On EssayChat, PV recently referred to me as the only writer he considers possibly better than him. I disagreed, but I'd trust his opinion about me over yours any day. In actuality, I do no more "self-promotion" than anybody else who contributed to this thread and I advertise much less frequently on these types of forums than most writers, including PV, and by a long shot. Your rationale for distinguishing him from me in that regard is ludicrous and just betrays your animosity and very obvious agenda.


I wouldn't call it a "wound"; it's just the same old deliberately false implication that comes outta you, kind of like a psychological "tic" anytime too many other forum members say something positive about me. Ironically, speaking of "wounds," your animosity toward me all started (and continues 2+ years later) in an old thread where someone asked writers for the dumbest essay they were ever asked to write. I mentioned having to write why lowering the drinking age would be a good thing. You responded to that post by arguing that driving drunk is a "skill" best learned early and that I must be "jealous" of people with that skill. Some fun ensued at your expense that (apparently) embarrassed you so much that you've hated me and manufactured opportunities to insult me ever since, despite the fact that I never refer to you in posts or ever quote you except in my responses to your periodic unprovoked attacks. You also called me "grandma" despite the fact that I'm a dude with no kids.

The facts, for anybody interested, are that in 2010, I received an email from the mods indicating that my account was scheduled for termination the next day because they thought I might be here for the sole purpose of defending one particular essay company. I responded that this was not true and that I'd only been defending them because I knew, first-hand, that various accusations were absolutely false, and I said that I had no problem at all agreeing never to discuss that website. The mods actually said that they considered me a valuable contributor to the forum (but I forget the exact phrase they used), and I have never discussed any specific essay company since that day or violated any other TOS. My continued membership here is no more "tenuous" or "conditional" than yours.


I never represented myself as a lawyer. I mentioned having a law degree (in the context of trusting me to know what's a good or bad analogy) and someone else accused me of lying about my degree. So I scanned and posted documentation from NYLS. Enough people here know my name to check with the Alumni Affairs Office at NYLS for themselves (Main # 212-431-2100). I also have a History degree but never claimed to be a historian, either.

Sticking with your analogy, I see this as a public beach where there are local surfers, non-local surfers, and also some genuine dirtbags trolling the beach to steal the wallets from all of our beach towels and who give the whole beach such a bad reputation that the beachgoers we all hope will come to watch us surf might just abandon the beach altogether. The local surfers are all the undisclosed legit essay company reps, employees, and principals; the non-local surfers are all the legit freelance writers; and the genuine dirtbags are all the scam essay companies and "writers" looking to rip off customers.

The local surfers are endlessly picking fights with and trying to embarrass the non-local surfers under totally manufactured excuses and justifications when their only real motivation is simple territoriality and resentment that anybody else just wants to share "their" public beach and surf. What makes it even more ridiculous is that in at least some cases, the locals here know some of the non-locals quite well, because they actually employ them during the week and yet still want to fight them just for surfing "their" waters on the weekends.

Meanwhile, it's the thieving dirtbags who are the ones really ruining this beach for all of us. In my opinion, there's plenty of room on this beach and in these waters for all of us surfers to get along without any conflict and if there's a worthwhile fight to have, it should be against the thieves on the beach and not one another.

Exactly. The higher the level of your natural writing style and the better your command of vocabulary the more it slows you down to write more simply at the ESL level.


This is also true, meaning a versatile ENL-writer can always write at a lower level if required, but an ESL-writer whose writing is characteristically and recognizably ESL cannot produce ENL-sounding original work at any price.

In my opinion, the origin of this ESL/ENL distinction as a focus of this industry is simply that many American and British customers reported having been ripped off by receiving work that was useless to them because it was written by ESL writers whose writing didn't sound anything like ENL writing. In many cases, the customers had ordered the work from companies whose websites offered no hint that orders might be completed by ESL writers.

The only two reasons that ESL/ENL is an issue for customers in the first place is that: (1) Most ESL writers don't write English as well as the ESL writers posting in this thread, and (2) Many ESL writers (and many companies employing them) purposely avoid disclosing their ESL status. The victims of that deliberate nondisclosure includes customers, ENL writers, and also qualified ESL writers whose work is probably substantially indistinguishable from that of many decent ENL writers. The problem isn't "finicky" American and British customers or territorial or "racist" American and British writers or companies; the problem is bad ESL writers and the companies that employ them and deliberately avoid disclosing their ESL status to customers.


