Why Many Essay Companies Struggle to Keep Good Writers

For more than a decade I have worked as an academic writer for various essay companies. I have written for reputable US and UK companies as well as for a few sites operated outside of these 2 territories.

Over the years I have noticed that most of these essay companies keep recruiting new writers every year. Of course, it is good practice for any business to always stay ahead by constantly adding on to its talent pool. However, my observation speaks to more than just efforts at reinforcing human resource. Many essay companies, especially the 2nd generation ones (if I'm allowed to call them that), find it hard to deliver because they lack sufficient competent talent.

The industry, of late, has not been growing as fast as it did the previous decade. The reasons for this are several, and a different topic altogether. Nevertheless, essay companies are desperately in search of competent writers even with lower orders each season.

There are several reasons for this. Here are a few:

1. Many non-US/UK companies don't pay enough to sustain good writers, so there's little mystery there.

2. Competent labor can sometimes be hard to sustain, even for well-paying firms. A writer who is good might get a better offer and leave. I've been approached by competing companies twice.

3. Many writers realize that their input forms the gist of the final product to the customer. They figure they can cut the "middleman" and avoid profit-sharing. Of course, they initially encounter a whole new beast when they try venturing on their own.

4. In a few cases, writers leave not because of the rate of pay, but because there's little work from which to earn. This is especially true for 2 of the most established UK companies. Their legitimacy places pressure on their expense accounts. Such pressure is not experienced by ESL sites (topic for another day). As such (and for other reasons), the prices of these UK sites are way higher than the industry average. This gives them higher margins, but ultimately alienates thousands of students on tight budgets. The result is that these premium sites get fewer customers than their mid-level competitors. When orders to complete are scarce, writers get frustrated, no matter how lucrative the margins are.

5. There are companies that outright frustrate writers. The Ukrainian twins are well known for this. They offer miserable pay, impose random unfair fines, manufacture lateness, delay payments, change payment terms, introduce incredibly abusive terms mid-contract, force-assign projects, assign 'editors' who get a portion of the writers' cut etc. This item deserves a thread of its own.

6. Then there are just those writers who at some point decide they don't want to spend the rest of their productive adult lives completing academic papers for students.

In my opinion, it's simpler than that and there are three principal reason that companies have to hire writers continually:

1. Many (if not most) of the people who try to do this for a living really can't do it well enough to be relied upon.

When I was working (nearly) fulltime as a writer for essay companies, I saw plenty of writing from my fellow writers and much of it was shockingly bad, especially considering that one of the writers whose work I saw was requested fairly often. Some of their projects were provided to me as source material for projects they'd started and I saw the work of this one particular writer after Googling his company ID out of curiosity, which led me to his freelance page where he'd posted some of his company essays as samples. I've been out of the loop since 2013, but in my experience, even a very big and successful essay company with hundreds of writers relies heavily on the work of its 5 or 6 top writers, whose output is comparable to that of as many as 100 other writers. Every one of the mediocre or bad writers who gets fired or leaves because he realizes that he really can't write well or quickly enough to make a living this way has to replaced.

2. Most of us who are good enough to do this for a living eventually build up a big enough private clientele to become entirely independent.

Once we get a taste of working for ourselves, we become more committed to building a private clientele because we don't have to write (literally) twice as much to earn roughly the same amount of money. We begin taking fewer and fewer company projects and prioritizing our private work over work from essay companies. Our customers who might have previously tried out various companies realize fairly quickly that it also makes more sense for them because, for the same price as they paid companies, they can have direct contact with the same writer for every project and without ever having to worry about which writer might take their projects off a company assignment board. Every really good writer who phases out company writing in the transition to independence has to be replaced, either by another really good writer or (more often) by several less-experienced and/or mediocre writers.

3. Those who try to support themselves over the long term exclusively (or primarily) relying on company work eventually burn out.

