How many hours a day do professional writers work?

FreelanceWriter, you definitely have the writing skills to pay the bills, based on your posts. I suspect there may be some jealousy from other forum members who lack those skills or who run companies and do not wish to pay what it takes to hire those skills.

32 bit computers generating text more fluent then you. Its not about writing only coz good original research is key. If you have no adequate research skill you wont go far in this business.

And you believe lies of your bosses coz .. you have weak research skill to find out real truth. Otherwise you can find out by yourself that what they posted is lie and propaganda.

How stupid is this guy?

I wouldn't want him writing my essay, that's for sure.

Managing writers is hell. I tried it once and I concluded that I was better off writing on my own and keeping 100% instead of having to chase them. Actually, if you are not careful with writers you will lose a lot if not all of your current clients.

The writers you were working with, where were they from? Were they flaking out on you or what?

I do not know why the admin deleted my post but I had said that managing writers can be quite tough. They refuse to pick calls, write crap or just don't measure up to the task. I met quite a few through both essayscam and essaychat and as usual they would lie about qualifications and so on. In the end you spend a lot of energy chasing them or going through their work and comparing it with the requirements.

Were you hiring Americans, Indians, Filipinos, or others?

I did get two Americans but was unlucky with the Britons because they are way too expensive and given that I was getting the orders from middlemen, I could not afford them. The rest of the writers (about 5) were ESLs.

Monitoring progress and controlling quality can be two decisive areas for anyone working as a manager in the essay writing industry. Some companies have established a very good system to carry out these tasks on a regular basis. What you have gone through is the field experience that should help you improve your managerial skills.

you are right about getting schooled on managerial skills and abilities and in fact I would say that if I were to start all over again, I would do a much better job. In fact, it is after the venture that I understood why the likes of EW and company apply very tough sanctions on their writers. I found it shocking that people would live for a very long time without power or phones suddenly ran out of charge a few minutes before the deadline. The worst bit was being kept at the edge of my seat while trying to trace a writer who had disappeared while at the same time calming down a very rude client. In most cases, whenever a paper delayed, the middlemen directly referred the client to me and so I was forced to deal with insults and other profanities that such clients would spit. For the small commission I made, I concluded that I was better off writing the papers myself because I had full control over my circumstances.

OK, sorry for asking a million questions, but as you know, I have specific reasons for being interested in this subject and for looking into what the pitfalls are.

Was any particular country better or worse than others? In particular, does anyone know how writers from the Philippines are in terms of reliability and quality, if you choose them wisely?

Also, I see what people are talking about in terms of management, but if you are trying to turn around pieces within 24 hours, it is going to be hard to hold the writer's hand and get constant progress updates.

I wonder which companies you mean. Legitimate American/British companies cannot "monitor progress" because they work with independent freelance writers. Scam companies don't care about the laws (or maybe the laws are different foreign countries regarding worker status).

Its quite hard to classify them on the basis of nationality especially in my case because my sample size is severely limited for any generalization to be valid. I did not have any Filipino writer and that is because I did not find any so I cannot authoritatively comment on their performance. All I can say is that the highest proportion of the ones I worked with were from Kenya and India and I can say they if you are to ask me what I felt about the whole working relationship I would say it was not that great otherwise I would still be with them now. If you are recruiting writers just think of them as individuals-think in terms of nationality and I can assure you that you will fail.


By monitoring progress I believe you mean occasionally checking on the writer to be sure that the project is progressing well and that delivery deadline will be met and not checking the writer's "professional" progress. For the short period that I worked with writing companies, I only wrote for Ukrainian companies namely EW and Uvo and in my experience, there is no progress monitoring that takes place. It is even impossible considering that most of those companies are simply websites with a few members of staff who are expected to process too many orders and for that reason, such companies are unable to keep an eye on what the writer does. They simply allocated you an order and put in place a deterrent in the form of a fine to deter any (potential) "slackers".

I meant the legit ones that are not necessarily Am or Br only. If the "American/British" companies cannot closely monitor how their "freelance writers" are doing their job, they'll simply be outsmarted by these "freelance writers". So, the thing is whichever country a company is claimed to be based in, they will have to put checks at one point or another in their supply chain. This simple rule applies to every single business.

If by "outsmarted" you mean that a freelance writer would "steal" a company's client then it's usually risky for the "stealer" because if there is a problem with a completed paper, the client would (almost always) CC or BCC the company, too. When it happens, the company knows the writer "stole" their client.

