models for their own writing the way they're intended, there's no ethical issue. However, if students are actually submitting our work for academic credit, it's not comparable to tutors because tutors just provide the same services as school teachers; they're not taking exams or writing essays instead of their students.

I get requests to "un-plagiarize" writing fairly regularly. Sometimes, they send me a thesis that received a high grade in the same course and ask me to rewrite it to make it all original; other times, they send me an entire essay of copied & pasted material and ask me to rewrite it all to make the same points in all-original writing. The former is harder than the latter, because the former requires replacing all (or most) of the sources, whereas the latter can actually cite most of the sources from which they copied & pasted the material.

It always takes me longer to write anything different from my natural voice; but if you tell me to keep it as simple as possible, I write shorter, less complex sentences. I can also purposely add some imperfections for ESL clients if desired. I'd say the more important issue is never to mix your writing with that of any professional writer for any professor who's already familiar with your writing. As long as all your submissions are consistent for the whole course, it shouldn't be a problem.

I'd consider Level III to be just as risky for high school students, because high school teachers tend to be more familiar with their students' writing than most college professors. They're even more likely to notice awkward ESL phrasing and idiomatic mistakes in work submitted by NES students than most college professors.

It's not a regulated field and it's populated by many people and entities whose work isn't good enough to consider "professional" writing; but for those of us who've been doing this well enough to earn loyal customers and a living comparable to the higher levels of traditional fulltime jobs as writers, I'd say we're definitely professional writers. Nobody doubted that I was a professional writer when the federal government paid me a salary for writing and there's no question that I work much harder and employ more of my skills and intellect as an academic writer than I ever had to when I worked downtown at 26 Federal Plaza in an office with a plaque that said "Writer/Editor" right on my door.

Who relies on just one computer? I have more than one in almost every room of my apartment. I've learned that one of the keys to avoiding overuse injuries to my hands, shoulders, and back from the constant writing is to use as many different working stations as possible. I have a bar converted into a standing desk with a CPU underneath, a laptop in front of my living-room couch and another next to a recliner, two on on the desk in my study for projects that require a second screen, and another one in a room that doubles as a library and lounge. I also have an I-Pad for the balcony and bathroom and sometimes, I'll take a laptop out to the balcony, too. Furthermore, most of those stations allow more than one sitting position: right now, for example, I'm straddling the ottoman in front of my couch with the laptop on the ottoman in front of me. Fifteen years ago, I used to carry around a small Casio hand-computer to write on anytime I was in a waiting room or anywhere else where I didn't want to waste time when I could be writing.

Obviously, that's not at all what I'm suggesting and I think you already know that. The OP asked whether a writer without a PhD can complete a dissertation, not whether all writers without a PhD can do it. As you know, all freelance writers are not equal; and nobody said anything about "ESL" writers in this thread until you just added that totally new variable. There are some very good NES writers with decades of experience and thousands of projects under their belts and there are many more not-so-good, relatively inexperienced writers (including ESL writers who can't provide high-quality English writing at any level, let alone PhD dissertations), and NES and ESL writers at every level in between. Obviously, not every writer who has nothing more than an undergraduate degree can, necessarily, produce a good PhD dissertation; but the point is simply that there are some who certainly can. In fact, I know several others besides me who definitely can. The OP (essentially) asked whether it's possible for a writer who doesn't have a PhD to produce a good PhD thesis, and I simply explained that it certainly is, at least in some cases.

To address the OP's concerns more specifically, I would not trust that a PhD-level order from most essay companies will, necessarily, be completed by one of those writers who can do it. Unless the customer contacts customer service directly first and asks for a writer with the ability to do so, the order typically just goes up on the assignment board where it can be taken by any writer, including those who have no business whatsoever touching a PhD-level project but vastly overestimate their own abilities. And that's at the best of the legitimate essay companies; at the rest, customer service will probably just tell the customer whatever they need to say to get the project sold. Even when I refer projects -- all projects, not just high-level ones -- to my old essay company, I don't tell the client to just go order it on the website where any writer will be able to grab it once it's posted as an available order. I never want anybody I refer to that company to get that company's worst (or newest) writer and then blame me for recommending that company. So, I either contact customer service myself first to make sure they try to get one of their best writers to consider the project (and also because I want them to know that I'm still referring projects to them) or I cc one of their reps on my reply to the client.

