I don't think either of us is lying about anything; I believe he was referring to his freelance rates and not claiming that any essay companies pay him $35-$40/pg. Earlier, when I thought it was obvious from the context of the conversation that I was only referring to freelance rates, you responded as though I'd claimed some company paid out at that rate and I had to clarify in a subsequent post that I hadn't meant that.

Since you asked me 2 direct questions, I'll answer them both directly:


My experience is that most of the essay companies I've been writing for since 2003 haven't raised their payout rates in a decade. I was lucky that they started me off at their highest rate because of my law degree and writing samples, but the top regular rate from them is $20/pg. Most of their projects pay out in the range of about half of that or a quarter of that amount. They add bonuses to some particularly difficult orders bringing the payout on them to $25/pg or $30/pg but not that often.


On average, most of the companies I've been writing for pay $20/pg for the work that I take because I don't take many orders that pay out less than that. There are very few orders that are worth taking at half the minimum per-page rate I charge for freelance work. If I wanted a lot of $20/pg work, I'd just "negotiate" more with freelance clients asking to pay that, but I don't even bother. That's what I was charging for freelance work 10 years ago, but my freelance prices have gradually risen to what my market has borne, and rather easily.

Now that I've answered both of your questions very directly, may I ask you for the same courtesy? Are you a rep or employee of or affiliated in any way with any essay company? If so, what company is it and what's your position or affiliation?


That's probably equally true of many essay-company administrators, too. So you may have hit on another possible advantage to using (some) freelance writers: namely, some of us (like me) totally ignore all holidays and related social rituals and work right through the times of year when it can be very tough to find someone willing to work. I'm booked pretty solid with deadlines in the next few days, including a few I'll be writing later today/tonight.

Correction:


I meant to say "about half or three-quarters of that amount" not "a quarter." But that's only for writers getting the top rate; less experienced writers don't make as much.

I don't "negotiate" price at all, much less go through any "tough" negotiations. I haven't written a single page for less than $30 in a long time (except for essay-company orders), and very routinely get $35-$40/pg on freelance projects that are even slightly difficult or slightly rushed. I tell prospective clients that I don't "negotiate" price at all; I quote my price for a given project and delivery date and they either accept my price or they're perfectly free to just try me again some other time in the future if they're not satisfied with work they find cheaper...which happens to be exactly the way I phrase it in emails.

Generally, most of the prospective clients who decline my price are those who were looking for something in the range of $15/pg anyway, so I don't consider it a loss when they go elsewhere; and most of the rest eventually do come back to order from me after trying out cheaper writers or essay companies...and once they do use me the first time, they tend to use me many more times after that...and at my price without any "negotiations" whatsoever.

Furthermore, professional clients often pay me almost twice what you don't seem to believe students pay, and typically, that means about $75 or $80 for about 400 words of copy. I don't know what any other writers get from their professional clients, but I know at least 3 other (academic) writers who all charge $30-$40/pg as their base price for most of their academic work. Rather than being the exception, that actually seems to have become the standard base rate for very experienced, very good American writers, at least the ones I know.

I agree, but reporting the student doesn't help getting any of the money back; it only fulfills the desire for revenge. If the writer (or essay company rep, as the case may be) believes the customer is planning to submit the work for credit, it seems the intermediate position might be to just notify the customer that the project will be useless for that if it isn't paid by a specific time because the full text will otherwise be posted in full with a date stamp in a thread titled "Free Papers" on a forum just like this with all the details about the transaction except the student's identity or school. That way, the customer would still have the option of paying for the work and neither the writer nor the essay company could ever be accused of being vindictive about it or of violating confidentiality over a payment dispute.

I've been very lucky in that I've never even had a reason to think about this before, because I've never had a single disputed freelance payment in the 10+ years that I've been doing this. In thousands of projects, I've had one client not like the first section I did and she never ordered the second section from me. One other time (last year) I accidentally used the textbook furnished by a client for an earlier project for a subsequent project instead of the 2nd textbook he sent for it and it radically changed the final product. Since it was my fault, I just refunded the whole thing instead of arguing about which parts were still perfectly usable. It was my fault for not realizing that he'd sent me two different books. Usually, clients resend me the same book (or other sources) unnecessarily with subsequent assignments when they all rely on the same materials I've already downloaded for the earlier assignment.

As far as essay company work goes, I've only had the company rule against me once (also in 10 years) when a customer demanded a rewrite that I considered unjustified, such as (typically) when they ask to add specifications or details after the fact that were never part of the original specs. Usually, once it's explained to them, they just place a supplemental order for additional pages or, if they really messed up the way they ordered what they needed, they just re-order the whole thing with a better description the second time around. If it was my fault, then the company never has to get involved because I just apologize for the mistake and fix it ASAP; but I don't make mistakes like that very often.

