I've advertised on Craigslist and have found several long-term clients from there. I've also used it to find a carpenter/home improvement handyman and the very first one whose ad I responded to has worked out great. My clients have used PayPal and I paid the carpenter after the work in cash. You can minimize your risk by selecting someone local to you and documenting all your conversations in email. That way, if things go bad, you always have the option of small claims court. If they're too far away, it's just not worth the expense of travel to recover a few hundred dollars or whatever. As always, (whether an Internet essay company, a freelance writer, or a carpenter), you should always start with a very small job as a test of legitimacy and honesty. Most rip-off artists only do rip offs;they don't usually provide a fantastic piece of test work and then cheat you on a bigger job.

None that I plan on sharing with potential competitors.

Why was my previous post edited (and made grammatically incorrect) by the administrators? All I did was list some of the sites that use me. WB asked another poster to name the sites he works for and I was just doing exactly that.

Lately, about 70% of my work is from private clients, but I still do a lot of work other legitimate essay sites.

If it isn't resolved and there's no legitimate explanation, you should just identify the person publicly.

There'd be absolutely no purpose to that at any of the sites that use me. What would be the reasons for doing that at other sites?

Unfortnately, they're pretty strict around here about that and we're not allowed to mention any sites positively or to give out our contact information, but it shouldn't really be too hard to figure out by going through some older threads. All the sites that use me are 100% legit (as am I as an independent freelancer). Then again, that's obviously what all the scam sites and phony writers would say, too. Good luck in your search.

What kind of assignment does a practicing psychologist need or is that just a screen name?

Awesome advice for an industry that's conducted almost exclusively on-line.


Equally awesome advice that referrals are safer than blind trust of strangers. The part about knowing them personally is especially useful in an industry where most customers probably prefer not to disclose to anybody who knows them that they use professional help to do their writing.

Honestly, nobody here cares one bit about your accent or whether you proofread your forum posts. If you're an ESL writer who discloses that to potential clients, they can choose to use you if they want to and nobody here has anything negative to say about your accent or nationality.

Many native English speakers just don't want their work written by ESLs; that's their prerogative and you don't get to decide whether or not it should "matter" if it matters to them. This has nothing to do with accents or with where/when you learned English; it's strictly about honesty and the fact that some ESL writers/companies think it's perfectly OK to lie to customers about having native English-speaking writers when that's not true.

Maybe it's just me, but I laugh at people in general who refer to themselves as "exceptional" and even more so at those who claim to be "exceptional" writers while making obvious grammatical mistakes in the process.


Thanks, but nobody was asking for your advice and this isn't a "problem" for me. It was a simple suggestion to customers that there's no need to embellish their academic level. It applies just as much to longer papers for a typical college freshman paper (like "compare and contrast _________ ") with the "Ph.D" box checked instead of 4th year high school or 1st year college.

I don't charge anybody 2.5 x the single page rate for writing 1 page either; I normally use a unique system of charging customers who order 1 page the price of a single page. If a particular order requires research of much more "time/effort/energy" than is fairly paid by the number of pages requested, I just explain and give a fair rate for what's involved on a case-by-case basis.

The legitimate essay companies don't advocate submitting the work you purchase from them for academic credit, but if you were to choose to ignore their terms of use and do that electronically without first checking the Properties tab in the file, you could inadvertently send your professor a file with "ABC Academic Ghostwriting, Inc." in one of those ID boxes.

If that's true, you can request a rewrite and the writer will have to fix it unless your complaint isn't accurate (in which case Customer Service will decide whether your complaint is valid). I'm not involved in admin at all (I'm just one of their writers), but I'd like to see what you got, strictly out of my own curiosity. Can you paste the order specs and some of the essay to me via PM? If you're right, they will require the writer to fix it ASAP.

Probably for the same reason that somebody calling your office desk on a Sunday afternoon in July won't get an answer until sometime Monday. The website always functions but it's probably only us writers who often work over weekends and holidays and overnights; the admin people probably just keep normal business hours. It's an honest business but it's not a hospital emergency room or an airport control tower, ok?