I'm sorry, but that's not a very good analogy, simply because a video game player isn't a pilot in the first place. An experienced twin-engine Cessna pilot with thousands of hours of flight time could fly and safely land a Boeing 767, either by following verbal instructions from ground control or from nearby pilots or by preparing in advance just watching 767 flight-instruction videos available online. A highly-experienced freelance writer writing a PhD dissertation is in the same situation as the experienced Cessna pilot, not the video game player who has never actually flown anything.

I've completed over 100 PhD dissertations by now, with very good results. Only a few of them were in areas in which I have formal academic training, such as in Law, Psychology, or History. The vast majority have been in academic areas in which I never took a single class, such as Nursing, Literature*, Business, Journalism, and Marketing. I've also seen plenty of incredibly atrocious writing in the first drafts of parts of some of those same dissertations from the candidates who are on track to receive their PhDs. So the other incorrect operative assumption is that all PhD candidates are capable of writing anything at the PhD level, which I can tell you, with no uncertainty, definitely isn't the case.

If you're already a good, highly-experienced writer and you're smart enough to read peer-reviewed material critically, all you really have to do is follow the format of the thousands of dissertations available online and/or in the models provided by clients. The faculty advisors are usually involved at every stage as well, so we get feedback and guidance for requested revisions beginning with the initial proposal and every chapter thereafter. As with almost everything else in this business, it really depends on the specific writer.

*[I did take one undergraduate course in English Literature, but the point is the same: 1 undergraduate course hardly equals PhD-level knowledge.]

The vast majority of my communications with clients occurs in between their very first inquiry and their decision to trust me with their first project. Once we're past that first project, they begin to realize that all they ever have to do is send me the details of any new project along with the desired length and due date to receive my quote in response. Then, they issue payment and just receive the project on or before their deadline. My favorite clients are the ones who realize pretty quickly that most projects only require one email from them, a response from me, and then confirmation from me that payment has been received and the project scheduled. Nice and simple.

Judges don't author opinions with laymen who are hoping to break into the law biz but who haven't yet really even worked in the field and whose every utterance only makes that more obvious.

You're right: you do seem to write well enough that being ESL shouldn't really be as much of an issue as it usually is for ESL writers. A NES client could easily go through your writing and correct any obvious idiomatic issues. I still think you should represent yourself honestly, perhaps with an explanation that your writing is substantially indistinguishable from NES writing, but might occasionally have an incorrect article or idiom that the client should fix after proofreading.

Unfortunately, if you're honest, you'll probably lose some work because of it, and mostly because many clients hardly bother to read the work they commission, let alone closely enough to proofread for subtle language-use discrepancies. If you're not honest about it, then one or two telltale ESL mistakes could really cause a problem for a lazy client with an eagle-eyed professor, so I wouldn't advise going that route. If you want to email me a representative page of your writing, I'll take a closer look and give you a more accurate opinion of how close your writing is to NES writing. But for it to be a useful exercise, you should send me something that's truly representative and not something that you've spent an extra effort perfecting.

Nobody bashes ESL writers who admit they're ESL and who are otherwise totally legit. The problem is that most of the scam essay companies (and individual scammers) in this industry also happen to be ESL. Once you reach your level of English fluency, it's tough to eliminate the tell-tale signs of being ESL through practice alone, because it's idiomatic expression more than technical grammar that makes ESL writing recognizable. There are also some characteristic mistakes in the use of articles that are subtle enough that nobody points them out to you to help you improve, but that are red flags of ESL authorship to any sharp reader. Frankly, the main reason NES students don't want ESL writing is simply that they don't want any hints in their expensive projects that they were written by someone else; and to any reviewer familiar with the student, ESL writing will call into question their authorship, even if the work itself is pretty good. I don't think anybody has anything against competent ESL writers who don't misrepresent themselves as being NES writers. In my opinion, the only way for you to eliminate those red flags would be for someone to highlight each of them to you or for you to live in the States long enough to pick up authentic idiomatic use through sufficient natural exposure to the way NES express themselves. For exactly the same reasons, many ESL students prefer ESL writers so that their writing doesn't sound suspiciously native.

No charge. You see, when you actually write fulltime for a living, it isn't really a challenge to just bang out a somewhat comprehensive forum post while you're watching TV in between projects.


No kidding.


I'm perfectly open to learning from your suggestions about anything and everything with which you have much more experience than I do, but writing for a living definitely isn't on that list. There's nothing wrong with "out-of-the-box" thinking, provided you already have a basic understanding of what's in the box. You don't and that's plainly obvious to everyone here who does.

First, if we're talking about writers who post on this forum, at least the prospective client has the benefit of being able to research those writers' reputations here. There's no such forum where writers can research prospective clients. As Major explained, some of us have been using the same S/N here and email address for many years, so we're much less anonymous to prospective clients than they are to us. We represent an entirely different level of risk than some totally anonymous writer soliciting their business from a random email address or someone with a brand new S/N who signed up here last month.


Exactly.

Second, nobody has suggested that a client prepay a new writer for an entire major project; I've suggested many times that clients should test out any new writer or company with a very short project or with a small section of a longer project, first.

Third, it is unavoidable that someone will have to take at least some minimal risk on the first transaction: either the client has to trust the writer with payment before delivery or the writer has to trust the client with delivery before payment. This is an unavoidable and obvious fact that also isn't "rocket science." If the client is dealing with a writer or company with an established presence and good reputation on this forum, the client at least knows that the writer or company has a public reputation to protect and an incentive to provide good work.

Fourth, for a client to trust a writer with payment for a couple of pages, the only risk is minimal, especially if the client has already reduced the likelihood of being ripped off by choosing a writer who is well known here rather than a brand new member or some totally anonymous email in the first place. Conversely, if busy writers had to provide work to every new client without being paid first, at best, those writers would have to keep track of every payment owed; at worst, those writers would have to chase after those payments from clients and at least some of them would default on their debt or make ridiculous demands after delivery as conditions of making payment. We get very silly revision requests from inexperienced clients all the time: things like "Hey, I forgot to mention that I was supposed to provide a quote from each of those 6 sources...could you please add them for me?" or "Hey, I forgot to mention that this was supposed to be 5 single-spaced pages and not double-spaced."

The appropriate response to those kinds of requests would be that we're happy to do that for them, but they're going to have to be paid revisions because it takes time to do all that and it wasn't requested in the original project specs. If we allowed payment after the fact, most of those clients would hold onto the entire project payment and refuse to issue payment until that revision was provided for free. There would also be a regular percentage of clients who simply disappeared after receiving their work, undisclosed 3rd parties impersonating students and collecting payment on their end for our work with no intention of ever paying the actual writer, as well as clients who ordered 1 or 2 "test" pages from several different writers with no intention of paying all of them after delivery. It would be impossible to earn a living or the reality (in addition to a lot of wasted time) would be losing maybe 25% of your work to one type of non-paying customer or another. While I retain close to 100% of clients who use me once, I may only end up doing business with half the prospective clients who contact me for a quote. You can be certain that if I provided writing before payment, many of those prospective clients who end up not hiring me would be more than happy to let me write a few pages for them first, and then try to start negotiating my price down as a condition of receiving the pre-agreed payment for the work already completed at the agreed price.

If you'd already actually been earning a fulltime living doing this kind of work, you'd know that just responding to inquiries, maintaining your schedule, and responding to questions from existing clients already absorbs a tremendous amount of time. I understand that everyone has to start from somewhere. What I'm suggesting to "writologist" is simply that if you're totally new to this business (which is more than obvious from your suggestions), you should really spend a lot more time just reading and learning from those of us who have been earning our living this way since you were in high school or grade school (or maybe even diapers) and a lot less time pontificating about how this business works or how you think it "should" work and dispensing advice that you'll realize is totally impractical and unworkable as soon as you do manage to break into this business in any substantial way.

Clearly the advice from someone who has never actually earned a living in this business. Only the most inexperienced new writers who are totally desperate for any work would ever agree to produce half of a project before it's paid and then accept payment after delivery.

If you're a busy writer whose services are already in great demand, you're already bending over backwards to help allay the fears of skittish new clients by allowing someone to prepay for a small section first, because that means you have to sit down twice to work on a project that you could probably bang out in one sitting. At the most extreme, you could even allow them to prepay for ONE page to test your writing and your legitimacy. Busy writers probably don't have the time or patience even to do THAT. But the suggestion to clients that they should expect half a project to be written before making any payment is absolutely ridiculous, unless, as I said, you're a brand new, totally inexperienced writer who really has no other way of getting work.

