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Posts by Major / Posting Activity: ☆☆ 279
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Joined: Oct 03, 2006 		Last Post: Aug 28, 2019
Threads: 35
Posts: 1449  
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Major   
Sep 22, 2017
Writing Careers / Latest Africa scam - Kenyans create gmail emails and wanna be professional writers [14]

Algerians, Kenyans, Nigerians - the whole continent it seems ;} They continue scamming students the regular way (ie. by luring them into ordering a plagiarized essay) while trying to engage into other, usually related niches. Having access to the scammed students' identities (real names, emails, postal addresses, social media usernames), they can forge documents and give them more 'authenticity.'

You're right that the market appears to be over-saturated; it seems everybody with a high-school or college degree who has ever written an C-grade academic essay considers themselves a 'writer' or 'researcher,' but when it comes to real quality it takes much more than that to be a successful freelance writer.
Major   
Sep 20, 2017
General Talk / How to become an essay affiliate, is it worth it? [13]

they also participate in the reselling of the papers themselves

Right... you know a lot about this business :) I didn't know these foreign services would first steal the copyrighted content and then ask writers to paraphrase the original papers and sell them as new? That's against their own 'terms' and it's yet another way for them to scam students (their customers) who think they receive 100%, never-published content.
Major   
Sep 19, 2017
Writing Careers / Why Do Freelance Writers Fail to Take Their Official Writing Business to the Next Level? [17]

The example "JohnSmithWriting .com" gives off a personal feel..

Don't give too much ideas to the online fraudsters from Africa; I've recently noticed some of them would publish a stolen picture of a young woman / teacher holding a child and describing in their fake bio that she is a 'young teacher who, during the day, works as a college professor, but on the afternoons helps students write essays for money.' :) :(
Major   
Sep 19, 2017
Writing Careers / Strange situation with essay company - hardly receiving any projects [26]

believer in social media for marketing

I guess it depends. In general, people / students who regularly participate on social media platforms aren't in a buying mode (those are spending time on commercial sites like Amazon). If anything, they may expect free stuff / free help from others or offer pennies, like $5 per homework or per page. Or offer a Like or a hug. That may be one of the reasons why the foreign freelance writers or foreign essay services may be active on social media platforms; a student (buyer) thinks he/she doesn't risk much when he/she has a 'custom paper' written (or plagiarized) by a 'writer,' but there is much more to it than just losing money.

On the other hand, I believe that social media ads may work well to build / boost brand awareness, but - considering the fact that these days students have a very short attention span - it would require a lot of money and time before it brings respectable financial results. Watching a commercial on TV vs. watching yet another commercial video online is still much more powerful and probably much more expensive overall.
Major   
Sep 19, 2017
General Talk / How to become an essay affiliate, is it worth it? [13]

The affiliate programs are mostly run by scam companies

That sums it up nicely. If you notice, most public discussions about 'essay service affiliate programs' are on Ukrainian / Indian / Kenyan platforms, written in a non-English language. Plus the possible 'penalties' (yes, they have penalties in a form of not counting valid referral clicks or mysteriously dropping referral cookies) makes it even more interesting (not).
Major   
Sep 14, 2017
Essay Services / List of spamming | scamming | foreign TWITTER freelance writer | essay service accounts [40]

I guess we all agree then - Twitter, Facebook, etc. are like flea markets in bad neighborhoods when it comes to finding a trustworthy person / a legitimate freelance writer; there is a valid reason Nike will never establish a brand store there. If students get scammed, it's only their own fault; they are not serious if they think an educated, native English speaker will work for $5-$10 per page.
Major   
Sep 13, 2017
Writing Careers / Kenyan Writers - stop hiring them? [162]

That means an American writer cannot pretend to be Kenyan even if he tried

That's an excellent point; it works both ways indeed.
Major   
Sep 13, 2017
Essay Services / New network posting fake testimonials of which to beware [47]

Just to add to this report. The following is yet another example of a 100% fake / 100% fabricated video testimonial of an essay service posted on Youtube. I reviewed dozens of such video 'reviews' and have found zero genuine ones. All of them have been ordered by those essay writing service review websites (or mostly foreign essay writing services) and their real value to a costumer is null. They do nothing but mislead and lie to the students who happen to watch them.

