FrustratedWriter 1 | 5
Nov 17, 2007 | #1
I own and write for a research paper company. I will not mention the name of my Web site, lest I be accussed of spamming, but students need to know what is happening here. Most of the papers on the Internet now are either plagiarized or so badly written that they are unusable. The good companies that did quality work are being forced out of business. That's the reality.
The American research paper site business has been killed by the offshore competition. These companies have created a market in which fairly priced papers (say, $16.96 and up a page) look overpriced and slave wages look normal.
First, these companies undervalue the market by selling papers at $7.95 a page. They can do this because they pay their writers, on average, about $3 a page. That works about to less than $2 an hour, just so you know. I know this because I actually registered as a writer with one of the Pakistani sites that has been mentioned several times on this board. I never wrote a paper for them. I just used my registration to check out their orders and to see what they were paying. It might be interesting to see if they trace this back and block my user name and password :-)
Graduate level papers with about 72 hour turnaround are getting about $4 a page. Everything else is below that. I did see a philosophy paper for $8 a page, but that was the highest price I saw on their available orders page.
Do people honestly think that a PhD is going to work for that?
For those of you who don't live in the U.S., you have to earn at least about $10 an hour here just to survive, and that's still low. Poverty level is $15,000 a year.
To the customer who wanted to know why my prices were higher than another site: I have to support myself and my family. I do not owe you a cheap paper. Sorry.
So, they choked out American businesses by using slave wages. Of course, I had to lower my prices to try to compete with these idiots, which means I am writing more pages for less money.
Their next strategy is to drive up advertising costs. I started advertising on Yahoo in June, after Google blocked research paper adwords. The manner in which Google did this ban was unfair and did not help research writers. Google basically screwed legitimate companies and boosted the sales of the biggest scams in the business. Banning adwords but not blocking organic search results was another bad idea from Google. Someone explain the subtle moral difference between a paid ad that makes money for Google and organic content that makes money for Google... but I digress.
When I came to advertise on Yahoo, the top slot for ads was $0.95 a click. Today, just over 4 months later, the Pakistanis and Ukrainians have driven that rate up to about $6 a click. (For those who don't know, ads are priced according to a bid system. The highest bids get the better placement on the page. Every time someone clicks an ad, there is a little cash register somewhere that goes "ka-ching".). The third world companies can afford this because they aren't paying their writers anything. I could see the writing on the wall the other night when I looked at the Yahoo search page and every site with a paid ad except 1 was Pakistani or Ukrainian.
These third world theives also commit rampant click fraud, driving up my ad costs wth fake clicks. Once again, they can apparently afford to have somebody sit there and click my ad. At $5 a click for middle of the page, it doesn't take many clicks to shoot an ad budget. The search engines have no real incentive to stop click fraud since they profit from it. Yahoo has issued me refunds twice for blatant cases (click through rates of 11%, when normal should be between 1% and 2%), but not every time. Even then, they did not acknowledge click fraud, but simply said that it was a courtesy to me as an advertiser.
By the way - another interesting point - for the 5 years that I advertised on Google, my ads cost about 15% of gross sales. On Yahoo, my ads are running between 35% to 50% of gross. On Google, about 1 in every 10 clicks resulted in a sale. On Yahoo, it's closer to around 1 in every 25 or so. I'm not sure why this is, but that's the difference. In should also say that Yahoo has much better customer service than Google ever had. They're Number 2; they have to try harder, I guess.
The result of all of this, for consumers, are fewer choices (all of these offshore sites feed into the same 2 or 3 companies, from what I can tell), lower quality (a look at the bad grammar and inappropriate word choices on their web sites would tell you that), and, ultimately, more scams.
I will continue with repeat business and word of mouth because I love to write papers. But, I have had to go back to the career I had before I went into business for myself as a writer. My income from writing papers has been cut from around $5000 a month between 2003 and 2006- after paying for advertising - to less than $1500 a month (after paying for advertising) since June. So far, this November, I had about $2800 in sales and have paid about $900 for ads on Yahoo. This is the rush season. Some rush.
Somewhere in the Ukraine, a former-Russian with bad dental work is smiling. I congratulate them and the Pakistanis, to whom I offer a ham sandwich as a token of my esteem.
What has happened here has much broader implications than just research papers. America's Wal-Mart mentality has resulted in the exportation of our manufacturing base. Stalin (or was it Lenin?) was right - we sold our enemies (and as far as I am concerned, these people are enemies in a trade war) the rope that they used to hang us. I guess all those Wal-Mart shoppers and the people who buy cheap papers will be happy when we all enjoy the same standard of living as a third world country.
I am past being angry about this. I am now just very sad. Google and the Pakistanis killed my dream, although the way things are going, I don't know that it would have been much different if Google had not implemented the ban. I believe in capitalism, and I don't mind being beaten by someone who does a better job than me. I just hate to lose to someone who creates an inferior product and is supported by a system that punishes legitimate businesses.
There are some American companies left. I am a small company, so my margins are tighter. Larger companies have more room to maneuver. However, I've talked to several of my competitors in the business, and we're all hurting. These are good companies run by honest people who pay their writers a fair wage. More important, they produce quality work. Too bad nobody cares.
You want to see the results of globalization? Here they are - everyone will be living in a slum in a few years, and only the owners of companies like Google will have any money. Google, and the third world rip off artists that sell inferior papers, produce poison toys, and otherwise scam their customers.