I'd imagine that depends entirely on the writer and that some writers might do that whereas others might just chalk it up to experience. The exact same thing is probably true for essay companies, only I'd imagine that essay companies would be in better position to do that and have more resources to throw into it if they chose to be vindictive about it.

Any music with lyrics or a beat distracts me and I don't listen to classical; so no music. I can't read and absorb information without relative silence, but once I'm actually writing (as opposed to researching/reading), I usually have talk radio or the TV on unless I'm working on something particularly difficult.

I have never once complained about it and have only expressed my gratitude for having been allowed to maintain my membership in good standing and I have never violated any rule or my agreement with the admin ever since then. I mentioned it only as a very direct response to your comment that I "belittled" essay companies. Not only didn't I ever "belittle" any company, but I was almost booted for defending one too aggressively; that was the context, not any kind of complaint, whatsoever. If Admin will allow it, I will immediately post their email explaining why I was almost booted after redacting all real names, other forum names, and any essay company mentioned in that email.

Admin? May I please have permission to post the contents of that email from you if I redact the name of the person and Screen Name of the forum member you told me owned the essay company at issue?

I haven't accused anybody of anything. You intimated that I'm less than honest because I am biased (or identify with) freelancers. I simply responded that I've always admitted that I'm (mainly) a freelance writer and I suggested that, since you brought up the topic of bias, it would be more fair if you simply told us whether or not you have any interest in any essay company.

If it were up to me, from the point of view of any writers who admit to being writers, any clients who admit to being clients, and any company reps or owners or investors or employees who admit to being company reps or owners or investors or employees. I'll start: I'm a writer who has worked for essay companies since 2003 but who now does much more freelance work than essay-company work.

You?

I believe you know that's far from the truth, because I was very nearly kicked off this forum a year and a half ago and the main reason given was that the administrators believed that I'd been too supportive of the essay companies that I'd defended many times against what I knew to be totally false allegations. In fact, their email to me said that they thought that was the only reason I was here. The terms of my continued membership here were that I stop discussing any of those companies by name and I have never violated that or even contributed to any discussion about any of them since. I have also said many times that I know absolutely nothing about any other companies and I have never said anything negative about any company.

I believe you also know that I have a very amicable relationship here with about a half a dozen other writers (including MeoKhan) and that I have routinely defended other writers, including two of my strongest and most direct competitors, from false allegations, even though it would obviously have been more in my personal interest to stay completely silent and let them fight their own battles, including in a thread whose title stated that I was a better writer and more trutworthy than one of those writers.

It's really none of my business or concern whether you work for an essay company or not, but you seem to be flat out refusing to answer that question while simultaneously accusing me of being biased against essay companies. Furthermore, I have been addressing your points extremely politely and without any sarcasm, whereas some of your responses to mine seem to be dripping with sarcasm and are bordering on outright disrespect and ridicule. Since you've raised the issue of bias, I believe you should just answer the question about whether or not you work for or are affiliated with any essay company so that everybody reading these arguments can decide for himself who is biased toward or identifies with essay companies or freelancers. If you do work for an essay company, it's not exactly fair to refuse to admit that while accusing me of being biased in this discussion, is it?

Actually, the company would be in a worse situation. My wife would be the first person to know if I have a medical emergency and she could start contacting everybody who needed to be contacted immediately. The company would have no way of knowing that something happened to a writer unless he made the effort to let them know or until a client started complaining about a missed deadline. The company communication system isn't even part of the equation because neither the company nor the client would ever know anything unless the writer sent a message about it and he could could just as easily click "contact company" as he could click "contact customer" to notify them of a problem on the internal messaging system.


MeoKhan hasn't really contradicted anything I've said. Are you implying that I've said something "dishonest" or just that I'm biased because I do more freelance work than company work? Because if the issue is the potential objectivity or bias of all of us, both MeoKhan and I have always disclosed, in our profiles (and above every post), that we're writers. You've chosen not to disclose whether you are a Writer, Customer, or Company Rep; and it seems that you don't want to answer that question directly. Do you really think that's an unfair question given, as you seem to be implying, that we all probably have our own bases for possibly being biased in our respective views on this issue? Your input here seems to suggest (at least to me) that you have just as much of a reason to be biased as I do, only from the point of view of essay companies. Do you think that's an unfair conclusion on my part?