Here is an example of such fake video testimonial. Just compare:

Falsified essay paper Youtube testimonial.

to the same person who sells her video testimonial services to the public:

Video Testimonials for Sale

Reference:

Fake youtube video testimonial: youtube.com/watch?v=1jVoGfRFMiQ

... ordered for $5 from:

fiverr/thepromogirl
Major   
Sep 10, 2017
Writing Careers / Why no 'Terms of Service' when ordering from professional freelance writers? [68]

Ok but then no TOS = a lot more risks for a student (buyer) because a freelancer may change their 'terms' on the fly and case by case basis. Basically, if a freelancer plagiarized, he or she may claim that it is now part of the TOS and plagiarizing is allowed etc. Not a good deal if that really happens...
Major   
Sep 08, 2017
Essay Services / List of spamming | scamming | foreign TWITTER freelance writer | essay service accounts [40]

So.. you justify lying to students (your customers) about your location and credentials because you consider them lazy or stupid...? Even so, that's not how it works in a civilized country. It's not a flea market; a paying customer has the right to expect to buy what he or she is promised to buy, despite his or her intrinsic motivation.
Major   
Sep 08, 2017
Essay Services / List of spamming | scamming | foreign TWITTER freelance writer | essay service accounts [40]

A student who pays for Nike is assured to receive the high-quality product each and every time. If they don't, they either get a refund or free replacement; they have legal protections because Nike is a company bound by the laws of a first-world country.

When a student buys a no-name product, he may be lucky if everything goes smoothly, but that will hardly be the case. If there's a problem, there's nobody to help because the seller is based in a foreign country.

But the most important thing is - the student doesn't buy what he thinks he buys. The student may want to pay more to have protection and insurance (which costs money too). With the no-name (or even worse - with a falsified) product, the student thinks he buys the whole package until there's a problem. In every civilized country the procedure is pure fraud.
Major   
Sep 07, 2017
Essay Services / List of spamming | scamming | foreign TWITTER freelance writer | essay service accounts [40]

Well, there's a reason why students would pay $100 for NIKE shoes and would not pay more than $10 for no-name shoes. We can assume that both shoes may be equally durable, but whoever paid $100 for Nike wants to have Nike. You, as the seller, tell students you sell Nike (ie. that you are located in NYC or London or have graduated from Harvard or Oxford), but in fact you sell no-name shoes. See the problem?
Major   
Sep 03, 2017
General Talk / Students hire custom essay writers to avoid plagiarism detection [16]

I don't think a serious / legitimate company would consider students / their customers to be mere tools who want to do nothing but party (maybe partying is a part of culture in Ukraine or Pakistan though, who knows).
Major   
Sep 03, 2017
General Talk / How to Buy an Essay Online? Listed from the Safest to the Riskiest. [17]

You surely may :) Yes, the recommendation system is good and can work well, but I mostly meant students who aren't frequent / regular buyers (ie. those who get stressed out to the point they post on a social media they need immediate help etc.). Then they get contacted by the scammers who pretend to be their friends when in fact they prey on them and eventually defraud them.
Major   
Sep 02, 2017
General Talk / How to Buy an Essay Online? Listed from the Safest to the Riskiest. [17]

THE SAFEST WAYS OF BUYING CUSTOM ESSAYS ONLINE:

1st choice - An old and reputable essay service registered in a law-abiding, English-speaking country (US / UK / Australia / New Zealand).

2nd choice - A reputable, native English speaking freelance writer located in a law-abiding, English-speaking country.

3rd choice - A reputable freelance writer located in a law-abiding country (usually one of the EU-countries in Europe).

THE RISKIEST WAYS OF BUYING CUSTOM ESSAYS ONLINE:

Risky - A service randomly found on one of the essay service review websites (the majority of the essay service reviews are 100% fake / totally fabricated).

Essay Ordering OptionsVery Risky - A non-reputable essay service or writer randomly found via an online search (the foreign scam-artists are black-hat-SEO contractors who hack other sites to fraudulently place links to their own websites; that's the only reason why their sites still appear high in search engine results).

Extremely Risky - An essay service or writer who randomly contacted you via one of the social-media websites, like Twitter or Facebook (especially after you revealed publicly you were in need of an essay). These 'writers' and services work like a dangerous, well-organized mafia, and are almost certain to be located in a 3rd-world, non-English speaking and non-law-abiding country. All they do is to monitor the social-media websites for certain keywords (like: "need essay help," "Will pay for essay," "My essay is due," "help with my college paper," etc.) and contact their to-be-victims. At first, they may appear legitimate (they have many 'followers,' 'reviews', and their social-media page is typically well-designed), but that's the only reason for their existence and effectiveness because their publicly or privately-posted statements and credentials are completely false.

