I write for Academic Knowledge (my rating with them is 98%) and they're quite good. It's nice to have the work filtered out for you so you know you're going to get paid at the end of the day. Still, I wonder sometimes how much they pay you out of what they get...And the scheme doesn't seem to make sense, with some 1000 word jobs being paid £20 while others are worth £200. I wish someone would explain that to me.

Wow, lots of negative publicity for AK, but I've never had any problems with them. The only thing I can say is that I don't enjoy writing anything for £16 to £20, even if it is a 500-word essay. But a lot of these seem to be coming my way. I just pretend I don't see the notices and delete them from my inbox without bidding on the work. I think anything less than £25 per hour is exploitative.

But every now and then a really good one comes along and you get £200 or more; and these are really good. The really high-paying jobs £300 or higher usually go to experienced researchers who have done work for the client before (so the client asks for that researcher to do the job). I haven't had one of those yet but I only started working for them at the beginning of the year so maybe there is hope yet.

Braiden, this seems to be really sound advice. I write for one website at the moment but I've put myself out there to get work independently...on Craigslist, Vivastreet & Gumtree, for example. But nothing seems to being coming through. Perhaps students have just been scammed too much in the past and have decided to only go through the established websites. Where would you recommend that I advertise for freelance academic writing jobs? Ta.

Never had any dealings with Smart College Research so I can't comment on their legitimacy, but it seems 1 day to complete a nine-page paper was a bit careless on Odyssey's part. Give yourself a bit more breathing room next time, love.

I didn't even realise how old the thread was; and I'm not looking for clients on here...I am asking for advice on where's the best place to advertise my services. Isn't this a forum for writers to discuss issues and help each other? I really don't think there's a need for your tone, pheelyks.

pheelyks, call it whatever you will, but since I write for Academic Knowledge and am paid for my work when they say they'll pay me, I think I have the right to speak up on a forum that seems to be bashing the company. All am saying is am not sure how they work out their payment system and am giving my reasons why I've questioned it. But other than that I haven't had a negative experience with them, personally.

Since we've all entitled ourselves to the term "Writer" and we're all talking about what we do and how we do it, one could argue that we are all "advertising our services" on here. I don't need to defend myself to you.

Did I forget to vote in the election where you were voted President of essayscam.org ?

pheelyks, if you think I'm trolling this forum then you need to take a really good look at yourself and some of the things you've written on here... Most of it is caustic, unnecessarily aggressive, sarcastic, attention-seeking put-downs of other forum users. Get a grip.

So what if I want people to know that I'm a writer and that am looking for clients? Who are you to judge me or anybody else? You clearly have a chip on your shoulder and way too much time on your hands, so am just going to ignore you from now on.

Hello Uberkoen,

I just signed up to this forum today for the very same reason as you; so I can totally relate. I think £300 for a 20,000 word dissertation is highway robbery and I wouldn't do it if I were you. Anything over 6000 words for that kind of money is just mercenary...cuz you can bet your life they're making three times as much from the client. I work for Academic Knowledge and they seem to be getting a bad rap on this website (well, the one AK-related thread that I saw anyway) when they're actually pretty good in terms of paying you when they say they're gonna pay you. Sometimes the payment offered is good and other times not so good. I've seen orders for proofreading and editing a 5000-word essay for £20 (I wouldn't go anywhere near that because with my finickety approach to grammar it would take me hours to correct such a long essay written by an ESL learner). And I've seen orders for writing a 1000-word essay for £90 or more. Sometimes you'll see a 500-word job being offered for £16 and then the same job (probably from another student in the same class) on offer for £45. So it's really unpredictable and I think it's because they let the client dictate a lot of the terms just to bring the business in; and while that's not always good for the writers, at least the work is there and available. But at least with Academic Knowledge, if the client comes back and asks for a particular researcher who did their work before, they then go ahead and charge them a very high premium rate, which is good for you. But of course you have to get that sort of return business in the first place. It's a good "goal" to work towards, I suppose.

Try them and see how they work for you. If your subject area is unusual you might get some decent work out of it.