Actually, I had a health scare about a month ago and thought I might need surgery on short notice. I immediately prepared a very detailed list of all my pending projects on a calendar for my wife, with client emails (that are searchable for all previous communications and materials) and I contacted a colleague to give him a heads up about it. In fact, I did all that before I took care of my personal needs and affairs because I know my clients trust me. More importantly, as I've said, the situation is exactly the same for company writers, except that company writers may have less of an incentive to worry as much about it because it's the company reputation at stake if deadlines are missed and clients have no idea what's going on, rather than their personal professional reputation at stake. People get ill suddenly, get hit by busses, and drop dead all the time, and that doesn't change anything when working for a company means working for them as remote, self-employed, freelance contractors as we do, as opposed to working in a traditional office where you clock in daily and your employers knows if you're out sick...or dead.

You seem to have very strong opinions about this. Do you mind if I ask whether you are employed by or are otherwise affiliated with any essay company?

Just briefly to respond to Major:

I meant that I hadn't worked for less than $30/pg in 2 years as a freelancer; the point I was responding to was your statement that the $35/pg mentioned by Pheelyks was "wishful thinking." I wasn't referring to company orders at all. The vast majority of company orders that I take pay out $20/pg, although I have drastically reduced my company work in the last 2 years, precisely because the going rate that my fellow experienced American writers and I typically get from all of our freelance clients is now almost twice the highest per-page payout rate of company orders. This month, for example, I have completed exactly 15 company orders of which exactly 15 paid out $20/pg.

I stand by my statement that the customer is in no better position if I get hit by a bus if I owe him a company order than he is if I owe him a freelance order. I do have emergency procedures for my wife to contact my trusted colleagues with my full schedule of pending projects. If I get hit by a bus today and miss a company order, I also have a similar emergency procedure to contact the company to let them know, but I don't know how many other writers do that. If they don't, the first the company would hear about a missed deadline would be from the customer. They would then just email the writer asking for an update because they don't know where we are or what happened to us, either. If the company got no response, they'd eventually end up asking the customer whether he prefers a refund or to allow more time to find another writer. And at least at the companies that use my 3 colleagues and me, that means we'd probably be the first writers to get an emergency request to help out with the order. So, that customer is in no better position either way, at least in my case.


I don't know what (if any) companies you represent because you haven't said, but that is absolutely not the case at any of the companies that use Pheelyks and me, unless they lied to me just for my ego. The last time they privately offered me a very difficult project that I declined, I suggested that if neither Pheelyks nor the other 2 writers to whom I've been referring in this thread (and 1 other writer I don't know except as a very-frequently-requested writer) wanted it, they should probably just repost it for their other writers. Their verbatim response to me was "If you guys don't want it, we want no part of that order." So, at least with respect to us, there is a perfectly good reason that a customer might prefer to pay us directly the same price they'd otherwise pay a company to post an order that might get taken by a few hundred other writers, some of whom might have just started doing this for a living (and only part time as an experiment or while in between "real" jobs) literally yesterday.

I have no argument with you, Major, and I don't know what company (if any) you represent; but I'd like to answer your questions and provide the perspective of those of us writers whose situation is just not accurately described by what may or may not be true "on average":


That might be true "on average" but not for good, experienced, American and British freelance writers. I haven't written a single page for a penny less than $30 in at least 2 years and I believe Pheelyks hasn't written a page for less than $35 or $40. The other 2 good experienced writers I know charge the same. All of us also work for some of the same essay companies and that's one reason we've gradually shifted quite heavily to freelance work.


The main reason is that many customers prefer the certainty of knowing that their work will always have the consistency of being written by the same person and at the same level instead of by whichever company writer chooses to take their order. They can (and do) ask for us by name at many companies, but if we decline it (and we often do), any other writer (of hundreds of writers with varying skill and experience levels) can take the order unless they specify that they prefer a refund if we're not available. If any freelance clients of mine ever need work outside all of our areas, I have referred them to companies that I know are legit and I've helped them phrase the description for company orders that help them get what they need.


From the customers' point of view, they probably don't care if they pay $30/pg (or more) to a company that only pays about half of that to the actual writer or the same $30/pg all to the person who's actually writing the paper. Whether it's a company or a freelance writer, customers are often (understandably) very apprehensive placing that first order, but once they get a good product from a freelancer, they might actually feel safer knowing that it's always going to be the same person writing every order. As many customer testimonials here illustrate, it's quite possible to get a good essay from a totally legitimate company one time and a much worse essay from the same company subsequently, simply because it was written by a different writer.