The other advice from writer4life about website chats isn't much better. Certainly, you should stay away from any site whose reps can barely speak English; but that doesn't necessarily mean that their writers are any good just because the chat operator speaks good English. There are pages and pages on this forum of transcripts with scam companies whose "live chat" operators are pretty good at selling their product with perfect "customer service." Of course, once they have your money, that all changes completely. It doesn't take much to hire 1 or 2 reps who can actually speak English to sell the work of 100 horrible ESL writers whose English is nowhere close to that of the chat operators. The "best" of these rip-off sites actually invest a lot of money into slick-looking websites and reps who are very good at gaining your confidence; they can afford to do that because they either provide nothing in return or they pay their "writers" next to nothing to copy & paste useless "essays."

Just try out whichever provider you think sounds the most credible and always start out with a small project and long deadline before you trust anybody with a larger project and/or short deadline.

Aside from the issues of dishonesty and defrauding the companies involved as well as their clients, what makes you think this is an offer that anybody would ever consider? Think about it: Whoever already has a writer account has that account because he needs it to earn a living through the company. You want an account because you're hoping to earn money from it. How could you possibly afford to pay somebody what that writer's account is worth to that person before you even have a job writing? Why would someone who has an account give it up for some paltry amount that you can afford to pay when you're so desperately looking for work in the first place? If you can't write well enough to qualify for your own account, how long do you think you'd be able to write under any account you get this way before the company deactivates it because of the inferior quality of work from a writer who couldn't get his own account legitimately?

If you're a writer, why can't you just apply to those companies yourself, straightforwardly?

Generally, no; but there are exceptions. I've mentioned this before, but my primary writing influences were my late father (German-Jewish Holocaust refugee who taught nuclear physics) and my 10th Grade English teacher who was Chinese. Both of them were expert grammarians with incredible understanding of the evolution of English as a language and, obviously, extensive vocabularies. However, they were, by far, extreme exceptions to the rule. I know one or two ESL writers I'd trust to write projects, but I suspect both of them know better than to offer to proofread ENL writing.

It depends. If the customer happens to have a few good sources and/or a textbook chapter scanned from the course, then it can be very helpful to provide those; in fact, it can be a little suspicious if the paper uses all outside sources and none of the material that was actually assigned or discussed in the course. But if you're asking whether it's helpful for the client to send me the first things that a simple Google search generated on his end, then it's not very helpful and can just be a waste of my time before I have to do my own research. I've had clients send me a dozen "sources" that weren't useful at all, whether because the client never looked beyond their titles or because they weren't remotely authoritative or scholarly.

If you limit yourself to writers who are willing to work on a project before being paid, you're automatically limiting yourself to the least experienced writers out there who are totally desperate for work. I don't know any good successful writer who would ever agree to start working on a project before payment. That doesn't mean you have to pay a writer you don't know for a 20-pg project all at once; it just means that you should limit your risk by ordering a very short project or a short introductory section of a longer project before you trust someone with a large up-front payment.

Busy established writers are already busy enough writing all of the projects that have already been paid for and handling our constant emails about projects. The last thing we have time for is actually writing something that hasn't been paid for and then chasing after those payments. If you want a good experienced writer to consider your project, you should be prepared to prepay for anything you order; just start out with a short order and long deadline to limit your risk.

I disagree with this:



There's no excuse for poaching clients or for falsely denigrating other legitimate providers just because they're your competition. I've maintained perfectly ethical relationships with every other legitimate writer who has ever referred work to me (for nearly a decade, now) and none of us would ever throw one another under the bus just to "compete" for one another's clients. Frankly, there's nothing more "cutthroat" about this particular industry than any other types of unregulated industries.

It's only cutthroat for the scam artists who rip off their clients and for providers who think that "competing" against other providers means it's "OK" to make knowingly-false public accusations against them just to try to damage their reputations. The same goes for essay companies who do that to one another and for essay companies who do that to freelance writers in general (and vice-versa) just to try to steer all prospective clients their respective way.

When I first started writing academic essays, I relied (mostly) on all the books that were actually on my shelves (and I have a lot of books, including my late father's library; he was a very well-read nuclear physics professor). So, my first few hundred essay-company essays all cited some combinations of all those same books. Once plagiarism scanning became the norm, I realized that I had to start using unique sources because similar lists of sources could have gotten flagged even when the content of the essays themselves was entirely original. Then I started buying more textbooks and other books that related to the subjects I was covering most often. Nowadays, I still dig info out of books that I own sometimes, but almost all of my main sources are peer-reviewed journals and books available online. Sometimes clients pay me to buy e-books (like the Australian Commercial Law textbook and e-book combo that I just bought tonight), or they actually mail me their textbooks. As a result, I probably have more nursing textbooks on my shelves than many RNs and APNs. I also have pretty sizable collections of business, history, psychology, and sociology textbooks, as well.