This writing gig can actually go two ways. For some, they prefer to do the regular 8-5 job with the computer off and the mobile phone disconnected at 5 PM, That's why they make sure to time the writing tasks to be completed not on a page number basis but rather, hours of work basis. The other side, works till their eyes get so tired, it closes on its own and the writer practically slumps over the keyboard, snoring away (figuratively speaking). Whichever way works best I guess. For those who have their money on the prize (increased salary), then work till their body asks them to stop. For those who are doing the job more as a form of additional income, the work clock chimes the end of the work day at 5. When I was actively working, I would work for 20 hours, sleeping only for 4 hours per day. I had my eye on the salary at the time as I had some specific financial projects in mind that required me to work like a hamster on the wheel. These days though, I work only when called upon by consultation clients. That job normally takes me just 30 minutes to an hour, 2 hours at the most, to complete. Then I have the rest of the day off.

Come to think of it, I never really bothered to keep track of my hours as a writer. Since I worked broken hours anyway, I never thought of quantifying the amount of time I actually placed into each task. I think that is because I was paid a flat rate for the job anyway, regardless of how many hours or how many pages I was working on.

I don't think there is a reason to count the work hours in this line of work since the work hours vary per paper completed. It would be better to instead, count how much the writer is paid for the task assigned. After all, the money paid should be commensurate to the manpower, rather than work hours, that a writer places into the completion of the work.

If pressed for a ballpark figure though, I would say that I was working at least 100 hours a week because I never took a day off and only stopped for the necessities like meals, personal obligations, and other incidental chores.

Ten years ago, when almost all of my projects were for essay companies, I worked constantly whenever I was awake, taking breaks only for meals and to workout. Even when I wasn't actually writing, I was never more than a foot from a laptop, because the only way to get the jump on newly-posted projects and grab them before other writers was to hit the refresh button every 30 seconds or so to catch new projects the instant they got posted. Eventually, I built my own gym at home, specifically, because of the time wasted travelling to and from the gym and so that I could still keep an eye on my screen even while I was working out. To make a living doing this, I would often write half a dozen (small) projects nearly every day of every week. Even while I was writing, I was still hitting the refresh key on another laptop constantly; and I'd routinely have to stop working on one project to write another one that just came in that was due in a few hours. However, I still preferred that to a traditional job with regular hours that required me to set an alarm clock to get up at 6:00 AM Mon through Fri but required no work whatsoever after I left the office (and frequently, little or no work for much of my work-weeks). At least as a contract writer, I could still choose to work or sleep at any time of day or night and almost never had to set an alarm clock. I'm thankful to the essay companies that gave me my start in this business (and still refer projects to one of them, sometimes); but looking back on it, I really don't know how I was ever able to do that without burning out.

Nowadays, working only for myself, I still do work a lot; but probably no more hours than one typically works at a traditional job with regular hours, with the exception of April/May and November/December. It's also great not to have to be tethered to a computer 24/7/365 because while responding to constant emails is still a requirement, I no longer need to monitor assignment boards every waking minute of every day of my life. I also have time to play a lot of hockey again, to take my wife out for fun, and to enjoy doing absolutely nothing in front of the TV when I want to. It's pretty much the best of both worlds in that I earn roughly the same as I'd be earning now if I'd stayed on my job writing for the federal government, but without ever having to set an alarm clock, or go to an office or deal with a boss; and I can work in a much more relaxed way, such as sitting outside in the sun.

Most independent writers that I know work as much as a given project requires. Personally, some weeks I'm working morning to past midnight while others I may work a few hours a day. I just depends on what's on the schedule, deadlines, and other factors. I like to complete projects ahead of time so that also lets me be more flexible with my work schedule. I also know a few writers who literally work an 8 to 5 or a 9 to 5 schedule Monday - Friday. It really depends on the individual and what works best for them. The biggest things I'd be concerned about is always providing quality work and meeting deadlines. The rest will work itself out.

I consider the writing job a regular 9-5 job. If I do not give myself a time limit in the form of an actual work day, My tendency will be to work until I complete the paper. It could take me about 20 hours to complete a 25 page paper, depending upon the source material, formatting requirements, and other instructions the client has for the paper. The client normally gives me about 3 days to a week to complete the paper so I should not be spending 20 hours working on it. Being a workaholic though, I just can't seem to stop working once I get started. Which is why I eventually had to give myself the work time. The constant tapping on the keyboard drove my house companions up the wall. They begged me to create work hours so they could sleep at night in peace. Hahaha !

While freelance writers used to work upwards of 40 hours a week when the work was in high demand, these days, they will be lucky to spend 20 hours in a week working on the job. It will all depend upon the influx of orders and the number of pages that they are required to write. It is still an easy job to have since the writers can still dictate their working hours. Normally though, it no longer takes more than 8 hours in a day for them to complete a workload, if they have any.