I can't speak for any other writer outside of the small circle of 3 or 4 good, very experienced, honest American/British writers I know, but if one of us has an occasional emergency, we do the responsible thing by contacting one another for help. We also happen to be the top writers (of hundreds) at the essay companies that use all of us, so when it's a freelance-work emergency, at least (in our case) our emergency will be handled by an equally good writer. If the same thing happens with a company writer, the order either goes right back to the pool of hundreds of writers or the company contacts its best writers asking for help with it. As it happens, we're the same 4 writers (out of about 5 or 6) who our companies will approach first, asking whether we can complete an emergency and they'll offer us a bonus for doing it; but even with the bonus, it's still less than we (now) make from our freelance work.

Finally, no company I know ever "assigns" or "reassigns" an order like that to another writer to complete it because we have no obligation to take any order we don't choose. The most they can do is ask one of their best writer to help and then, if we all decline, they just repost the order for all writers to consider, and usually with a bonus to make it more attractive, hoping someone will take it. So, when it comes to emergency situations, the customer is usually in the exact same position whether it's a company or a freelancer, and in many cases, it actually involves some of the same writers in both cases.

In addition to barely speaking English while presuming to pass judgment on the "research skills" of good American writers whose work you've previously admitted to never having seen, you're not even honest about what you are and about why you've posted more 900 times in almost 8 years on a site that's obviously only of interest to writers, writing company reps, and their customers and prospective customers. I refer to myself honestly as a "Writer" in my profile, unlike you, who is very obviously a company rep masquerading as some kind of objective "observer." You do absolutely nothing here (in all of your 900+ posts) to contribute substantively to any topic of conversation in any thread; all you do is constantly (and falsely) attack legitimate writers because that's the only apparent strategy an "observer" like you can come up with to compete against us in an industry that you won't even admit to being a part of for profit in the first place. You should probably just concentrate on worrying about how to build up your own business to serve any clients who actually need whatever services you provide from "writers" who probably speak English no better than you and the other "observers" who hire them. The first step might be to just be honest and change your profile from "Observer" to "Writing Company Rep."

Because "writing" that includes an average of a half a dozen very obvious mistakes in every sentence is no bargain.


That's why.

I don't know anything about the writer, but in my opinion, once you get a plagiarized paper like that from anybody, you shouldn't ever expect anything else from that person. In this business, you're either:

(1) a real writer who actually writes all the projects you get paid for, or

(2) a scam artist who takes money and simply provides nothing in return, or

(3) someone who decided to try to pretend to be a "writer" by copying/pasting material and passing it off as "writing."

If you paid $3,000 for a high-end watch and it turned out to be a $10 fake, you wouldn't go back to that same seller to return it with a complaint and then expect to get the real thing the next time from the same person.

As Pheelyks said, unless your project was only a single page, you should take that as a lesson that, as Judge Marilyn Milian from The People's Court always says, "Lo barato sale caro" for "the cheap comes out expensive."

Take is as a lesson learned and apply it the next time you think the fair price quote you get from a real writer seems "too expensive."

[Moved from]: Warning About PayPal Phishing Scam

Received this request through PayPal yesterday. PayPal confirmed it's phony. Probably harvesting emails from here or EssayChat

Nov 18, 2013 00:49:17 EST
Hello ___________,

Nekpen Eghidemwivbie would like to be paid through PayPal.
Merchant
n.eghide@gmail

Note from merchant
Please refund the above amount for cancelled order 14644-1
Description Amount
Service $22.68 USD
Total $22.68 USD

Pay with PayPal
Nekpen Eghidemwivbie would like you to use PayPal - the safer, easier way to pay and get paid online. Click the Pay Now to continue.

That wouldn't really work here because some competing companies would just "list" one another and the admin here doesn't comment about essay companies. The TOS of this forum caution you not to necessarily rely on what various posters say, so you pretty much have to figure out for yourself who here sounds credible and legitimate to you and who doesn't. The search function works very well and you can also use it to search for previous discussions about any company you want to research and about any writer whose posting history you might also want to review. There's a lot of potentially useful information here, but you have to find it for yourself and also decide what content or which posters to believe and what content or which posters not to believe, in general.