The simplest system would be for writers to just disclose their English-language fluency to prospective customers; that would enable customers who demand ENL writers and customers who prefer ESL writers to find exactly what they want. The two main reasons that doesn't work in practice is: (1) many ESL writers don't want to limit their (first-time) customer base to customers who want work written by ESLs, and (2) many ESLs are genuinely oblivious to (if not downright delusional about) how bad (and immediately recognizable as ESL writing) their English writing is, as evidenced by some of their posts throughout this forum, although not in this particular thread.

Your post implies that providing TOS necessarily means that an entity is "professional" and "honest" and that not providing TOS necessarily means that a freelance writer is unprofessional or dishonest.

Meanwhile, companies in myriad industries (including this industry) publish TOS statements that they routinely violate or that are designed to provide nothing more than plausible deniability for uses of their products that are illegal but that are actually much more expected than unexpected. For example, bong and rolling paper manufacturers whose TOS say their products are only intended for tobacco and some essay companies whose TOS warn that their product is never to be submitted for academic credit but that routinely fill hundreds of orders every year whose specs say things like "Please make shoor my essay no so much good English...my teechar noes my English no so good!"

As you know, some essay companies have TOS that say they never resell their products but do so anyway. The same is obviously true of plagiarism-scanning sites that store (and sell) scanned files despite TOS that promise they don't store anything submitted for scanning. Other times, so-called "reputable" companies (again, in myriad industries) use their TOS very deliberately to bury consent clauses in ways specifically intended to obtain "consent" for various things from users without those users every really recognizing what they're consenting to by using the site.

In fact, just recently, I had a very frustrating experience where a forum to which I belong maintained an extensive TOS page one of whose provisions expressly promised to provide the entity's mailing address upon request. Instead of providing it to me upon my polite request, that entity simply changed the TOS the very next day and just deleted that particular provision in its entirety. So, it seems more accurate to say that some legitimate, professional, and honest companies (in many industries) maintain TOS and that some illegitimate, unprofessional, and dishonest companies (in many industries) also maintain published TOS.

Some freelancers may provide a FAQ page that provides all the same basic info and warranties as a traditional "TOS" statement. Finally, you definitely know at least one writer who's honest enough to alert customers to an entirely different and very real danger of sharing institutional credentials with writers that no writer who had any dishonest intentions for misusing that type of information would ever warn anybody about, especially very publicly. I believe it was in Post #12 above.

I'd much rather have clients just send me the source material as files anyway, which also happens to protect them. All large institutions probably have the ability to determine what IP addresses accessed their systems and from where. In the event there's some reason for checking into it on their part, do you really want to have to explain why someone several hundred or several thousand miles away (and whose email address may also appear on sites frequented by writers and students looking for writers) was logging into their system using your credentials to download all the sources that eventually turned up on your project's Reference page?

You don't have to beg people to help you.

The search function works very well.

Just type in the name of any business or writer you're considering using and read through years of posts with comments about those service providers.

The posts were all authored by the same community of people from whom you're begging help and are no less reliable than any of the advice you'll be receiving directly in response to your request for help.

Actually, public posts are probably a lot more reliable because there's at least an opportunity to read what others have had to say publicly in response.

When people contact you privately, there's no public response letting you know that they might be scam writers or representatives of well-known scam companies.

Thanks for asking (assuming you mean me). I don't think we're allowed to use the messaging system here for that purpose but it should not be too difficult for you to figure out how to contact us without breaking any forum rules using the information that we are permitted to publicize.

A. Just because a company says that all of its writers have advanced degrees on the customer side of its website doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. I'm sure many of them that may say that about their writers actually employ more writers without any advanced degrees than writers with advanced degrees, including companies that are generally legitimate as far as their product and customer relations are concerned.

B. Having an advanced academic degree doesn't necessarily mean someone is a great writer and not having an advanced degree doesn't necessarily mean that someone isn't. I didn't learn how to write in law school at all; I got into and through law school (and found it to be relatively easy) partly because I was already a very good writer. You can certainly improve your writing in school if you work at it (or if you're forced to work at it), but most people who earn a living by writing well have always just been relatively good writers at every level from the time they were in grade school.