Relax. If you sent them the requested info, your order was probably processed. I don't see it on the board but have no way of knowing whether that means it went up and has already been taken by another writer or that it hasn't gone up on the board yet. Sometimes foreign orders get delayed because they need to verify the payment after getting burned by stolen credit card orders in the past.

My advice would be to take care of the deadline extension on your end and you won't have any problems. If I see it go up, I'll let them know that you're working on a new deadline and still want the paper. We're supposed to check with the company before taking any order with an expired due date and they contact you to confirm that you still want it. You should use the email addy on your confirmation email for "questions" and let them know your new due date in advance to save yourself the extra time that could be lost when the writer asks them to confirm with you after the order gets posted before he/she starts working on it.

I don't start writing until I've actually received payment; if it can be cancelled on the sender's end, that means it's not "received" on mine until it's in my hand. I've been paid that way a few times but I went and collected the cash before I started writing.

What were the original instructions you submitted? (You can change the exact topic if you don't want to post the actual assignment details publicly.)

How many pages/word in the paper and how much of it is quoted?

From my understanding, academic institutions pay for a turnitin subscription but they also have a student version. In my opinion, the best way to find a quality product is to take a small risk on a short paper and stick with the first company and/or writer from whom you receive a quality product. Unless you have a word-of-mouth referral, it's always a bit of a crap shoot at first. If I were a student, I'd also look through old posts here carefully, because it shouldn't be too hard to identify likely prospects as well as likely risks you would probably want to avoid.

If you're willing to trust them to honor their formal transfer of copyright to you, why wouldn't you just trust their explicit promise never to reuse your paper without a formal transfer of rights? It would be just as easy to lie about it either way and you'd be very unlikely ever to know they breached the agreement, especially if they waited months before reselling it.

Promises, contracts, and laws in general don't do much to protect you; they just give you statutory rights that you have to pursue on your own after a breach (or other wrong). Do you really plan to scour the Internet forever looking for a violation of your copyright so that you can then file a claim in court against a company and also make your use of their service public record in the process?

All the sites that use me all resell papers but they wait at least 3-4 months to do so except one, and that site charges more partly because of that (I assume) as well as because they specialize in PhD-level dissertations.

My advice is not to worry about copyrights and just go with a legitimate U.S. site that delivers a good product and won't rip you off. If you research carefully enough on this forum, you should be able to identify several. Good luck.

Generally, it's the same pool of writers either way. There are some advantages and disadvantages to both. Either way, stick with the first good writer and/or legitimate company you find unless or until they can't do a specific paper you need.

Nobody gives a damn where you're from or what language you think that you think in. If there were no differences in language use that are obvious to native English speakers, nobody would care whether or not a writer is ESL or native English-speaking. The differences are obvious to us and that's the only reason anybody cares. Nobody's criticizing ESL intelligence, ESL educational qualifications, or even ESL writing abilities in English; but most American students don't want even a well-researched, substantively well-written paper that sounds like it was written by an ESL. If you ESLs could understand why your use of English is obviously different to a native ear, maybe you'd be able to sound more like a native in your writing. You don't understand because can't hear it; that's the problem and that's why nobody wants an ESL writer who fails to disclose that he's ESL. If there's no difference, how do you think we always know immediately that something was written by ESLs?

Yes, falsely misrepresenting to your credit card company or to the seller that you never received a product that you actually received for the purposes of reversing the charge or receiving a refund is called theft of services by fraud. It's obviously all about context: only an idiot would interpret that phrase to mean it's a crime to say never received an email more generally, but idiots deserve answers to their questions too. You're welcome.

I changed my mind: you have no right to write anything in English.

I don't think anybody here has ever questioned your right to write in any language you want as long as you're 100% honest with your customers about the nature and origin of your language skills. Our only beef here is with ESLs who think it's OK not to disclose that they're ESLs, because there's almost always a noticeable difference in language usage to a native ear. As an American, I have the exact same obligation not to misrepresent my nationality to UK cusomers: some have chosen to use me anyway, but others have decided that they prefer native UK writers. As an ethical professional, you have to give the customer that fair opportunity to make an informed choice. You may not think there's any difference but that's for the customer to decide, not you.