Hi uberkoen, another site I found when looking for websites to work for were Researchwritingcenter.com. They sort of invited me to apply nearly 7 months ago but I didn't go through with the application because at the time I wasn't sure if I could work with two such organizations at the same time. That's something else to find out before you sign a contract with anybody. Some allow you to freelance with their competitors and others want you to work exclusively with them. AK haven't specified this so I think am free to work with whomever. It's useful to have more than one sources of income because you wont always win the bids, especially if you're up against more experienced researchers who've been with the organization for years, possibly decades...

But anyway, here's the registration form for RWC: researchwritingcenter.com/regform

Best of luck. Cheers

If you absolutely must know my business pheelyks, I signed up with Academic Knowledge 6 years ago while I was still studying at Oxford (yes, "shameless self-aggrandizing/self-promotion blah blah") but didn't do any work for them. Then last year I re-registered and went through their screening process again. Since then I've bid on a lot of work but got nothing until February this year.

As for your other remarks, I really don't know what you're talking about when you mention "Ukranian etc." (you appear to know a lot more about the company I freelance for than I do...kudos to you!). Yes, I know what it means, but it doesn't change the fact that some academic writing companies don't want you to work for a competitor. This is information I thought uberkoen might find "useful."

And since I addressed my remarks to uberkoen, why don't you let him decide whether my comments were useful or not? Must you feel the need to start an ongoing evaluation/commentary/judgement on everything I post on this site? And if you're so concerned that my comments are "spamming" or self-promotional, why not report me to a moderator or something? I promise I won't be offended if they kick me off for doing the things you've accused me of doing. It would be within their rights if I've violated the rules to the extent that you're apparently claiming.

Finally, perhaps you live alone and have nothing better to do than sit there policing every post, insulting other forum users and generally trolling every thread with insults ... in which case you have my sincere sympathy. But if it isn't within your limited capabilities to be polite and non-confrontational, I suggest you buy a book, take a class or get a pet (or something)... if you're going to keep addressing me on here. Otherwise I'm just going to go back to ignoring you.

You made this personal the first time you called me a "f***tard" ... And if you notice, even though I speculated you might live alone because of your apparent bitterness and the amount of time you seem to spend on these forums commenting on everybody's post (yes, that's a perfectly logical conclusion for anyone to arrive at, whether it is true or not is irrelevant), I have never resorted to calling you names or describing body parts which I have no way of knowing about. And yes, I've been ignoring you since yesterday. You posted after me on several other threads, including this one and I refused to even acknowledge you ... There's another sign of someone who has no poor social skills: You don't realize when you're being ignored or when you need to give it a rest. But whether I choose to ignore you or not, I'm never going to descend to your level. Your posts are degrading even to yourself.

Correction of the above: "no social skills" OR[b][/b] poor social skills" ... Take your pick. Rational people capable of logical reasoning and dealing fairly with people on a day-to-day basis don't behave like you, pheelyks. You remind me of those psychopaths out there who think the anonymity of the internet is some kind of empowerment which protects them. It isn't empowering and it doesn't protect you. Because deep down inside you know how very sad and disgusted you are with yourself as a human being. That's why you use the internet to take out your frustrations on other people.

Get a grip.

Get a life.

Get over yourself.

What's this? Are you trying to prove now that I don't know how to ignore you? But what would be the point of me proving that I can when I ignored you all of last night and you didn't even notice? It's just as I suspected, you're writing your snide commentaries on here to get a rise out of people. That makes you even sadder than I thought you were, Psycho.

I wrote a two-word response to intimate that what you wrote in your second-to-last post above had nothing in it for me to respond to... You just keep saying the same things and using the same words like "f***tard" like you think it makes you cool, interesting, authoritative or impactful. It doesn't. It just makes you look even more like a psycho.

And why should we both keep repeating ourselves? I've got better things to do.

I just signed up to the forum yesterday and it seems like only you and maybe 3 other people make comments on here regularly. And so far you're the one stalking me while the others seem to have a life. It's like being in the same room with a psychopath and having no one interesting or likeable to talk to. Maybe you've chased away all the other forumers with your distastefulness ... That's called speculation based on fact. And whether it's true or not I'm just not interested.