C. Practically every one of my coworkers in federal government had at least one advanced degree, but the reason that the agency hired a dedicated Writer/Editor for every one of its regional offices in the first place was that they wanted to improve the quality of the writing coming out of the agency. I believe all 7 of us also had advanced degrees, but so did most of the other 400+ candidates for each of those positions, so that's not the reason we got hired as writers or the reason the other candidates didn't. According to what I was told at the time, the most important factor was our performance on the writing test they gave us. In my experience, writing companies also care much more about how good your work is once you're hired than they do about what degrees you have.

If you used a writer based in the U.S., I'd suggest you post the person's identity here immediately because of the outright extortion attempt and tell them that if they contact your school in any way, you'll immediately forward the entire email exchange to the local district attorney (and to federal authorities, since it was committed via computers online). If nothing else, this might be a reason for U.S. clients to use only U.S. writers. The same would be true in reverse for writers who are willing to provide work before payment; but that's still a bad idea that most experienced writers wouldn't even consider in the first place. Anytime there's actually a bona fide disagreement or dispute about what work (or money) is owed, customers and writers should always work it out amicably and/or at least settle it privately; but in the case of a writer actually blackmailing you for unearned money (or, alternatively, a customer blackmailing a writer with threats of negative feedback to get out of paying for work), the person on the receiving end should go public with it immediately and pull no punches as far as pursuing any and all criminal charges that might be applicable and available.

Certainly, your demonstrated writing ability on this forum makes you an appropriate judge. Customers who want their projects written exactly as well as your posts (and anybody who values your opinion about anything having to do with writing in English) should obviously contact you immediately.

One advantage of working for companies is that you don't have to deal with becoming a target for barely-English-speaking fools who resent the fact that you can actually express yourself coherently in writing so much that they make every thread about you, even when you haven't posted in it. All anybody new to this forum needs to do to identify genuine professional writers and distinguish them from these kinds of idiots is just click on their respective user names and check their posting history. Generally, real writers contribute substantively to forum topics, interact respectfully with other legitimate writers, never instigate malicious conflict with others (especially) totally unprovoked, and even offer good-natured help to competitors new to the business. Meanwhile, those who can't even compose a single grammatically-correct sentence in the language they purport to "write" for money never contribute substantively to any forum thread and do absolutely nothing here other than stalk and trash the real writers against whom that can't even hope to compete successfully. I encourage anybody who wants to see whether or not that's true to just check this fool's entire posting history and then check mine:

No problem. Good luck to you.

I was obviously referring exclusively to this, you idiot:


You accuse me of being a "hack" despite never having seen anything I've ever written other than forum posts. Your non-stop, totally unprovoked animosity toward me started immediately after someone once created a thread asking about the dumbest essays we've ever been asked to write. I'd responded that it was probably an essay asking me to argue that the drinking age should be lowered. You then proceeded to embarrass yourself arguing that the drinking age should be lowered because driving drunk is a "skill" best-learned early and that anybody opposed to that must just be "jealous" because he lacks that "skill." Prior to that, you and I had co-existed here peacefully; since then, you've jumped on any conceivable opportunity to attack me and when an opportunity doesn't exist already, you just throw in a nasty reference to malign me, unprovoked, in threads (like this one) where I haven't even posted and that had absolutely nothing to do with me until you decided to take another shot at me.

To the idiot posting above major: I don't "chat up" anybody here, much less "confused students." I contribute to conversations on this forum genuinely and, unlike you, I manage to do it while writing well, providing logic than is actually logical, and without dopey ideas, constant self-contradiction, hypocrisy, and (your) attempts to impress others by referencing nonsense like how big your house is or how much you "don't" need to work in this business anymore. I respond substantively to topics initiated by others regardless of whether they're customers or fellow writers or company reps; and, unlike you, I just discuss the issues.

Also unlike you and that other barely-English-speaking fool who stalks my posts and takes shots at me in threads where I haven't even posted, I don't stalk and attack other writers here as a desperate way of trying to compete against them. I maintain a perfectly professional and respectful relationships with all other legitimate writers here and at least 4 other well-known writers and company reps and insiders have repeatedly supported me over the years (since 2008) and only referred to my work as "excellent," most recently, ProfessorVerb, a few days ago. Same goes for every single one of my clients who responded to that thread asking for reviews about me. This forum happens to allow signature posts with website links and it also offers advertisement space that anybody can purchase, which I have done twice, for 1 week each time, and clearly identifying exactly who I am in those ads. If you're having that much trouble competing against me that you need to continually stoop to this level, you should probably be a little more focused on your own work and skills and a lot less on me.

Not at all. Generally, most clients would probably pay after the fact without a problem. However, we cannot afford to absorb the loss or waste time chasing down payments for even a few clients who don't pay up immediately or to make a living getting paid without an issue only "most" of the time. This work is stressful enough with constant overlapping deadlines practically every working day of your life without also having to worry about whether you're even going to get paid for work you just stayed up all night writing or cancelled your non-work plans to squeeze in for someone. Getting stiffed on a payment is also psychologically demoralizing and keeping track of all your deadlines is already enough of a headache without adding more work to keep track of who owes what for work already delivered. Prospective clients at least have some ways to "vet" a new writer who's been in this business for any length of time; as a writer, you can't check out the student the same way and it would waste too much time even if you could.

Furthermore, anybody who's done this for a living for any length of time (whether freelance or for companies) has encountered occasional demands for revisions that are totally ridiculous. For example, demands to add or remove biographical information about a psychological theorist after the work has already been delivered when the only specs were "5 pages on Freud and his theories." If it hasn't been paid, payment can be wrongfully withheld to leverage free revisions that are not fairly owed. Same goes for requests to revise (again, after delivery) based on conversations between the client and the professor occurring after your work was already delivered days earlier, exactly as promised and meeting the specs provided at the time it was ordered. All of that extra work can certainly be negotiated fairly, but if the client hasn't yet paid, you could be fighting just to get what's already owed for your work.


None at all, but usually, they are not "willing to pay for it" (or expecting to pay for it as something extra) when they ask that way. Usually, they just have a very unrealistic student's-eye view of the writing process and imagine that it takes us multiple sittings spread across a week to produce a 5 or 10-page paper. They also don't necessarily realize that their project might be one of a dozen or two-dozen or more projects on your calendar that week or two and that it's not as much on your mind as it is on theirs for that entire time. If they offer to pay for your time or if you're only dabbling in this as a writer and have only one or two projects pending in a given week, I suppose it's totally up to you if you want to engage in a prolonged email exchange and/or multiple phone calls to discuss a project that you really need no assistance to write and about which you have absolutely no questions requiring answers. Typically, you'll be responding to college freshmen wanting to "discuss" points about writing that they've just heard for the first time from their professors that week but that no professional writer needs to spend time discussing, especially for some 5-pg paper that you plan on banging out in an hour or two next week on the day it's scheduled on your calendar to be written and that will probably be an "A" in quality without any discussions about it after you confirm that you have everything you need for it.

Generally, experienced writers who aren't hurting for work at the moment will stay very clear from both of those problems. Partial payment in advance for partial delivery of however many pages you want to prepay on much longer projects isn't usually a problem; nor is requesting to review and discuss sections or chapters of dissertations and theses in between those prepaid sections. Paying half only "at the halfway point" would be something that only very desperate writers would accept. However, we don't need "drafts" because a project of this type and length is something we'd normally just write in one sitting, say sometime on Saturday or even Saturday night. There'd be absolutely nothing to "update" you about until we started writing it; and nobody's going to stop while working on a 7-pg project that only requires several hours to write just to contact you to communicate about progress after every page or two. Finally, very few experienced writers ever accept anything other than 100% prepayment before we'd even schedule a project of this length. This kind of request is ripe pickings for scam artists who will agree wholeheartedly to your conditions and then try to find a real writer to trick into providing the first half by posing as a client, pocket whatever you pay for the first half, and then disappear with your money, leaving you and an unpaid writer hanging. Your best bet, in my opinion, is to just try out a specific writer (or company), with a shorter prepaid project if you think 5-7 pages is too big to risk, and see how that goes. Good luck with this one.

"The Freelancer" is not me. Just want to make that clear to avoid any confusion.

Negative. The moderators of this forum actively monitor exactly that kind of thing and will immediately edit the offending post to publicize any such attempt. The poster above you (PV) is another writer known very well as a legitimate professional freelance and company writer in his own right, and there are several other known writers who responded to support me earlier in this thread. Without exception, every single person who responded to support me in this thread is either another writer who knows my work or an actual client of mine who was genuinely happy with my work.

