$0.01 per word is not uncommon these days...

Working from home is great for most people, so competition in the online writing field is tougher and tougher each year. More and more writers from big countries like India, Russia, or Pakistan (that equals to thousands of new writers each year) aspire to be online writers each year.

The result - lower and lower per-word rates. There are popular sites that offer as little as.. 1 cent per word and 2-3 cents for "qualified native English speakers who are experts in a particular field."

1 cent per word at 300 words per page = $3
2 cents per word at 300 words per page = $6

Some people may argue that research/writing quality suffers when so many people call themselves "writers;" however, that's often not the case (and even if 20% of new writers are qualified, that still means hundreds or thousands of new writers every year).

How low can the rates go? Is it possible to reverse this trend? Are native speakers living in the US / UK / Australia able to compete with foreign writers whose English is better and better in the long term?

Very critical questions, indeed.

I think it is very difficult to predict the future rate scale as the industry is full of gray areas. Lack of research (let alone rigorous research) is one prime reason; the other is the porousness of transactions taking place on the internet.

Perhaps better internet technologies will help the essay writing industry to grow mature enabling the writers and the customers to make better informed choices. Thus, although it may not be possible to bring the industry back to it booming period (when native writers were valued more than the ESL or EFL writers), it is also rational to argue that the quality would still matter in the coming days. So, a mature market will probably have segments of different types of products written by writers from different backgrounds.

I am not taking side with anyone, but it seems that in more general areas of essay writing industry (such as literature, management, tourism, etc.) the native writers will face growing competition from the NN writers. However, when it comes to certain niches, they can still maintain their edge over the NN ones.

I'd like to point out a very important area that has not been touched upon in the post above - the case of growing trend of essay and research writing in many countries other than US and UK (ESL/EFL). Many well-renowned colleges/universities (both local and with international affiliation) based in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and even in India and Pakistan now require of the student to complete certain essay writing tasks. Thus, it adds to the riches of the essay writing industry.

Soon these who ***** about $6 per page will beg for $6 per page.

Means?

That you can write for $0.0075 per word in near future if you compete with mass chinese. Not good for writer.

I don't think that native writers are in any danger, except maybe at the bottom of the barrel.

Have you ever seen some of the essays produced by the essay mills who employ loads and load of non-native writers? I have. Complete trash, not even gradable by the professor. I don't know who their customer is, to be honest. