The Future of Professional Essay Writing Services

I stumbled into this business by accident during a very dark time in my life. A poorly-timed bong hit sentenced me to a two-year suspension on the second day of my third year of college. Shortly after, uncertainty infiltrated every aspect of my existence. I was broke, unemployed, and back in my childhood bedroom, lonely and isolated. I started writing to cope with the isolation. I didn't write for anyone else; I didn't write to publish. I wrote to satisfy my intellectual curiosity; I wrote for myself. The academic world from which I was exiled had never provided the intellectual freedom that accompanied my new-found prison.

Soon, I realized that writing could be as effective of a solution to my financial problems as it had been for my personal struggles. At that point, I viewed writing papers for profit as an ingenious idea. How many times had I heard a friend lament, "Can't this paper just write itself?" I had never heard of an essay mill. I was entirely unaware that an industry built entirely upon that question already existed. A quick bout of research left me with a bad impression of the well-known writing companies, so I set out to make it on my own, not entirely sure what awaited me in the wilderness.

I learned a lot, that's for sure. A one-man shop is certainly not the most effective way to break into this industry. Thankfully, one of my earliest marketing theories proved to be successful, and I quickly built a roster of 40 to 50 clients during my first three months. Now, a year and a half later, that roster has grown significantly, and I will be forced to expand operations if I am to supply that demand.

See, writing papers should be the easy part for anyone thinking about this gig. It's the act of acquiring, retaining, and satisfying valuable clients that provides the largest roadblock. There's a large difference between a freelancer and an independent writer. The independent writer is running a business that's future success is predicated entirely on his ability to market twice as well as he writes. The freelancer (and I mean no disrespect to freelancers) bounces from post to post and lets someone else trouble with the business aspects.

In a normal environment this stratification of the industry wouldn't be an issue, but this isn't a normal environment, and I feel obligated to speak out. I know that my words will have little effect, and I anticipate that many of you will issue harsh replies. However, I joined this forum after years of lurking to post this diatribe out of hope that even a few of you out there see the same things that I do. I hope to connect with those people so that we can join together to preserve this industry before it's ran into the ground and we're all out of jobs.

In my opinion, there are three imminent threats to the essay writing community

1) The rapid growth in Eastern European and Far East essay mills that rely on scams perpetrated by a style of marketing that can best be described as carpet bombing. Google search results are dominated by these companies, who are like shops that ensure their front window displays are immaculate, yet once you're lured inside, you find a slaughterhouse awaiting you. What at first appears to be a professional, honest, and trustworthy outfit to an already-skeptical and nervous college student transforms into an incompetent criminal operation ran by some punk sitting in a bomb shelter in Kiev who touches himself to pictures of Vladimir Putin and longs for the day when his country didn't suck.

2) The rapid growth in former Nigerian princes and exiled military officials who have abandoned attempts to innovate their scamming techniques and instead convinced themselves that they can write well enough to be paid. I have had the infuriating experience of sub-contracting writers named "Paul," "Kevin," and "Brittany" who, despite overwhelmingly Caucasian and Anglo-Saxon names, wrote papers that could have only been formed by transcribing a gospel choir singing death metal while suffering a collective stroke. This is not an insult on the intelligence of the folks from Africa, India, and Middle Eastern countries, but when 99% of a business is conducted in one language (English), and the business requires a mastery of that language, you're wasting everyone's times when you pretend to have what it takes. More importantly, your interactions with customers (who again are already skeptical and nervous) lead them to believe that their paper will be written from an Internet cafe in Mogadishu. Hint: that doesn't reassure them.

3) The rapid development of educational technology and its adoption in higher education settings. In the United States, this process is occurring at light speed. Textbooks are a thing of the past; everything a student needs is online. Soon, I worry, instructors will attempt to alleviate the concerns with essay mills by implementing technologies that more accurately detect and expose when a student is not submitting his own work. As an industry, we must be able to anticipate those changes and adapt alongside educational institutions. If our industry is dominated by criminals, scammers, half-wits, and wannabes, these changes will leave students with the perception that the opportunities for our services have been rendered obsolete. This is indeed an industry where demand creates supply, and if that demand isn't there, no amount of marketing in the world is going to be able to create it.

Ultimately, I believe that those of us who understand the importance of quality writing and over-the-top customer service must join together, alter the course, and consolidate control, for our own sake. Currently, the future of this industry is in the hands of those who are more interested in entrapping customers than embracing them and more likely to cheat good writers than appreciate them. Combine that with the influx of writers who have no business in this industry, and the majority of our industry's ambassadors are crooks or frauds. Our industry thrives on perceived legitimacy and the belief that, just this once, "too good to be true" is a reality rather than a warning.

This discussion must be had now because as lines of communications continue to stretch the globe and access to consumers increases, we cannot allow the crooked companies and the unqualified writers to continue increasing their market share at the expense of those of us who are genuinely good at what we do.

I got into this business because it provided a method of therapy for me, and I stayed in it because I saw the benefits it could provide to students held hostage by a broken educational system. My joy for this comes from knowing that I am helping these students, but as things currently stand, our industry is just exploiting them. Fortunately for us and the students, the bad actors and the targets have been clearly identified.