I do, actually. In my opinion, it would be much harder to earn a living doing this if you limited yourself to any normal 8-hour shift, or, for that matter, spent a lot of time outside of your house or apartment. You have to be prepared to work at all hours of the day and night, to go to sleep at 10:00 PM or midnight some nights and at 7:OO AM or 11:00 AM some mornings, and you have to be able to respond to emails basically anytime that you're awake. On one or two occasions, someone has offered me enough money to turn a project around in a few hours that I (literally) stuck my fingers down my throat to puke up an Ambien that I'd just taken before the email and agreement to pay the ridiculous amount of money that I said I'd have to have to do that project within 2 or 3 hours instead of going to bed and just doing it the next day. I have a gym in my apartment and a converted bar that works as a standing desk in that room and I'm always answering emails in between sets and sometimes writing easier stuff that I can write that way...and it goes without saying that I've stopped in the middle of a workout many times to sit down to work on emergencies dripping in sweat if the price was right or if it was a good regular client with a real emergency.

I've done both and definitely prefer this. When I worked for the government, I was up at 5:30 or 6:00 AM Mon-Fri and usually at my desk by 6:50 or 7:00. It was up to me when to come in, but I had to be there 8.5 hours and needed to leave by 3:15 or 3:30 to beat the traffic going home...or to get a full workout at the Federal Building gym and still get home in time to have some down time before rushing to go to bed to get 7 or 8 hours of sleep. After 5 days of that, I was totally wiped out and still had to spend one day of most weekends running errands like food shopping or dry cleaning, etc. It felt like I did nothing in my life but work and get ready to work again. The actual work was much easier and less intensive than this work and I never felt the least bit of pressure to make deadlines. Doing this, I sometimes have to go right from one deadline into another and often have to drop what I'm doing to squeeze in emergencies and then get right back to what I was already working on, especially during the busy seasons.

I make about the same salary now (except that I pay for my own health insurance) waking up pretty much whenever I want to, not working at all a few days a week during much of the year, and working in my boxers in front of the TV or in the sun on my balcony during the summer months. On the other hand, there are times when I have to work all day and/or all night long to make deadlines; emails have to be responded to constantly; it's hard to plan more than a couple of consecutive days off at a time; and there's really no distinction between "weekdays" and "weekends." Then again, I only got 2 or 3 weeks of annual vacation from the government and my usable "weekends" were only 1 day more often than not. All in all, doing this is much better than working a 9-to-5 unless you're one of those lucky people who only needs 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. I've also worked as a bouncer in a few strip clubs, a hockey skills instructor, and a community center athletic director and this pays better than all of them, although it's a lot less fun that at least 2 of those jobs =)

It's definitely a slow build initially and if you write for companies, that will be your main source of income at first. You'll get private clients here and there by participating in public forums and by putting some ads out on various websites, and if your work is good, almost all of your private clients become long-term repeats. Some of them need work only a few times a year for several years but others need much more work (like monthly or even weekly) for most of a year or more. By the time you have a few dozen regular clients, you don't really have to advertise too aggressively because all you really need is enough new clients to come in at roughly the same rate as your existing clients complete their degrees and every long-term satisfied client is usually good for at least one new referral, if not several. It also helps anytime prospective clients and writers share any public forum because, as is very evident just from reading through this forum, much of the competition can barely put together a single sentence in English without completely massacring the language, which helps clients weed them out pretty easily and find you. The only thing I'd be afraid to do now is ever take off a few months from working because then I'd have to start building up a client base all over again.

True. It also varies on my end, substantially based on how much time I have at that moment and what kinds of emails I've already been answering that day. Some new clients send me just 1 email asking for a quote and then 5 minutes after I respond, a PayPal auto-email pops up telling me the work's been paid for. Other times, new clients make me jump through a lot of hoops and hit me with a dozen emails asking endless questions about how they can be sure I'm legit, what my degrees are in, whether I can lower my price or take a 50% deposit, what the "process" will be, whether they will be getting updates or multiple drafts, can I send them a few pages at a time, what if they want things changed after the fact, whether it will be 100% original, and on and on and on. Usually, I'm working so I have to interrupt what I'm doing to respond to each of those questions, or to however many they put in each of several consecutive emails, most of which I already know (but they don't know) are unnecessary and whose answers could have been found in my posts on the forum where they found me and/or on my informational website. If your first email comes in right after that, you probably will get a different tone in my response than if your email comes right before that ordeal, especially if it starts out in the same direction. That's probably somewhat true about getting a waiter whose last table just left him a lousy tip after giving him a hard time throughout their meal.


I don't think the people who run this forum want us having these kinds of conversations here, but I already sent you one of my jerky emails with a response to your much nicer email before checking this forum this morning =)

I don't even understand what your problem is with me, seeing as we serve a totally different type of clientele: my clients appreciate consistent, high-quality writing in grammatically-correct English and yours (assuming you actually have any customers) obviously appreciate "writing" in whatever language that is that you use in all of your brilliant and insightful forum posts. In my view, we're not even competitors, and if we were, I'd maintain my end of the same type of mutually respectful relationship that I have with all of my real competitors here who are my equals.