It's definitely ESL, not an education-level issue. Check your other thread for a more detailed response to your problem. Actually, most of these people are better educated than many American writers; the problem is that education isn't a substitute for native language style, especially use of idiomatic expression. If they advertised themselves as highly educated ESL writers, nobody here would be criticizing them just for being ESL. It's strictly about the misrepresentation because even the best educated ESL still sounds like a foreigner to a native English ear.


Never trust any merchant or service provider once you have any reason to suspect a possible chance of dishonesty. You can always close the dispute once opened; file it ASAP and be safe rather than sorry.

I think I can make make sense out of that:

It's always the case that there's luck involved, simply because the quality of the work depends on which writer happens to take the order and even the worst companies might have a few good writers. The problem is some companies apparently don't limit themselves to hiring only qualified writers but take unqualified writers and ESLs who can't write well enough in English to write for native English speakers. Their best writers might give you a good paper, but there's just an unacceptable degree of difference between their best and their worst and they (apparently) don't care or can't afford to reject writers who could never get hired by companies that do care and can afford to hire only qualified writers. Personally, I couldn't imagine paying good money for a paper and then hoping that I get lucky every time I needed an essay.

Always pay by credit card and say something very specific in your order (like "I will not accept any work written by an ESL or that misuse any basic English vocabulary or idiomatic expressions and I will dispute the charge if this essential element of our contract is not met"). Then, if they send you any ESL garbage like that essay, at least you know your credit card company will back you up 100% and the essay company might even make the effort to refer your order to someone who can actually write in English in the first place. Also, use this forum and Google extensively first and don't ignore very negative reviews that sound credible just because there are other reviews that are positive.

We writers are always "available" because this is what we do for a living, but we aren't hanging on hooks waiting to be plucked for specific assignments and we don't get any work "assigned" to us. The company maintains an online bulletin board-type of thing on a secure server to which we have access. All the available orders are listed with their specs, due dates, requirements, etc. Once the order is posted, it stays there unless or until someone chooses to take the order. If nobody takes your order, you get a full refund issued.

The company has no way of magically knowing when (or whether) any writer will take your particular paper. Some papers may stay up for days until someone decides to write them the day before they're due. If the topic is very obscure or difficult, the company often increases the payout (out of their end) to encourage us to take it; they have also contacted me personally to ask whether I'm available for certain papers and I'm sure they do they same with their other long-time, high-quality, high-volume writers who get many requests, like Pheelyks. We may not necessarily take every specific request either, but we try to take as many as possible. In that case, the orders get opened up to other writers after a few hours.

You should be able to identify some legitimate companies and freelancers just by going through some old threads on here.

1) It depends on the topic, but generally, I'd need about 2 hours for it.
2) Not in the Western Hemisphere
3) Sure, as long as they didn't expect more than 90 words/pg
4) If they were a landscaping company or a garage, that wouldn't be a problem at all.
5) I wouldn't even consider working for a company that fined writers the way I've read about on this forum. See answer to #2.

Always pay companies with a credit card and avoid any need to argue with the company reps or accept a partial refund. If you provide your credit card company with that email trail and the original order confirmation with the deadline, they'll reverse the charges. Read the fine print on the TOS page too so you know what kind of punctuality they're actually promising and not necessarily promising. If you paid by wire or debit card, you're screwed; just chalk it up to experience. Always try out any company or freelancer with a small order to start off before you have to order an expensive and crucial assignment.

Wow. I guess I was completely wrong.

You're probably a liar and dopey.

Again, my apologies.

I did't "leave"; I just didn't feel the need to respond further (until now). You asked for "reactions" and I gave you mine. If it's not your site, you're just a little bit dopey for publicizing the website of a competitor for the business you say you're hoping to start, especially on a forum that prohibits you from doing the same with your own site once it's up. Brilliant move. As someone who is already in the business and can't post my web page here, I also don't appreciate the free publicity you just gave that website on this forum.