---

I think the most difficult part for a student who considers hiring a freelance writer or a writing company is to determine their legitimacy, reputation, and the true country location. It may take some research, but doing a search here for the company's domain name or the writer's email / username is the most efficient way of finding out the truth (or getting the closest to the truth).

The last thing that cannot be stressed enough - having reviewed some of the social-media posts it seems to me that some students are very gullible by taking the fraudsters' claims at face value. The foreign scammers who are currently involved in the 'essay writing business' are also working in other 'niches' (like illegal gambling, adult entertainment, website hacking, personal identity thefts, etc.). Students need to be more careful when posting in public or else the social-media mafia of 'writers and essay services' that contacts them will take advantage of their naivety by first scamming them and then blackmailing them.

Have I missed anything? )
Major   
Sep 01, 2017
Writing Careers / Is "writing experience" really needed to be a good writer? [36]

Most of them come out of Kenya, the Ukraine, India, and Pakistan. Those types of writers can barely string together a coherent English sentence.

Exactly. A student who considers working with a freelance writer who contacts them first should reply to their offer with a 'custom' question that would require the writer to respond to it in his/her own words. Once they receive a reply (typically written in broken English), they will know to get away :{
Major   
Sep 01, 2017
Writing Careers / Is "writing experience" really needed to be a good writer? [36]

I've heard there are many bad freelance writers.. bad to the point that they would send a resume and writing samples (probably not self-composed) without a single sentence in the body of the email because they may be afraid whatever they write would instantly reveal and spoil their 'perfect' samples and resumes ;)
Major   
Aug 30, 2017
Writing Careers / Finding Students to Write For: Are There Any Viable Alternatives to Essay Chat? [19]

Why money to burn? :) Google and Facebook are the biggest advertising platforms (but you're right that the competition may just click on your ads, even though it may either be calculated in price or refundable). Still, Google, technically, doesn't allow advertising of 'academic paper services' - ref: https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/google-ban-term-paper-ads-225/ (not sure if this policy is still valid though since there are some foreign services still advertising on Google). Bing and other search engines may allow it without restrictions.
Major   
Aug 28, 2017
General Talk / Writing Services and PayPal Warning [26]

I wouldn't be too positive about Paypal; their 'problem transaction investigation' is seriously inadequate. The best part about it is the ability to communicate directly through their system with the unsatisfied customer (that way it's ensured they actually read your messages), but anything else are just automated robo-messages which falsely claim they have actually 'investigated' something, when in fact their robo-system is set up to automatically close a dispute after a certain action.

I'd assume that 80% of all Paypal 'investigations' are not being read at all by a human; they may only be read when the dispute is 'escalated' but even then I doubt more than half of those disputes are actually reviewed by a human. Sure, they send nice and reassuring messages about 'investigations' and 'case progress,' but that's typically about all they do (ie. send automatic emails without humans involved).
Major   
Aug 28, 2017
Writing Careers / Are Writers Evolving To or From the Academic Research Field? [15]

Judging on your comments here, I can tell you earned your English degree with honors :) I wonder if there's money in short stories or even novels; these days it may be easy to publish (especially online), but I'd be wary about the actual number of sales without professional advertising (which would likely cost more than the profit from sales).
Major   
Aug 28, 2017
General Talk / Credit Card Chargeback on scam essays [7]

Starting a 'chargeback' for a (writing) service transaction is not recommended. The best way is to resolve the issue with the seller (unless the seller is an obvious, 100% scammer). Otherwise, by doing a chargeback, you DECREASE your credit score, even if you win the chargeback. A good credit score may be important to students who start their professional and personal lives
Major   
Aug 27, 2017
Writing Careers / Are Writers Evolving To or From the Academic Research Field? [15]

I've been wondering about the careers of academic freelance writers / editors. Is this line of work an early or a final 'career destination' to most of them? It'd be interesting to know how many percent of 'academic writers' have started their online writing careers as an 'academic' writer/researcher versus those who evolved from a different niche (eg. content / advertising / creative).

I personally think only the most talented writers may be successful in the serious academic research field and new or inexperienced writers may be better off starting as content writers than starting as academic research writers. Too many new writers assume that the academic research field is easy (well, it may be if you copy-paste or paraphrase stuff instead of doing actual in-depth research and custom writing). What's your view on that (from experience ;)?
Major   
Aug 25, 2017
Writing Careers / How do writers / essay services deal with customers who try to steal their money? [16]

The cost of hiring a lawyer and investigation proceeding would likely be about the same or more as the order amount. If a scammer used a proxy and/or was based in another country, it would add up and the overall cost and such an effort would be prohibitive. Imagine hiring a lawyer in the scammer's country, translate and notarize all documents into the local language, then subpoena their IP and email address (it would probably stop there as it'd be unlikely to get through the subpoena requests).
Major   
Aug 25, 2017
Writing Careers / How do writers / essay services deal with customers who try to steal their money? [16]

FreelanceWriter's response in this thread got me wondered, how freelance writers and legitimate writing services should deal with fraudulent transactions or lying customers. What if you were a writer who's completed a 30-page writing order and you receive a notification from Paypal that the charge was not 'authorized' by the buyer or that the buyer claims the order does not meet their academic standards?