If I hadn't made the transition to independence, I'd definitely have burned out because of the sheer volume of projects I had to write to make quite a bit less than I make now. Many times, there wasn't even enough space on my (paper) calendar to fit all of the projects due on a single say into that box. I was tethered to my computers because the only way to get a jump on the best projects was to check the board constantly, meaning refreshing about every 30 seconds from the minute I woke up until the minute I went to bed, including while I was writing, by using a second screen. I even kept a laptop in the bathroom. Once the company took my suggestion of adding a sound to alert us to new projects being added to the board, I'd interrupt anything I was doing (meaning anything) to click that refresh key whenever I heard that sound. I've already described many times how grabbing new rush projects due in a few hours while I was already writing something else became extremely routine, especially during busy seasons. Even for those of us who become very good at this, it's very stressful on a daily basis; and we don't work only 5 days a week, because to make a living this way, you have to be prepared to grab projects and write them almost 24/7/365 except when you're sleeping. Every good writer who burns out this way needs to be replaced by an equally good writer or by several less-experienced and/or mediocre writers.

Most essay companies that struggle to keep writers are mostly part of the 2nd generation (as the OP calls these companies). They struggle to keep their writers because they don't know how to treat the writers well enough to make them rethink the difficulties of moving on their own in the business. They are after the financial bottom-line and nothing more. Which is why they do not mind having a revolving door of writers in their company. It's not about the quality of the work or the repeat business that good writers can bring to them. It is all about keeping the seats filled for the lowest cost.

Writers who have real talent know the value of their work and are bright enough to know when to jump ship. When they do, it is often towards a competitor company. Others, decide to strike out on their own and build (or take the client base of the company) with them. The companies that struggle to keep their writers normally do so because they think that they can keep the business running just by having a constant stream of low quality writers. It is only when their company is already struggling to stay afloat that they realize they should have treated their good and best writers in a better manner than they did.

Poor treatment of writers is a definitive reason as to why companies cannot retain good writers. I find that some essay companies (given - they are profit-oriented entities making them sort of excusable) prefer to hire bottom-feeders in the freelance writing field. They would rather hire mediocre writers to cut on costs rather than try to acquire more expensive writers that will produce high quality output within a shorter period of time. I do believe that the latter would let the companies freer when it comes to their choices because they would need to worry less about complaints from clients. On the other hand, I do think that there are some essay companies who treat the business as a short-term investment to cash out - not necessarily a long-term business.

I also think that some people believe that academic writing is not necessarily sustainable for everyone. As some have mentioned in this thread, it is quite difficult to make a full-time living out of it. It's a dragging and exhaustive work; and unless you have the entire business under control, it can mentally drain you to the core. This is also perhaps why I have resorted to quitting my previous companies for academic writing. Instead, I have transitioned into making academic writing a part-time engage rather than a full-time commitment.

It goes both ways, really.

To simplify the answer as much as possible: essay companies struggle to retain their best writers because these are, precisely, the writers with the most options to become independent and to secure other opportunities to do different kinds of writing. There are definitely some good writers who (also) stay with their companies throughout their careers; but it is much more typical for the best writers at the best companies to make the transition to full independence, eventually.

Yes, and it really depends on the individual writer and what he/she is willing to do to grow their writing career. Some prefer to write and have a company handle all the other facets of the writing business. Others would rather handle it all and have bigger financial outputs versus a percentage of the project cost.

The turnover ratio among academic writers is due, in large part, to burn out. The best writers tend to get called upon for a lot and a lot more is expected of and from them. It also depends on how well the writer feels he/she is treated by the company. If a worker (employed or contractor) feels valued, their output will be better. Even the best and most motivated writers will only stay motivated (and dedicated) for so long if they aren't treated fairly.

Also, as @FreelanceWriter said, the best writers have more opportunities to exceed outside the umbrella of a company.

Essay companies will only struggle to keep their writers if the company is located in a third world country and runs a slave camp for writers. The latter being the most common reason that writers refer to when they leave a company. The third world writing companies see the writers as drones instead of human beings. They are run into the ground to the point of developing major illnesses, which the academic writing company will not pay for. These writers don't have insurance so when they get sick, they end up on the no-work, no-pay list of the company. That is why the writers would rather leave these companies and try their luck elsewhere, but still within the same line of business.