Personally, I still don't believe it's not your site. If it's been up since 2009, that just suggests to me that you lied in your original post about getting into the business now for the first time, not that it can't be yours. You asked for reactions; that's my honest reaction to your initial post and to your apparent need for additional "reactions" to your responses. In my opinion, there's really no point to asking people here what they think about that website if you're really just getting into the business and not associated with the site you posted. The most likely reason you posted it is simply that it's yours. Again, that's just my honest "reaction."

So, you're either a liar or you're just a little bit dopey; I apologize for not knowing which one fits best. OK? If you still need any further "reactions" just keep responding.

My initial reaction is that it's pretty obvious that you just posted your own new web page on this forum and that you think people here are too stupid to see right through your pretending to be just asking for reactions to some random website put up by someone else. Personally, I think mine's a lot better but I know I'm not allowed to post it here.

I write for some of the companies on that list. The ones I write for are totally 100% legit; I have absolutely no knowledge about any other websites except for whatever I've read on this forum and I don't know anything about the history of any restrictions on discussing specific websites here.

Freedom of speech is a concept that's very poorly understood: it only pertains to censorship by governmental authorities, not private entities. Otherwise, I'd have a great case since my outgoing PMs were permanently disabled a long time ago for contacting customers that way.

Sounds like they should just change their website to plagiarizedtermpapers.com and they'll be all set.

Actually, I'm very nice to prospective and existing customers; I just don't consider you one. I appreciate my customers very much and usually establish very good long-term business relationships with most of them. In fact, the customers who get along best with me tend to have a good sense of humor and think it's funny to watch idiots like you continually come back for more of a beating because you don't knowing when to just slink away instead of suffering more (deserved) abuse.

It's only a few times a year that someone actually makes such an idiot of himself in the process of making the initial contact with me or in the way he or she handles things on the customer's end of things that I drop them as clients because I just don't have the patience necessitated by their stupidity and I don't need their business that badly.

In your case, it seems pretty obvious that you're not really any kind of "prospective customer" at all. If I thought you were smart enough to learn better tactics and employ them here I wouldn't tell you this, but that's obviously no risk. No genuine "prospective customer" would ever register on this forum to find a writer and then spend more time posting and antagonizing actual writers than reading "old posts." Real students wouldn't conduct the types of conversations you're pretending to have so openly on this forum either, especially since you "don't live" here, as you've said.

Listen, Genius: If you come here specifically looking for information about finding good writers you can trust but you don't even bother going through any old threads, then I guarantee you that "time" is definitely not your primary obstacle to writing your own intelligently-written papers.

Another poster asked me for some very basic information about whether a certain amount of work is possible in a given time period and I simply provided some general insight into what we writers typically can do and what our practical limitations are in that regard. Maybe you should mind your own business and just spend a little more of your precious time reading and absorbing the information you say you're here to find instead of worrying about who's who on the forum and what the rules are on matters that don't pertain to you.

If advertising were allowed, I'd have posted my contact information instead of just hoping he might figure it out on his own. In my understanding of the rules, hoping is still allowed.


Who's "we"? People too stupid to figure out what I do for a living just from my S/N? Other people with a whopping 34 posts on this forum?

I appreciate it but I don't think I ever received any communication from you unless it was through elance. Yes, 25 pages is definitely possible in 7 days. It's actually not much more than 2 days of work ordinarily and it's something I've done in 24 hours more than a few times, although not comfortably. It really just depends on the topic. You have to keep in mind that we do this for a living and those of us who do it fulltime routinely write 10+ page papers in a single sitting and very often write several essays in totally different academic areas totaling 20+ pages in a day's work a few times a week, especially during the busy seasons.

Listen: The kinds of obvious mistakes in your writing are not matters of "preference" or conversational "style" or choice of "vocabulary." You cannot write in English well enough to charge money for it because practically everything you write in every post is full of grammar and punctuation mistakes that prove you have absolutely no business offering professional "writing services" in the English language. Unless someone specifically wants an essay that was obviously not written by someone who writes in good English, nobody would ever hire you to write anything in English.

I'm guessing that "beyond our scope" means anything written in grammatically correct English with basic English punctuation. If your intended "niche" is ESL customers who want papers to sound like they couldn't possibly have been written by a native English speaker, you're right on target. Nobody else would trust you to write anything in English.

Good lucks with thoses.