I didn't ask for this attention and the OP also turned out to be a genuine customer looking for reviews about me this way instead of just vetting me more privately or trying me out for a short project the way everybody else does. I told him in no uncertain terms how much I didn't appreciate being the subject of his thread in this way because of the opportunity it provides to the resident dirtbag vultures to attack me, and even his (the OP's) response to that in this thread proves I had nothing to do with this at all. The post asking about "the Freelancer" that the Mods moved here by accident wasn't even about me: it was someone asking about a totally different writer whose posts on EssayChat I normally respond to just to let people know he isn't me.

Actually, I believe the Mods deleted a newer thread asking about a totally different writer and merged it into this thread that was originally about me. The other writer calls himself/herself "The Freelancer" on EssayChat and that's why I sometimes respond to those posts just to make sure people don't confuse us because of the similarity between "FreelanceWriter" (me) and "The Freelancer" (him/her).

Thanks Verb, appreciate the support.

(PV and I are direct competitors on the company boards and for freelance work. We know one another's work and sometimes refer projects back and forth when either of us is overbooked or where a project is out of our respective areas.)

In my opinion, this industry is saturated with unqualified writers and outright rip-off artists, so most of the head-to-head "competition" is among and between them. If you're really good at this, there's much less direct competition. By the time many customers finally find a good, reliable, and honest writer, they've already been so badly disappointed (or completely ripped off) by others that they're just relieved to have finally found someone they can rely on for good work and they don't gripe about the cost. Consequently, my average price has nearly doubled since 2008 and I lose relatively few prospective clients because of price. Most people who think I'm "too expensive" were looking for Third-World prices in the first place, or they end up coming back and ordering from me a few weeks or a few months later, after being totally disappointed with work they found at a cheaper page rate in the meantime.

Being "reputable" is something separate from being "good" or "experienced." You can be reputable as soon as you start offering your services by being honest (and realistic) about your capabilities and by delivering exactly what you promise to deliver from Day One. You become good at this and experienced by doing a lot of it over a relatively long time, pretty much the same as most other professions. The anonymity component is probably similar to many other online services and it typically goes both ways with many customers preferring to identify themselves only by an email address at first. Once you've done a couple of transactions with someone, both parties generally drop any initial reservations about identity disclosure. The only results you can "guarantee" are that you will fulfill the specs provided and that the writing will be at the quality level that you promised and that customers will feel that they got their money's worth at the time they receive and review the product you provide.


It depends on the customer. Many are A students who expect your work to be the same general quality as theirs; others expressly request it not to be more advanced than their writing samples that they provide. Sometimes, you get parents placing orders and requesting that you don't write beyond the level of a high-school student, 8th Grader, or even (one or twice in my career) the level of a 5th or 6th Grade student. Customers who are ESL often request simple language and sentences, but I've also had ESL clients expressly request language as "complex" or as "sophisticated" as possible.

When I started doing this, it was strictly a supplemental income and I could not even imagine writing enough or as fast as would be necessary to provide a comparable income to a decent regular job. It's not something you'll ever become wealthy doing, but if you like the independence of it, you can definitely make it work. Nowadays, I gross more than my last pay grade as a Senior Writer/Editor for the U.S. federal government and I could never even consider going back to a regular 9 to 5 again (more like 7 to 3, by choice, to beat the rush hour) just to earn the same money or even slightly more. I'd have to make substantially more than what I earn doing this just to consider another office job; but I'd definitely go back to teaching hockey or bouncing at a strip club for somewhat less, if a steady, long-term offer like that came along =)


For the first few years, most of my income was from essay companies and I had only a handful of freelance clients, most of whom were either acquaintances or referrals from acquaintances. More recently, almost all of my work is freelance and essay-company work is less than 1/10th of my income. I wouldn't necessarily say it's "word of mouth" either: it's more like you (very) gradually get to where you have about a dozen or more regular repeat customers; then, it's just a matter of continually getting enough new clients to replace the ones who graduate. Even if you're very good at this and very experienced, it would still take some time to start all over again to go from having no clients to having enough clients to sustain yourself doing this for a living exclusively.

