A Treatise on the Future of the Custom Academic Research Industry

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.

Point #1 and #2 - I think you are 100% correct and you summarized how these business operations really work (btw. Putin is the president of Russia, not Ukraine, even though half of Ukrainians consider themselves Russians ;). Google / Bing search results have been spammed with hundreds / thousands of fly-by-night flashy websites owned by a few individuals from foreign countries. Writers from Africa.. I still don't get why they are in the academic writing business.. lying and deceiving is their first nature..

Point #3 - you're right that high quality will always prevail. Students will eventually learn that a flashy website usually has little to offer (same applies to other online industries). And that if nobody's heard of the website/company yet it usually means it's been created to spam search engines.

Whatever's happening, the past year has sucked. Imo, 4/10 customers have English as bad or worse than ESL-speaking operators in Ukraine, Nigeria, Pakistan et al., so they just go with what's cheapest, fail, and then leave the entire industry alone "once bitten." As I am a freelancer, the business aspects aren't my forte, but there has to be a way for folks with know-how to step up and start blasting these foxes out of their hen-house. Till then, here's hoping this is a short-term dig, and that everyone has a plan B, just in case.

I have networked with a few writers in my position -- independent business owners who primarily do all writing for our business. We have outlined plans to, in your words, "blast these foxes out of their hen-house." We just require a good amount of start-up capital that we unfortunately cannot divert from our own personal incomes at this time.

In my opinion, we actually have a groundbreaking idea that will marginalize these scam companies and render them irrelevant, leaving a large majority of the essay writing market share to freelancers and independent writers who provide quality work and represent the industry well. I have taken the lead on developing that idea, but the overhead costs are substantial. That's where the scam companies are beating us; they have no overhead.

What plans do you have in mind (and why would it be so expensive)? It may be like chasing your tail - you expose one, they buy a new domain and spam search engines with little effort and minimum cost (using the same backend scripts, but different logo / design template).

I wound up applying for a company I'd already worked for and that stole from me, thinking that their new domain name was a new company. Luckily, I remembered the administrator's voice.

Nor do they have to concern themselves with earning and maintaining a steady clientele of satisfied customers and word-of-mouth referrals. They just have to boost their Google rankings by hook and by crook to dupe an endless supply of first-time/last-time customers with a slick-looking website.

I've just checked the following terms in Google trends graph, as below: "custom essays" (red), "custom term papers" (blue), "custom dissertation" (yellow) and the general trend for these keywords appears to be downward ..unless students use completely different set of keywords to find example research paper services.. On the other hand, nowadays a lot of students use social media sites / direct or private recommendations, so the fact they don't use Google search as much as they used to doesn't mean the trend in fact negative. Thoughts?



Btw - I've just checked a different set of keywords: essay writing service (red), dissertation service (blue) and these search phrases seem to contradict the ones I used in the first scenario (the trend is on the rise). It's hard to conclude the real trends; damn stats ;)

Tump's Victory and how it affects the Writing Industry

Hello guys, wanted to ask your opinion on the future of this industry, especially now that Donal Trump is set to be President. Are we likely to get better jobs and better wages, thus, exit the industry (considering he promised us more jobs during the campaigns)... Is Trump likely to disrupt this industry?

Yours truly,
Me.

He's not going to affect the industry directly and actually has no realistic plan for "bringing jobs back," but the inevitable reduction in the strength of the dollar and the tanking of the entire US economy are going to be huge problems.

The US economy has been struggling for years now (debt doubled in the last decade), so a chance for change of economic direction may only have a positive outcome. IF taxes on small businesses (and bureaucratic regulations) go down as promised (and, as you should know, freelance writers are in fact small business owners), it would be a very welcome outcome. Freelancers depend directly on their customers/students - if students have more job opportunities and less debt, it can only benefit freelance writers in the long term.

Lower taxes + increased job availability for students can only help the industry. There's never going to be a lack of students who need/want help.

He's going to drain the swamp and make the essay industry great again.

All told, there's about 16 million college students enrolled in the U.S. and of these, there's about 400,000 international students, mostly from China, India, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. If the new prez follows through on his immigration reform (especially prohibiting Muslims from entering the U.S.), the flow of new international students into the U.S. will slow, and these students may enroll elsewhere or simply opt to postpone their education until things return to normal. For-profit and community colleges in the U.S. have also experienced an overall (slight) decline in enrollments over the past year. On the other hand, if the economy rallies in response to the new prez's initiatives, there may be more discretionary income available which would likely be good for our industry.

Will President Trump Help or Hurt Demand in the Model Writing Industry?

Has anyone considered what, if any, impact recent and proposed changes by President Trump could have on the essay industry? As we all know, a significant amount of clients are international students. Maybe tighter immigration laws will decrease the amount of students needing model research?

Yeah. You can now start citing "alternative facts" sourced from the National Inquirer and RT.



This is just a grammar pet peeve of mine, but it's number of students and clients, not amount.

So, for example, you'd refer to the sheer number of lies and the incredible amount of nonsense coming forth daily from the mouth of the foolish conman sociopath we now have as POTUS.