Thank you (again). I'd just like to point out that there's a big difference between "niceties" and "niceness": You're right that I don't usually bother with niceties like salutations and other elements of personalization in emails, and I admit to being sort of blunt when answering the same questions (and having to allay the same fears) from so many people all the time. I'm like that off line too in that I ignore superficial social niceties like entertaining "polite" conversation about the weather, wishing people happy holidays, etc. But I'm pretty nice when it counts, like doing the right thing and helping people out.

I once wrote a $50-pg paper for a company client and in communicating about her instructions, found out that she was using the service because she lost her computer (and several pets) when her house burned down and she was using the library pc to place the order. I went on ebay and bought her the same refurbished IBM laptop that I use and had it mailed to her, (a total stranger) at a cost of 3 times what I earned writing her paper. Just today, I did what I had to do to get a paper to a client 2 hours earlier than promised...after emailing her yesterday to ask whether she could afford any extra time because I'm working with the flu. When she told me she'd forgotten to tell me she was in a European time zone and that she actually needed it earlierthan I'd promised it, I got it done for her early. I admit to being too lazy to bother with many social niceties that people expect, but I think I'm pretty "nice" in ways that really count.

My price for projects of ordinary difficulty with plenty of time is pretty standard for good American writers, but yes, rush projects and those that are harder (for me) can get pretty expensive. I think that's fairly standard too. Finally, it's probably a good sign if a prospective writer is a little blunt because the professional scammers all have impeccable "customer service" skills, because their only job is to get your money into their hands. Those of us who actually have to write all the projects we get paid for are sometimes under too much pressure to answer every email in perfect customer-service style and tone.


Thank you. You know I have equal regard for your work. I think some of my work is "outstanding" but I might be living on cat food if I only took orders that I could complete at an "outstanding" level. In my opinion, I write a lot more papers that are just "good" or "very good" but the important thing is that I always tell my clients what my level of confidence is with any project before they decide to pay me for it.

Here's another example: About 3 years ago, I asked the new UPS guy what happened to my usual UPS guy and he told me the guy was laid up at home after getting hit by a car riding his bike to work one morning. He'd mentioned where he lived so I dropped by his building to see how he was doing and found his apartment by asking some people in the lobby if they knew the UPS guy with his first name. He introduced me to his daughter who was starting high school at the time and the next time I saw him back on his route I told him what I do for a living and to make sure to let me see his daughter's college application essays when the time comes. Just last week, I got a package and it reminded me that it's about that time of year and about 3 years later...so I dug out his phone # to remind him of my offer and let him know it was sincere and that I hadn't forgotten. In my opinion, that kind of thing is more important than superficial niceties like sending people holiday cards and typing out personalized emails, which I have no patience for whatsoever. I hate social rituals of all kinds but I'm no Scrooge when it counts. Jus' sayin.'

How do you figure? Even the client acknowledges that is was a trial.


If it's a trial for the client and the client has the right to decline to use the writer based on that trial, the writer has the same right. It's a very simple concept of mutuality or bilateral contract. Neither of them had any obligation to continue beyond 5 pages based on their explicit language describing their agreement. It would have been a totally different story if the writer had been paid for 20 pages and then decided to write only 5, leaving the client hanging. The client would have had a very good argument for demanding a full refund for the very reason explained by other writers: it's harder to find a writer willing to add 15 pages to an existing 5 pages written by someone else than it is to find a writer willing to just write 20 pages. What's your reasoning for suggesting that only the writer and not the client was bound to continue the project after what the client describes as "5 pages for a trial"?

Further, it isn't necessarily that you couldn't agree in advance that one party has a different option than the other: such as where the writer agrees to accept the whole project on the condition that the client wants him to after receiving the 5-page sample...or vice-versa: the agreement in advance could be that the client agrees to commission the whole project if the writer wants to continue beyond the 5 pages. Various types of non-mutual obligations could be formed by an explicit set of terms; but if it's nothing more than a loose mention of "5 paid test pages" of a possible 20 pages, nobody is obligated to continue the professional relationship at all unless that scenario was discussed and negotiated. If it could be a problem, the writer and client should just discuss their respective expectations, all the more so because it's a foreseeable possibility under the circumstances.