You definitely get better with practice: most new writers specialize in longer deadlines and work much the way they did as students, laboring for several days over every 10-pg paper. By the time you've written 1,000+ papers, you start specializing is rush work that pays more and you typically bang out a 10-pg paper of ordinary undergraduate-level of difficulty in a few hours, maybe with a meal or TV break in the middle. You no longer need multiple "drafts" anymore, either, because the first thing you write comes out pretty polished and rarely needs more than a spellcheck and one proofread.

There's no way to use any kind of "syntax database" or a sentence template, because if you're a good writer, that would take more effort and time than just free-writing. You might have a template of standard headings and font settings, but that's about it. Generally, people who are not naturally good writers tend to assume that anything other than writing from scratch is helpful and several non-writer acquaintances have asked me the same question and then looked at me like I was BSing them when I told them that you can't write academic papers (or much of anything, really) the way you fill in "Mad Libs" party games. For experienced writers, free-writing is the fastest process there is. About the only thing we do along those lines is keep a database of good reference material on various topics so we don't have to re-type every book or journal article that's useful for more than one project, especially those that you actually have in hard copies in your library at home.


I believe it's futile but for an entirely different reason: The only objective "qualifications" you can provide are that you have a particular degree, but having a degree in most academic fields has little to do with how well you write, especially if you're writing in many more subject areas than your formal educational background as you must be able to do if you hope to make a decent living at this. About all you can do in that respect is prove that you don't just grab at any work dangled by declining projects that you can't take with confidence and by providing good work on the first small test project from any new client.

I'm not sure where you get your facts, because if you do even the slightest bit of research on the topic of aircraft accidents and their causes, you'll find that pilot error has been responsible for two or three times as many accidents as any other cause in every decade since the 1950s. Aircraft mechanics need to be good at fixing planes not writing essays. You can accuse them of lacking integrity if you want to criticize them for not doing their own writing (assuming for the sake of argument that's the case), but writing about aviation is hardly "turning theory into practice." Sticking with your terminology, books and essays are "theory" and actually working on planes is "practice."


In that case, you better go learn how to do blood work and catheterize yourself before you or a loved one is ever hospitalized, because no profession has been better represented during the 10 years that I've been doing this for a living than nurses, and most of them are already licensed RNs pursuing advanced degrees and certifications. While you're at it, also be prepared to home-school all your kids, because teachers and education administrators are among the next most common professions patronizing this industry, and most of them are also already working in their respective fields and pursuing advanced degrees and positions.


Speaking of integrity and "frauds," aren't you the same guy who once proudly announced here that you'd "graduated" your client by registering at his online university to impersonate him for the entire duration of his online course?

Actually, I'm in the middle of an engineering project right now and do them fairly regularly. In this particular case, he already contacted me through my website and I responded, telling him (honestly) that it was out of my depth to take on from scratch with confidence but that I'd be more than happy write up his substantive analysis and research.

No; but if that's an analogy, it's a bad one that has nothing to do with the topic or (especially) with my prior statement.

I said that people going into technical careers like engineering and nursing typically don't do much writing once they get their degrees, so getting help with their academic writing isn't quite the equivalent of having someone else take their substantive academic (or licensing) exams for them, if that's what you're suggesting.

The point was that practicing engineers (or nurses) who had someone else take their substantive exams OR their licensing exams could conceivably present a risk to others, but that isn't true if the only thing they had help with was writing their academic essays in school.

Public safety is an issue if engineers and nurses don't learn and practice all their hands-on skills in school or don't pass all their own substantive (and/or) licensing exams. I don't believe public safety is an issue if engineers or nurses get help writing their essay assignments in school and I don't think writing (other than basic written communications) is an important skill for engineers or nurses.

Let me just get this straight: The same person (you) who once argued here that lowering the legal drinking age was a good idea because driving drunk is a "learned skill" that should be learned early and that anybody who thinks that's stupid must just be "jealous" about not having that "skill" is now worried about public safety in connection with engineers not writing their own essays in school?

Generally, when aircraft go down, it's usually related to human error in the cockpit or in ground maintenance, not the inability of engineers to write well. The same holds true for nurses with respect to medical practice errors and their academic writing assignments. People going into technical careers typically don't do much writing once they get their degrees, so getting help with their academic writing isn't quite the equivalent of having someone else take their substantive academic (or licensing) exams for them if that's what you're suggesting.