How would you typically deal with this situation (especially that you KNOW the customer is not being truthful about the whole situation and that your order has met or exceeded the highest expectations of an academic institution). You risk having the order amount chargebacked (or it has already been chargebacked).. and now what.. Would you allow the customer to have your money 'stolen' this way or perhaps you'd take some actions to try to recover your money?
Major   
Aug 24, 2017
General Talk / Hired a freelance writer who plagiarised work and now threatens me [10]

It's yet another reason why working with 'individual freelance writers' could be risky (as opposed to legitimate US/UK based writing services). I don't imagine a legitimate writing service to email the student after months or years of order completion to blackmail him or her.
Major   
Aug 19, 2017
Writing Careers / Are Freelance Writers Wise to Offer Student Discounts and Coupons? [19]

It's funny to see mostly foreign essay services offering a discount instantly calculated into the total price. Quite often, a writing service offers a discount to 'first-time customers' (who then end up using multiple emails to quality for it ;) I agree that referral discounts are the most productive ones for both the student and the academic research service.

If they cheat their own writers, one may expect a similar behavior towards their customers who count on getting "purchase rewards." Virtually all ESL / suspicious essay services offer discounts to all visitors (they usually call it a "Discount for a NEW Customer"). I'm not sure about the reasoning behind this; to me it's like going to a home furniture store and having this conversation:

Buyer: How much is this chair?
Seller: It's only $160.
Buyer: Ah, seems very expensive to me.
Seller: But this price includes a 20% discount!
Buyer: Wow, that's a great price, I'll take two!
Major   
Aug 19, 2017
Writing Careers / Question on receiving payment via WU? [17]

The best and the safest way for a freelancer is to receive money via bank transfer or Western Union. Paypal is the second best option (even though it is not as safe when it comes to fraudulent or 'it-was-my-charge' transactions). It's worth giving some kind of discount in exchange of receiving the money via bank transfer or WU.
Major   
Aug 18, 2017
Writing Careers / List of Penalties against Academic Writers? [14]

The line between an independent contractor vs a regular employee is fluid and should be determined on case-by-case basis (it's been discussed here). In general, if they force you to work on a specific order you don't want, it may suggest they want to treat you as a regular employee. But if you take any orders you like, it may suggest you are a contractor. There are other variables related to that, but these are one of the strongest ones when it comes to employee classification.
Major   
Aug 17, 2017
Writing Careers / List of Penalties against Academic Writers? [14]

You're right - they don't 'fire' a writer just like they would fire a regular employee, but in many cases they do treat them as a regular employee, so they take advantage of all the best opportunities for themselves. FYI - from a legal point of view, a formal/written/signed contract with a company does not mean a worker is or is not a contractor (a contractor may be classified as a regular employee based on certain actions or expectations of their employer).
Major   
Aug 17, 2017
Writing Careers / Question on receiving payment via WU? [17]

Paypal is very good (for the buyer); for the seller (a freelance writer or an essay service) they don't offer as much protection against fraudulent charges as they used to. Of course, if we're talking about B2B (business to business) transactions, the fraudulent charges don't typically apply.
Major   
Aug 17, 2017
Writing Careers / List of Penalties against Academic Writers? [14]

So.. the foreign essay services can steal money from freelance writers by:

- creating a bogus revision request (obviously they can login as a student and make up a story),
- creating fake plagiarism reports,
- assigning an order a freelance writer doesn't want and penalizing him/her for not completing it (in lawful countries a company cannot tell a contract writer to complete an order he/she doesn't want to complete or else they would face a formal investigation).

One should remember that the service owner / admin can always login as a customer and post false statements in order to achieve a certain goal (typically to create a bogus refund request - after that the money goes back directly to the admin/service, or to fire the writer).
Major   
Aug 16, 2017
Essay Services / Hey guys. Question on answerstohomework.com [6]

It's yet another Kenyan outfit (created by the failed 'essay company' owners); you may surely continue using it, but the potential risks may be too high, starting with a stolen identity and ending with bounced checks.