I guess the 20/20-hindsight lesson is just to run any "drafts" through a plagiarism scan to see whether they're original. Again, I know nothing about the particular company involved, but I don't know any writers who provide "drafts" of anything before payment. I'm even more skeptical of promises by anybody claiming to be a writer willing to accept payment after delivery. In my opinion, anybody promising delivery before payment is probably just a middleman hoping to convince some naïve new writers to do those assignments to "prove their abilities" on unpaid work and then turn that work around to the client for payment. I know that I've been approached by "writers" or agents (or whatever) pretending to be students (because of they "had to get back to me" when I asked basic questions about their assignments that any student would know)...as well as "company reps" promising me that they'd have plenty of work for me after I provided a few sample unpaid assignments to "prove" my abilities before they could offer me payment.

I don't know anything about the site in question, but I'm curious about this. What topic was the draft on?

Personally, I don't get the whole concept of "drafts" because nobody I know who does this (well) for a fulltime living needs to write "drafts" in the first place and we're certainly not doing any work on any project before it's paid. I may make some corrections and minor revisions after I write an essay, but it's basically done after the first version. By the time you've written a few thousand essays, you just sit down and write most of them in one sitting unless they're over 10 pages.

I don't think anybody reasonable has any bias at all against any writer based on nationality. But this industry is flooded with very bad ESL writers of many different nationalities and they purposely misrepresent their nationality and English-Language fluency to trick clients and (basically) steal their hard-earned money within a business model based mainly on first-time/last-time disappointed customers because there's an endless supply of them for big companies that do a lot of advertising. So, certain nationalities that are heavily represented in that practice have become synonymous with the problem of dishonest unqualified writers. In my opinion, there's even a legitimate role in this industry for ESL writers who speak and write English poorly by NLS standards, simply because some ESL students want writers whose language fluency matches their own. For me, the only real issue is honesty in how writers and writing companies represent themselves to prospective customers and not about anybody's nationality.

None of the sites I write for charge extra, but those that do may require preferred writers to accept all requests and pay them more for that. I don't get paid any extra for taking requests and I'd never work for any company that assigned me orders without my consent. If they did, I'd consider myself an employee instead of an independent contractor and I'd expect my full employee benefits, like any other employee whose employer exercised that much control over our assignments.

Actually, I'm doing just fine and not complaining at all about any recent decrease in work volume; that's why I don't need to continually attack and lie about any of my competitors here, much less totally unprovoked and to the complete exclusion of a single substantive post on the topic of any thread conversation. Then again, I don't really understand your vicous hatred, since I specialize in an entirely different subset of clients than you do: namely, those who require a writer who speaks English well enough that taking their hard-earned money for writing in it isn't tantamount to stealing from them.

Relative difficulty (for me) and due date are my primary pricing factors. As a freelancer, I also do take into account how easy or difficult clients are. Those who communicate clearly and don't waste my time with many emails to say (or ask) what they could in only a few emails tend to get slightly better prices. My favorite clients are the ones who simply send me everything I need to quote a price in a single email and don't make me open files to read something they could have just pasted easily into the body of an email. My least favorite clients are those who always email first just to ask whether I'm "available," and then send me a topic without due dates so I have to email back and forth for that basic information, and who start off our relationship asking for a price break (before I've even quoted a price), promising me that they'll have more work for me if I give them a good price. In general, the easier they make it for me to help them, the better price I can give them because they don't waste my time emailing unnecessarily.

It's probably about time you Googled the difference between "then" and "than."

You've never seen anything I've ever written besides my forum posts but I believe the American-English idiom you're looking for here is you got that right, not "You get it right."

My UK university clients seem to be happy enough with my work to come back to me over and over, but here's a free lesson in English from a very average writer:


Only 6 obvious elementary mistakes in a very short English sentence. Congratulations on your continual improvement.

I've learned to explain to UK customers in advance that my job is to provide my best work on that initial order and that includes fixing any (obective) mistakes or omissions brought to my attention by the customer after the customer's initial review. If there's going to be a longer-term revision process, (especially based on the criticism of any third party), I just quote a fair price to do whatever else is required and treat each request for subsequent revision or editing as a smaller paid order priced according to the anticipated time and effort involved. I'd have no idea how to quote an all-inclusive price, because the amount of subsequent revision required for UK clients varies tremendously from project to project.

It's not necessarily that UK writers are more expensive, but UK academic writing is often more challenging than US academic writing, and (at least in my case) it has nothing to do with British English. It's no secret that UK universities have higher academic standards than most comparable US university programs. The market simply bears a higher price for more difficult work. I've learned to be much more selective about UK projects than US projects and there are many topics that I'm perfectly comfortable doing for US students that I wouldn't touch for UK students and there are many other types of projects that I charge more for if it's for a UK program. Their specifications, requirements, and their grading are usually much more difficult than those for projects assigned by US schools.