1) If you don't know anybody who's already happy with the work of a specific freelance writer or company, you should use the search function here to explore the posting history of (and about) writers on this forum and of (and about) any disclosed company reps. Make sure you change the default search from "topic titles" to "messages."

2) People order stand-alone literature reviews all the time; it's just another routine project for most experienced writers.

3) Ideally, whatever information or specifications your learning institution provides you about the project. If you happen to have specific source material available, it's always helpful, too.

4) Possibly, but it's much more common and less expensive to have the writer just make up mock "data."

5) Possibly, but a more realistic set of criteria might be a writer who has previous experience with qualitative date analysis, and previous experience in sports and social science research, because "excels at" is subjective.

I wouldn't count on that. If you got that bad an essay, nobody is going to want to start with that as any kind of a guide for a good essay. Even a rewrite of a pretty good essay takes as long as writing from scratch, sometimes longer. Unless you get a very inexperienced writer, nobody is going to take that job. Your best bet would be to just use that first essay as nothing more than a warning for your next writer about what not to do and (maybe) to get a sympathy-based discount from the regular price of a brand new essay on the original topic.

I haven't paid close attention to who posts what there, but I've definitely been approached by some of them pretending to be students. Sometimes they say they'd like to "see my work on a sample basis first" before paying for a longer piece of work; other times they ask for a price quote and when I ask a question about the assignment or the course that anybody actually assigned that project would obviously know, they say they "have to get back to [me]"...one time, the guy even responded that he needed to ask "the customer" after first presenting himself as a student.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I can easily un-muddy the waters in that respect by admitting that I'm just too cheap to invest in a more advanced website that supports contact. I'd probably spend that money just advertising more on here to direct people to it before developing a more advanced website. I use it strictly as an informational source for clients and simply provide my email contact on the page. It's explained in greater detail below.


In my opinion, it would be more accurate to say that there are exceptions to most rules, and even more accurate to say that it doesn't follow from "All A are B" that "All B are A."

Crooks in myriad businesses obviously use those types of emails, mainly because they can be changed easily and an unlimited number of times; but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't also some legitimate users of those types of emails. I don't have a dog in that fight, since I've used the same 1 AOL email address for writing since 1999 or 2000.

When I created my intuit page in 2010, I added a second AOL email for the sole purpose of easily being able to know how many customers found me through that page based on which email they used to contact me, and I've never conducted any kind of business using any of those other types of emails listed. My first response to any email on my newer account always asks to switch immediately to my main email, so there's nothing "hidden" about that. I also have a 3rd email on a different ISP that I had to get when I worked for the government. More recently, I've used that email only for business purposes on behalf of my co-op building Board of Directors as VP. Nothing hidden about any of that, either.


One could easily flip that to say the exact same thing about the "hidden reason" that some large essay companies would invest so much more money than that to create many different user-end websites, all with totally different company "DBA" names and not even the slightest hint to customers that the same company actually owns and operates all those very different-looking websites, typically relying on the exact same group of writers and customer-service and administrative personnel regardless of which company takes the order. So, to be fair, there are probably some crooked essay companies and freelance writers who maintain or create multiple sites and/or emails for "hidden" reasons and some totally legitimate essay companies and freelance writers who may both use multiple sites and/or emails for equally legitimate reasons.

Coincidentally, the obvious ESL-types of mistakes in their website copy are identical to those in your first-ever post on this forum.

Actually, since your experience was with an essay company and not with a freelance writer, your comments are probably much more helpful to me than harmful, and I don't need to defend anybody.


Luckily, that's probably very true.

I sympathize with your disappointment over your experience with the company you used, and I know nothing about them whatsoever. But your subsequent campaign against the whole industry is a little silly, because, among other things, you're generalizing very broadly based on an isolated experience with one writer at one company and on the way that one company handled your complaint. Frankly, you really don't know what you're talking about.

Certainly, there are many large essay companies whose entire business model is based on a steady stream of first-time/last-time customers and they operate the way you describe, mainly cobbling together any combination of words to constitute an "essay" that is useless to their customers. There may also be freelancers who try to do this as a side job or as an attempt to make a living that way. But it would be impossible to do make a living steadily and successfully, especially over many years under the same online user ID and email address that way. The few other good writers I know and I depend on repeat business from happy customers to earn a living and the quality of the work we do really has nothing to do with how many project we have pending at a particular time.