You're hilarious. And yes, I will be ignoring you henceforth. My time allotted for foruming today is up anyway. Hope you find some other person to cyber-stalk and abuse soon. Every post you've made on this thread today suggests you're not on here to contribute anything positive but rather just to be an attention-w*0re. You appear to need to construct these pseudo-arguments to get a reaction out of people. lol!

And as for me being paranoid (more repetition from you), that accusation would make perfect sense if this was an actual "physical" stalking. But as you're just a cyber-bully, you pose no threat whatsoever other than to yourself (making yourself constantly look like an aggressive, attention-seeking a-hole).


Further proof of how pathetic you are, Psycho. Goodnight.

writepass, I've never heard of a company offering a sign-up bonus before...Is that before or after "screening" the writers? By screening I don't mean just looking at old sample essays but rather seeing what sort of feedback they get from their first couple assignments.

Ha ha! Looking back at it now I can't believe I allowed myself to get embroiled in this. Now there's an hour or more of my life I'll never get back. And on a Sunday as well! When I should have been watching my football or sleeping. Talk about time-wasting.

Fortunately I've learned to either ignore the stench or leave the room quietly when the filth seeps into the thread.

As Bob Marley said, if the cap fits, wear it.

Am not sure what you mean. Could you please explain?

lol! Wow. I'm speechless. In my defence, am having a lazy day off at home and thought I would do some browsing on this forum to see why there are so few members posting. This thread was quite and interesting find. Explains everything.

Seriously? People actually do this? Unbelievable. I've been away from the forum for too long. Can't believe the things I'm reading today on the front page.

fyi, Psycho, this was on the front page...and all the other threads I posted in today were either on the front page or had a link at the bottom of another thread that I was reading. And it's a free bloody country. I can post wherever I want. You are not the boss of anyone on here.

Having said that, I've been away from the forum for quite some time (unlike you I do have a life and work to do); but I guess I've kinda missed you... Very disturbing indeed. Lol!

Oh geez, I forgot what I was dealing with here: The painstaking breaking down of every single sentence to construct pseudo arguments with the aim of proving how sophisticated your intellect is. It's not fooling anyone Psycho. Unfortunately for you, you're already spent far too much time displaying how stupid and easily-wound-up you are. But even more alarmingly, your last quote and response shows that you have no grasp whatsoever of sarcasm. Shall I do another Google search for you?

Furthermore if you think anything about you or remotely related to you has enough of an effect on my life to make me "sad" (or affect me in any way for that matter) then you are clearly the delusional one here. You pathetic waste-of-time "breakdowns" are boring.

Where do you find the time? If anything I probably envy you the leisure. I can barely find a couple hours in a day to browse the internet. You seem to be available to comment on every entry in every thread 24 hours a day. Are you sure you're as busy as you so often claim on here?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: You're hilarious pheelyks.

Now I'm off to do something more constructive with my time. Goodnight.

It's not a conversation, Psycho. It's a senseless convoluted monologue of tripe where you overuse the 'Quote' button. And I just read one of your posts on another thread where you were pointing out to someone that their CAPS lock was on. Not every helpful or contributing anything. Other times you just butt into conversations to insult other forumers. Just posting for the sake of posting... On and on with the quoting and unnecessary arguments. Blah blah blah. Like you're some kind of forum police. **** off already.

You're not interesting enough to converse with Psycho. All we can do is trade insults and even that gets boring after a while. Now I'm exhausted from my night out so am off to bed. I suggest you get some sleep so you can keep up with me tomorrow.

This is really careless on the company's part. I don't understand how anybody can have spelling errors in a text when there's a spellchecker function in Word.

To the original poster: I don't think the source company is necessarily the problem: It's the people who are running the subsidiaries who often fu*- up. The main problem with allanswers.co.uk is that they have their hands in too many pots and some of their subsidiaries are not quite as meticulous as the others. Before you give anybody your money to do work for you, make sure you ask them if they have a Quality department which checks their employees' work (Word Count, References, Formatting, and most of all, for plagiarism). There is no excuse for sending a client work lifted from the internet when that's easy to trace. Also, if you can prove that work was plagiarised you should get your money back.