Geez, it's only January. Usually, it's not until season when you start alienating people with your crankiness. Do you have an answer to the question or did you only respond to be an insufferable pedant?

I'm not really too worried about "alienating" anybody who believes that Trump isn't a foolish lifelong conman and a sociopath who lies pathologically about things that are easily-provable as lies just about anytime his mouth is moving without food in it.

If you really want a serious answer to your question, then no, I don't think anything proposed by that fool will affect this industry because relatively few international students who utilize these services are actually seeking physical entry into this country from "terror-prone" regions of the world. Most of my international clients who do come from the regions at issue are studying abroad.

He's threatening to limit the H-1B Visas though, which would reduce the work opportunities for international students after graduation:

dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_30746186/trump-effect-cu-boulder-sees-7-6-drop

usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-12-15/ election-of-donald-trump-may-deter-international-students-from-us

But yeah, it probably won't matter much.

First, I really don't understand your adversarial tone. I've detested DJT for decades, going back much further than his relatively recent entry into American politics, although (admittedly) much more so since 2011 when he started his nonsense about Obama's supposed foreign birth. Unless your last name happens to be Trump, you shouldn't be insulted personally by that. Likewise, my comment about amount vs. number wasn't intended (or phrased) as a personal insult to you, either. It happens to be a grammar pet peeve of mine that I've mentioned previously on this forum.

Second, your own cited sources contradict your rhetoric. They suggest that even if some students from the Middle East might now be somewhat less inclined to study in the US because of Trump, many students from Russia, China, and elsewhere might actually be more likely to do so, now.

Third, and most importantly, I don't understand your underlying premise that this industry depends substantially on in-person attendance by international students at US colleges and universities, in the first place. Again, your own cited sources suggest that the most likely result of any reduced enrolment of international students at US academic institutions is that they will simply enroll in UK or European universities, instead.

Already, more than half of my clients attend academic institutions abroad. As you probably know, transactions in this industry are generated remotely online, making it completely irrelevant where clients are actually situated or where they attend school. So, while you seem to have intended your comment that "it probably won't matter much" sarcastically, I'd suggest that it's really quite accurate.

In any case, none of that is intended as a personal insult to you and I'm sorry if I offended you unintentionally.

I didn't mean that last comment sarcastically. Your sensitivity regarding what's happening politically is perhaps clouding how you're interpreting my language.

I'm not offended by your political position on Trump, but I was slightly annoyed with your grammatical nit-picking when I was asking a legitimate question.


I realize the "Daily Camera" isn't exactly the NYTimes or the Economist, but the title of the article is "Trump effect? CU Boulder sees 7.6% drop in international applicants."

And nowhere does it claim this:


Both articles claim it might not just be students from the Middle East or war torn countries that would be impacted by Trump's immigration policies.

But yes, it seems you're right that many of these students will study in Europe or Australia instead.

Good grief. Where do you find the time?

To cite a famous rock band

"When your day is long
And the night, the night is yours alone"

The first post GOLD. This is exactly what's been happening in the last couple of years. Nevertheless, the scammers have been affected too (have you noticed some of they have just closed their "hiring departments" until further notice?). Well, it's like the Chinese taking over the world production; at first everybody complained about the "cheap junk," but over time they got used to it and started accepting it.

Another sign - check out the most popular research sites; a couple of them (including the foreign junk or ukessay) have now started promoting their "free content" to students. What they basically do is to dump all "customized papers" they have ever written as an effort to spam search engines in the hopes that some lost student would find the page and order from them. In the past, they would charge for such reference papers, but now nobody is buying all those pre-order essays so they offer them for free. Of course, they do it in a highly-unethical way because first they lie to their customers that whatever they order would belong to the customer only, but in the end it's not the case.

The biggest threat to the writing industry is not found in the list of the OP, nor is it related to Donald Trump (very far from it). The real threat to the industry was the entry of January 2020, when the Covid 19 pandemic swept the globe. The pandemic closed the schools for the rest of the academic year, cutting into the profit of the writers and writing companies, forcing refunds, and basically, deducting from the perceived gains of the company and writer during that time. Then, schools, where it reopened, took on a new format with the blended learning standard. Some parents chose to fully homeschool the kids just to err on the safe side. These actions have resulted in a major shakeup in the industry. It has made the writers think twice about their academic writing career. What if the pandemic doesn't end? What if a new form of schooling is finally developed? Can the writers still find a niche in a changing academic world? What is the true future of the academic writing industry? Can we survive this pandemic and go back to the way we used to earn? There are way too many new factors to consider now which proves that academic writing professionals need to think long and hard about their current and future career choices / decisions.

Nope-- until you have more evidence than questions, the biggest threats are still #1 and #2.

I can see wanting to deflect, though.

This thread is actually a historical look at a time when students from all educational levels were hiring academic writers on an academic year or semestral basis. There actually was a time when academic writers were king in this field and there was nothing that could be done about it. Even if teachers knew a paper was paid for, they had no way of proving it and often just let it slide. Nobody, not the educators, students, or writers ever thought that the actual future of academic writing would lie in the hands of artificial intelligence. Even the prediction about how technology might affect the work did not show an inkling of knowledge about AI. We all thought of technology affecting us as writers in a vastly different way.