I wouldn't disagree that a totally unknown freelance writer with just an email address is as bad a risk as any unknown essay company, especially located in the 2nd or 3rd Worlds. But when it comes to writers who've established good reputations on this forum dating back roughly a decade (especially those of us who use the same exact S/N here that we used as our Writer ID on the most reputable websites in the business), customers are no less safe doing business with us directly. As always, the fair comparison is between legit reputable freelance writers and legit reputable essay companies, not all freelance writers and only the legit reputable essay companies.

I just referred a client to my old essay company (from which I haven't taken an order in several years) a few minutes ago and I contacted admin on his behalf to make sure they match him with the right writer for his highly-specialized project. But I was one of that company's best and most trusted writers (by those who run the company and its customers alike) based on the quality of my work and the number of requests they received for me. So, at least in my case, clients are in equally good hands when they order projects directly from me without any middleman taking about half the fee paid for the work. As I've said many times, if I write it, it's the same essay whether they buy it directly from me or through the company. Frankly, while I did good work for all of my company orders, I am even more conscientious about work for my direct clients, because that's only natural when I'm being paid roughly twice as much for the same project (because I keep 100% of the fee) and when it's my personal reputation at stake if someone's not happy with my work.

As far as protecting customer info goes, I don't even put customers' real names anywhere on my computer: all of my projects are identified by a random code and the key to that code is only on paper, just in case I'm ever hacked or my laptop is stolen. I also remove all personal info from any course materials or source documents provided by clients. While I haven't checked recently, every essay company that I ever wrote for explicitly retained copyrights to all work they provide customers and also explicitly retained the right to resell their work a few months after delivering it. I don't retain any copyright in work that I provide to my private clients and I've never resold anything I've ever written for a client even once in my entire two-decade-long career as an academic writer.

@Major
I've managed to establish a large enough private clientele that I just haven't needed to take any essay-company orders for quite a while. As far as pricing goes, the companies set their prices, not their writers. The companies don't charge customers any less than I do; they just take a substantial cut off the customers' payments and, in my experience, they pay their writers only $8/pg to $20/pg (maximum). Customers pay the same $30/pg to $50/pg either way, but they still get the same exact essay written by me whether I keep the entire payment or the company pays me only $20/pg on projects for which customers pay twice that amount or more. Surely, you understand why I'd rather take direct orders from freelance clients than write the exact same essays for an essay company and get paid no more than $20/pg. If you had as much freelance work as you could manage, would you spend your time writing company essays for half the pay?

I haven't taken a company order in several years, but they've allowed me to maintain my account because I still refer orders to them on occasion. When I was still earning a substantial portion of my income from company projects, the only way I was able to do it was by making sure I got the jump on new orders as soon as they popped up on the system. I had a laptop signed on to their system in every room of my apartment 24/7/365 and I was never farther than arm's length from one of them. I even got an I-pad specifically so that I could still check new projects that came in while I was in the bathroom. Regardless of what I was doing, I could check any newly-posted project within seconds of its posting. Part of the reason I built a full gym in my apartment was that it enabled me not to have to leave my apartment for 3-4 hours almost every day, because I needed to be able to check the company board for projects all the time. (That's also why I get my sun on a massage table on my terrace instead of going out to a park or beach.)

As soon as the system indicated that a new order was posted, I checked it and grabbed anything I wanted immediately. The company also implemented an audible indicator as well as a bright visual cue on the writers' screen to indicate that a new order had come in, (both at my suggestion), which was very helpful. Since I noticed that the email notifications of new projects often came in before either of those indicators, I also always enabled those system-notice emails to alert me to check the board immediately (and probably) before anybody else realized there was a new order. The instant my nearest computer "clicked" to indicate I had a new email, I refreshed the writers' screen without even checking to see who emailed me. Before that, there were no active on-screen indicators and we had to refresh the board manually to see new orders; so, from 2003 through about 2009, I'd hit F5 on the nearest screen as often as every 30 seconds whenever I was awake. They added the active notifications in 2009 after I suggested it.