As Major says, price is sometimes determined by much more than just page count, especially for very short projects. Normally, the time involved in researching or reading is included in the price quoted for a project; but some very short papers just wouldn't be worth taking on if they require extensive reading just to write 1 or 2 paid pages. As students who dread writing, this might be hard for you to imagine, but for those of us who do this for a living, the "writing" part of the work is often the easiest part and most of the time involved on our end is in everything else we have to do before we actually start writing. Just as a simple example, you wouldn't expect a "1-pg summary" of a 100-pg article or book chapter for the price of 1 written page, would you? Generally, the shorter the project, the more likely you'll get a price quote that doesn't correspond directly to the number of pages requested if the material is more difficult than ordinary projects or requires more than a fair amount of reading for the price of the number of pages you need. Make sense?

Actually, your written English is better than that of most of the ESL writers here who scream bloody murder anytime someone suggests that American and British students don't want to pay good money for writing that sounds like it was very obviously written by someone who barely speaks English.

Set aside the issue of whether you can get that much work, because my sense is that many (or most) writers wouldn't be able to write that much 5 days/week, at least not comfortably. Assume 320 BP is roughly 500 USD and that you get paid about 30 or 40 USD/pg. You're talking about writing approximately 15 pages/day. I'm probably considered a consistently high-output writer (or relatively high-output) and I do routinely write 15+ pages/day 5 or 6 days/week throughout every busy season. Even though there are certain types of 15-page assignments that I can bang out (well) in a few hours, your average 15-pg assignment takes "most" of a very long day's work or "much" of two very long days' work. To make 500 USD every day, you'd have to spend almost every hour of your waking life writing. Even assuming that this much work is consistently available and that you're already earning at the high end of the page rate for everything you write, my sense from the posts of many other writers here is that many (or most) of them aren't really all that confident about writing one 15-page assignment in any 24-hr time period, let alone doing it (well) daily. If you picture yourself doing this fulltime and want to project what you could likely earn, your first estimate should be how many pages you expect to be able to write comfortably day after day; and if you picture yourself having any semblance of a normal life (i.e. work about 8 hours, live life about 8 hours, and sleep about 8 hours x 5 days/week), it would probably be unrealistic for any new writer to estimate being able to write more than 10 good pages/day regularly and comfortably.

In my case, I can write 10 pages in a sitting pretty easily or 15-20 pages in a few sittings in one day, but I could not write 15-20 pages day after day, at least not comfortably. Once you build up a base of satisfied clients, you'll get regular work from about a dozen clients for months at a time, and the rate of their graduation seems to match the rate of new clients coming in, some of whom are referrals from previous clients. By that time, you don't need to do much advertising to get as much steady work as you need.


This guy has never seen anything I've ever written besides my forum posts here and my personal website and he has no way of knowing anything about the quality of my work or research skills. All of his forum posts (including this one, obviously) demonstrate that he has no business taking anybody's hard-earned money to write anything in English, which I only point out whenever he attacks me in forum threads, totally unprovoked. His mantra about "rewriting" and "research skills" is nothing more than his lashing out in anger and apparent jealousy against a competitor who can actually write grammatically and structurally sound sentences in English. His response to (accurate) comments about the fact that he can't even compose an informal forum post in correct English is always some version of the idea that everybody who is foreign-educated must, necessarily, be a better researcher than anybody educated in the U.S. because the American education system is no good and because there's a relatively high rate of illiteracy in the U.S. Meanwhile, he's provided no evidence about his supposedly fantastic "research skills" and Mr. "Observer" won't even admit that he's a competitor who owns a foreign commercial essay company. All we really know for sure is that my clients receive work written clearly and in good English and his receive work that sounds like it was written by Boris and Natasha from Rocky & Bullwinkle.

I'm just a writer, not an industry expert or investigator. Based purely on what I've read on this forum, it seems that there are so many fraudulent essay companies from your area that many people now consider your location a red flag. There are probably legitimate business enterprises in Nigeria that encounter the exact same problem for the same reason.


Simply put, nobody who speaks English as a native language would ever want to pay hard-earned money (even their parents') for writing that sounds nothing like it was written by any native speaker. It has absolutely nothing to do with your education and you may be able to write very well in your native language. In my experience (mostly on this forum), ESL writers who keep bringing up the topic of "education quality" are just denying the obvious and trying to deflect the issue about being unable to produce writing in good enough English to satisfy non-ESL clients. When you write English only as well as you've demonstrated, the issue is not your education or your nationality. You just don't write well enough in English to satisfy any American or British customer, regardless of how honest or well educated you may be.