We have our range of topic areas that we can handle competently and within that range, there are some that are easier for us than others. The specific details of each project is the principal variable that determines whether the product we provide is the equivalent of a "B-" or an "A+" in terms of quality. As is the case with even very good students, we may also occasionally write a "C" paper, too; but not too often or we wouldn't be able to keep customers' business for dozens (and dozens) of consecutive projects, often over several years per customer. Whatever the quality of one of my papers, it's almost exclusively a function of the topic and requirements of that particular paper and never a function of whether it's the only project I write that day or the fourth project I write that day. Just looking at one computer, I have 100+ folders for individual clients for 2013 and my other computers have folders for more 2013 clients that aren't on this one; and out of 100 folders, there might be 10 that have only one project rather than 5 or 10 or more for each person.

Nobody's going to argue with you that there aren't many shady companies (and individuals) in this business. It's also difficult to find a talented and honest mechanic or repair shop for your car, because that industry is notorious for ripping off customers left and right, too. But if you do your research and/or go by reliable referrals, it's definitely possible to find a great car mechanic who does good work and doesn't rip anybody off, and who routinely fixes several cars equally well in a single day. It's basically the exact same situation with this industry; and your diatribes are roughly the equivalent of someone who got ripped off by one lousy mechanic posting over and over that nobody should ever trust any mechanic with any car repairs.

I'm not even arguing with you (let alone insulting you or calling you names); just responding to the topic of conversation.


I wouldn't call it "loads of money" and it's not "greedy" when sellers of retail goods hopes that customers will buy more expensive items rather than less expensive items or when a time-dependent service provider hopes that customers will place rush orders. It's up to the customer when to order, not me; and whatever the price, it's quoted in advance and always up to the customer to accept or decline and continue looking for a better price from someone else.

No offense intended, but as long as the end-product you receive meets your expectations, it's really none of your business when it's produced. Frankly, most orders get placed on a calendar and they get written whenever it's most convenient for me before your deadline. If it's a very long, difficult order, work obviously begins much sooner than it does for shorter, much easier orders. If you order what I consider to be an easy or very routine project and our agreed-upon deadline is Midnight Saturday (let's say), I will probably write it sometime on Saturday, although not "at the very last moment." That's also "revealed" in the many previous posts on related topics where I've explained that very explicitly before. Congratulations, Sherlock: you figured me out.

It's funny how definitions (like "quite late") depend on perspective (i.e. student versus professional writer). I routinely get projects requested for next-morning delivery, and sometimes, even for requested delivery in a couple of hours. In fact, I specialize in (or at least greatly prefer) rush orders, precisely because the price is obviously higher than non-rush orders and it means much less writing for the money. Usually, when I get an inquiry without a specified deadline for anything about 10 pages or less and I have to ask "when is it due?" I'm usually hoping the response is "tomorrow" and not "next week."

No offense intended, but that's ironic considering your chosen S/N here.

I do plenty of (non-academic) ghostwriting and there are dozens of articles and blogs and white papers published online that are attributed to the dentists, lawyers, veterinarians, and company reps in various other industries whose names and pictures appear right above the verbatim copy that I authored for them. It would be nice to be credited for them, but as a ghostwriter, I understand that's exactly what they're paying me for.

Agreed. I may retain the copyright technically; but in a practical sense, once I write something for hire, I consider it to belong entirely to the client. When I write for essay companies and corporate clients, they usually specify that they'll own the copyrights and it's explicitly understood from the outset.

We can't do that without breaking forum rules. You can use the search function to check out the long-term reputation of most writers and companies here; just make sure you switch the Title field to the Message field. You may also want to consider that this forum probably wouldn't take paid banner advertisements that appear periodically at the top of these pages from any shady writers or companies.

Not me. I've always said that I have no problem with any ESL writer who is honest about it (like you); my problem is strictly with ESL writers who deliberately try to conceal that from clients, especially, when they're also unqualified. I've also acknowledged that there may even be a legitimate market for ESL writers who don't write that well in English (such as for clients with similar non-fluency), as long as they're honest about it.

Nobody's suggesting that. Native speakers can also be horrible writers; but if someone can barely express himself in English in the first place, the chances that he can write well enough in English to satisfy the needs of a native-English-language client is zero. (Not all sighted or sober drivers are necessarily good drivers, but nobody wants to get in the car with a driver who's almost blind or drunk.)