That's, essentially, how I managed to keep a full calendar of company orders even during very slow periods when only a few new projects came in all day. It was very competitive, because anytime there are so few orders, they all get grabbed within a minute (or less) of getting posted. A few years earlier, it was not uncommon to see 50 or even 100 orders posted on the board throughout the busy season and a dozen or two the rest of the time. That would probably have been impossible for anybody who wasn't already something of a hermit. I started playing adult-league hockey and practicing regularly again in 2014 after a 24-year layoff, which would have been impossible for me while working (mainly or substantially) as a company writer, without significantly cutting into my earnings. As a freelancer, I have much greater freedom from my pc screens, although I still tend to be a hermit.

I don't refuse them, but I never quote a price until I can actually see the file that (supposedly) just needs "editing" along with any editing specs they may have received from a reviewer or (previewer). Once in a while, a project described as needing "some editing" really only needs exactly that, in which case I charge roughly half as much as for new writing. Much more often, what they send me is, essentially, useless and requires a full rewrite because salvaging whatever they already have would be even more work and cost more than new writing without any benefit to justify the cost. About once every few years, someone sends me a file for editing and I respond that the changes it needs are so minor that they're probably not important enough to spend the money for me to make them. That's probably happened about three times in the last 15 years.

I'd agree that the experience and ability of the writer is the most important variable that determines the quality of the work you receive from any essay-writing provider. As a practical matter, that probably does mean that companies located in the US and UK are going to be your best bet. However, even some of the best of those companies do also hire ESL writers, as well as very inexperienced fledgling NES writers who aren't (yet) likely to provide work of the highest quality. Even among NES writers, there's always going to be a huge difference between the quality of work provided by writers who are new to this business and the quality of work provided by writers with thousands of projects under their belts, especially when it comes to handling projects outside of the academic areas of the one or two degrees they may have earned, themselves. That applies as much to new freelance writers vs. highly-experienced freelance writers as it does to the worst writers of the hundreds of writers working for large companies vs. the best writers at those same companies.

I'd just like to know how to make a video like this.

I trust that the OP is no longer looking for academic help a decade after starting this thread, but since it's already been revived:

As far as the issue of avoiding rip-offs goes, there's really no distinction between writing services and editing or proofreading services, because you'll be dealing with the same companies or independent providers; it's just a different type of service that any essay company provides. As mentioned above, the last thing you want is the typical ESL writer employed by many essay companies "proofreading" anything written by a NES (which is not meant to insult or even apply to the relative minority of qualified ESL writers at all).

Once in a while, someone sends me writing asking for "proofreading" that really only needs proofreading. Usually, whatever's presented to me as something to be proofread really needs heavy editing or substantial rewriting; almost as often, it isn't something even capable of being salvaged to turn it into a high-quality essay, at least not without more work on my end than simply writing the entire thing over from scratch.

Generally, if all it really requires is proofreading, whoever wrote the essay ought to be able to do that for himself after just letting the essay sit for a day or two before doing a "cold" read to catch missing or overused words, punctuation mistakes, and sentences whose ends don't match their beginnings, etc. If it requires anything more than the original author is capable of doing for himself, it's probably editing (at least) rather than proofreading that's required.

@wordsies
I'm not a practicing lawyer; I just have the degree. My understanding is that simply disclaiming liability like that for what's done with the project is not really sufficient to absolve any of us of legal responsibility, because the applicable standard is whether we "know or should know" that the only real purpose of a custom-written academic essay is to submit it for credit if any prosecutor ever decides that it's an important enough issue to dedicate public resources to pursue. If they did, they probably wouldn't waste their time on the small-time, sole proprietorships of individual writers; they'd probably go after large companies incorporated in their states and taking in multi-millions annually.

There are other more subtle legal reasons that their lawyers make sure they do their best to create plausible deniability; but ultimately, if it ever became an issue in a case, those efforts really stretch the limits of plausibility and credulity when they take thousands of orders every year whose specs make explicit references to what grades their customers expect on their work and equally-explicit requests (often in very broken English) not to write the projects so well that their professors will realize they didn't write their essays. They actually include these types of things in their orders quite regularly, as well as rewrite requests because their essays were written "too well" for anybody to believe they were written by the customer. In those cases, the writer usually responds that the only way to get a rewrite on that basis is to pay for it and they simply place a new order for the same project written less well. When those customers insist on a free rewrite, customer service reps usually step in and back up the writer and if the customer wants to pay for it, they just process the new order like any other order. I never saw one of those orders get rejected because the customer made it inescapably obvious that the work was intended for submission for academic credit. However, what I have seen is company reps reject unpaid demands for rewrites by telling the customer that the request admitted to TOS violations (such as where the customer complained about a bad grade on the essay); but I've never seen it become an issue except where the customer insisted on an unpaid rewrite.

