Greetings all,

I am an ESL teacher living in Jiangsu, China and have a very good friend that has operated an essay-writing service out of Shanghai for the past handful of years (all of his customers are Chinese students abroad in Australia). He has been quite successful using writers in mainland China that have a decent grasp of the English language...however his writer list has been waning as of late. He shared this info with me yesterday, and I figured since I have a much better understanding of the English web, I'd do a little searching for solutions which ultimately led me to you guys.

So...if you don't mind I have just a couple questions. Side note, as a member of many message boards, I understand how annoying it is when noobs create a profile just to ask a stupid question, but under the circumstances I figured it would be worth a shot...especially since some of you seem to be freelance writers that may be interested - or might know someone else who is.

1) I am aware of thepensters (a website that has the writers themselves bid on each request)...are there more websites like that? Care to share their names if you know of any?

2) I understand that African writers are certainly not the same caliber as English-as-a-first-language writers, but can they be trusted for minimally passable work?

3) If I were to find him freelance writers willing to take on a percentage of his workload, what is an acceptable rate per page?

4) Do you know of any other message boards/websites where one can post essays/papers needed and have people contact them based on the type of paper requested?

5) I'm unsure if anyone is allowed to give recommendations on this board, but if you know of any websites worth using or at least checking out, OR any writers interested in a steady flow of work, please share below...and if that isn't allowed, please PM me or email me.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and if you can be of any help, it is TRULY much appreciated!

-Peter