I wish I could sign my name, but I know that is not allowed here, and I respect that. Suffice it to say that I had a good business doing something that I was very good at. It was an honest business that helped students at a fair price, and now it is gone.
Your job may be next.
The American research paper site business has been killed by the offshore competition. These companies have created a market in which fairly priced papers (say, $16.96 and up a page) look overpriced and slave wages look normal.
First, these companies undervalue the market by selling papers at $7.95 a page. They can do this because they pay their writers, on average, about $3 a page. That works about to less than $2 an hour, just so you know. I know this because I actually registered as a writer with one of the Pakistani sites that has been mentioned several times on this board. I never wrote a paper for them. I just used my registration to check out their orders and to see what they were paying. It might be interesting to see if they trace this back and block my user name and password :-)Graduate level papers with about 72 hour turnaround are getting about $4 a page. Everything else is below that. I did see a philosophy paper for $8 a page, but that was the highest price I saw on their available orders page.
Do people honestly think that a PhD is going to work for that?
For those of you who don't live in the U.S., you have to earn at least about $10 an hour here just to survive, and that's still low. Poverty level is $15,000 a year.
To the customer who wanted to know why my prices were higher than another site: I have to support myself and my family. I do not owe you a cheap paper. Sorry.
So, they choked out American businesses by using slave wages. Of course, I had to lower my prices to try to compete with these idiots, which means I am writing more pages for less money.
Their next strategy is to drive up advertising costs. I started advertising on Yahoo in June, after Google blocked research paper adwords. The manner in which Google did this ban was unfair and did not help research writers. Google basically screwed legitimate companies and boosted the sales of the biggest scams in the business. Banning adwords but not blocking organic search results was another bad idea from Google. Someone explain the subtle moral difference between a paid ad that makes money for Google and organic content that makes money for Google... but I digress.
When I came to advertise on Yahoo, the top slot for ads was $0.95 a click. Today, just over 4 months later, the Pakistanis and Ukrainians have driven that rate up to about $6 a click. (For those who don't know, ads are priced according to a bid system. The highest bids get the better placement on the page. Every time someone clicks an ad, there is a little cash register somewhere that goes "ka-ching".). The third world companies can afford this because they aren't paying their writers anything. I could see the writing on the wall the other night when I looked at the Yahoo search page and every site with a paid ad except 1 was Pakistani or Ukrainian.
These third world theives also commit rampant click fraud, driving up my ad costs wth fake clicks. Once again, they can apparently afford to have somebody sit there and click my ad. At $5 a click for middle of the page, it doesn't take many clicks to shoot an ad budget. The search engines have no real incentive to stop click fraud since they profit from it. Yahoo has issued me refunds twice for blatant cases (click through rates of 11%, when normal should be between 1% and 2%), but not every time. Even then, they did not acknowledge click fraud, but simply said that it was a courtesy to me as an advertiser.
By the way - another interesting point - for the 5 years that I advertised on Google, my ads cost about 15% of gross sales. On Yahoo, my ads are running between 35% to 50% of gross. On Google, about 1 in every 10 clicks resulted in a sale. On Yahoo, it's closer to around 1 in every 25 or so. I'm not sure why this is, but that's the difference. In should also say that Yahoo has much better customer service than Google ever had. They're Number 2; they have to try harder, I guess.
The result of all of this, for consumers, are fewer choices (all of these offshore sites feed into the same 2 or 3 companies, from what I can tell), lower quality (a look at the bad grammar and inappropriate word choices on their web sites would tell you that), and, ultimately, more scams.
I will continue with repeat business and word of mouth because I love to write papers. But, I have had to go back to the career I had before I went into business for myself as a writer. My income from writing papers has been cut from around $5000 a month between 2003 and 2006- after paying for advertising - to less than $1500 a month (after paying for advertising) since June. So far, this November, I had about $2800 in sales and have paid about $900 for ads on Yahoo. This is the rush season. Some rush.
Somewhere in the Ukraine, a former-Russian with bad dental work is smiling. I congratulate them and the Pakistanis, to whom I offer a ham sandwich as a token of my esteem.
What has happened here has much broader implications than just research papers. America's Wal-Mart mentality has resulted in the exportation of our manufacturing base. Stalin (or was it Lenin?) was right - we sold our enemies (and as far as I am concerned, these people are enemies in a trade war) the rope that they used to hang us. I guess all those Wal-Mart shoppers and the people who buy cheap papers will be happy when we all enjoy the same standard of living as a third world country.
I am past being angry about this. I am now just very sad. Google and the Pakistanis killed my dream, although the way things are going, I don't know that it would have been much different if Google had not implemented the ban. I believe in capitalism, and I don't mind being beaten by someone who does a better job than me. I just hate to lose to someone who creates an inferior product and is supported by a system that punishes legitimate businesses.
There are some American companies left. I am a small company, so my margins are tighter. Larger companies have more room to maneuver. However, I've talked to several of my competitors in the business, and we're all hurting. These are good companies run by honest people who pay their writers a fair wage. More important, they produce quality work. Too bad nobody cares.
You want to see the results of globalization? Here they are - everyone will be living in a slum in a few years, and only the owners of companies like Google will have any money. Google, and the third world rip off artists that sell inferior papers, produce poison toys, and otherwise scam their customers.
I wish I could sign my name, but I know that is not allowed here, and I respect that. Suffice it to say that I had a good business doing something that I was very good at. It was an honest business that helped students at a fair price, and now it is gone.
Your job may be next.