First, the TOS of most essay companies don't protect the rights or expectations of the customer as much as they spell out the rights of the essay company; some of them ONLY spell out the rights of the company and none of the rights of customers. Typical essay-company TOS emphasize what the customer may NOT do and what rights the essay company has AGAINST the customer; and most (if not all of them) specify that the essay company owns the copyright in the work (not the customer) and that the essay company can resell the work after a certain amount of time. Some essay-company TOS promise not to disclose the customers identity to third parties or send spam, which no reputable freelancer does, either. As always, the only fair comparison is between "reputable" companies and "reputable" freelancers, not between reputable companies and all freelancers. Major, don't the TOS of your essay company specifically say that your company retains the copyright to all work purchased by your customers?

Second, as far as the issue of "changing terms on the fly" goes, an essay company can change its TOS just as easily as any freelancer by simply editing its TOS. Further, whether it's company TOS or freelance TOS, they can't directly contradict everything expressly warranted on the rest of the website. So, a freelancer whose website promises and refers to providing only original custom writing couldn't use the TOS to contradict that in fine print; and a freelancer would have to do nothing more and nothing less than an essay company to change the TOS to say that plagiarism is "allowed"; so that's just silly to suggest.

Third, as far as typical essay-company TOS go, they actually DISCLAIM any responsibility for plagiarism, which is the exact opposite of "guaranteeing" that the work won't be plagiarized. No need to take my word on any of this, as readers can simply pick any essay company they choose and go read their TOS for themselves. They'll usually find all kinds of language about how all of their work is actually produced by independently-contracted FREELANCE WRITERS and that the essay company provides NO warranty whatsoever that such work is accurate or useful or up to any academic-grade standard, and that the company doesn't give refunds under ANY circumstances and isn't responsible or liable for ANY consequence or harm of any kind suffered by customers from using the product, including late receipt of the product. So it's fascinating that undisclosed essay-company reps actually try to suggest here that essay companies -- that ONLY sell work written by freelance writers in the first place -- are "safer" than some of those same freelance writers whose work they sell because the companies maintain "TOS" that primarily protect the rights of the company and that specifically disclaim any obligations or responsibility to customers. In fact, some of them expressly limit customers' rights in the product to READING the work and "learning" from it and to making no other use of the product whatsoever. Some of them do reference revisions and refunds, but they also typically include extensive language in those clauses that ultimately gives the company the exclusive right to determine whether or not any complaint about the work qualifies for any revision or refund.

Fourth, essay-company TOS usually say that the customer is absolutely prohibited from submitting their work for academic credit and that they may not use the work for any purpose (other than reading and "learning" from it) without explicitly citing the company as a "source," as though any customer would ever pay $40 or more per page just for the right to include "citations" in a paper indicating that an online essay company was the "source" of information cited in the paper. Some of them even go so far as to say that the customer may never claim to anybody to have written the essay, which, of course, is all just part of their effort to create what lawyers call "plausible deniability" that the company is in the business of selling essays that they (obviously) know customers purchase for the sole purpose of doing exactly what their "TOS" prohibit. Customers have professors and assigned textbooks to "read and learn" from; nobody's purchasing a custom-written essay to "read and learn" from what some contracted freelance writer provides to an essay company and then sells to the customer. "Terms of Service" that suggest otherwise insult the intelligence of anybody reading them.

Finally, agreements between customers and writers don't have to be titled "TOS" to protect customers. For example, a simple FAQs page that promises a minimum (or average) word count per page, or original, non-plagiarized work, and free revisions for mistakes serves the exact same function as anything titled "TOS." Reputable freelancers often warrant exactly those things on their websites and I've never known any freelancer who retains the copyright to the work instead of transferring them to the customer or who resells any custom-written essays. In my experience, only essay companies use their TOS to deny the transfer of copyrights of commissioned work and only essay companies use their TOS to limit what their customers may do with the work they provide.

Similarly, I can attest to the fact that my "typical" client is a high-achiever on his or her own merit and used to getting high grades on all in-class exams without any assistance from me. Those who have kept in touch with me and who have used my services since their graduation have gone on to successful careers as nurses, engineers, business executives, and government officials, for just a few examples. I don't think their ability to do their jobs has been affected negatively at all by virtue of having had my help with some writing assignments, whether as students or in their careers.

Generally, writing assignments are over-relied upon as a lazy way of "teaching." There's little purpose to make non-majors write research papers except in Research courses and Writing courses. It's a residual from traditional ways of teaching that are hundreds of years old. The same goes for requiring all college students to take "core" courses in languages or other disciplines in which many students already know they have no interest. By the time students are paying for their education after completing whatever education their states require, the decision of what to study should be theirs entirely and exclusively.

@Writer4U
In between the original question posed in the initial post and your first contribution to the thread, did you happen to read Post #4?

@Writer4U
Nobody is saying that experience isn't important; what we're saying is that natural writing ability is the primary determinant of whether or not someone can do this particular job well or become any other kind of professional writer. I've mentioned in other contexts that my teachers always said that I was a "good writer" ever since grade school, but that I still dreaded having to write term papers in college and that I actually chose law school over grad school for psychology because the latter required so much more writing. My natural talent meant that my college papers always came out well once I finally managed to finish them, but I was so inefficient at the process that they seemed to be daunting challenges at the time, just like they are for my clients. It was my acquired experience that now allows me to write fast and to keep up a high volume of writing, but the essays that I submitted to my first essay company as writing samples back in 2002 or 2003 weren't written much less well than my thousandth or five thousandth essay for hire; they just took me a lot longer to do back then.

Natural writing ability is what's referred to as a "necessary but insufficient condition" to write well professionally. A person with natural writing talent PLUS experience can build up a large enough clientele to make a decent living doing this; but a person without that natural talent in the first place just isn't going to be able to do that, even with a lot more "experience." Whether or not someone has a talent for writing is actually something that can be ascertained from a single page of writing on virtually any topic, and nobody really needs any "experience" to write a single page on a topic of interest to him. Writing talent (and its absence) can even be fairly evident in forum posts, and they don't require any significant "experience" either.

Understand?

In my experience, most students don't really care about learning how to write and just want their projects done so that they don't have to worry about them anymore. It's really not so complicated that someone couldn't just learn to write an essay. I'd suggest trying to outline it simply with an Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion. Figure out how many main points you want to make in the Discussion. Make some notes in the margins of your sources indicating which passages are useful for each section, and then just write whatever you want to say, citing whatever ideas that come from source material.

As far as writing itself goes, it's hard to teach someone how to write if that person doesn't have some natural talent for it, much the same as it's hard to teach someone to be good at math without some natural ability, even though almost everybody can learn to be a little better at math (and writing). As a senior writer for the US federal government, I also had the responsibility of giving writing training to everybody in four different offices within our region. I asked them all to submit a writing sample so that I could go over it and make suggestions based on what I'd change in their writing samples and then we had some one-on-one meetings to go over the issues that I'd identified in their samples. I noticed that some of them learned not to make certain specific kinds of mistakes, but more generally, their writing didn't really change all that much, otherwise. The ones who started off with better-written initial samples tended to improve more than the ones who started off with worse initial samples, in keeping with my point about the importance of natural ability.

Nowadays, most people just don't have to do all that much writing once they're out of school, so they don't really care to put the time into improving it. Those people who do plan on entering fields in which more writing is required tend to be people who don't find writing to be that much of a problem. As a writer, I do sometimes marvel at how badly some people in fairly high professional positions write, but most of their peers don't really seem to notice because it doesn't really stand out as glaringly to them as it does to me (if they even notice at all). Several of my current clients started off with me as undergraduate students and now that they're vice presidents (or whatever) in their business organizations, I find myself writing their professional correspondence and business reports for them. They have no interest even in just drafting them and having me edit them to help them improve; they just give me the info in bullet format and throw money at me to turn that info into a polished product for which they can take full credit. But even that kind of thing is probably the exception to the general rule that they just don't care about writing poorly at work because (apparently) nobody ever criticizes their bad writing, even at pretty high professional levels outside of academia.

One of the things that I've always appreciated the most about being able to do this for a living is (almost) never having to wake up to an alarm clock. I may end up staying up all night to make a deadline, but even if I go to bed at 7:00 AM, I can usually sleep as long as I want to. It's always up to me what hours I work and don't work as long as I get my writing done. Once in a while, I have no choice but to set an alarm clock to make sure there's enough time for me to write (or finish writing) something with a tight deadline and it always reminds me how lucky I am that I don't have to wake up to an alarm clock more often.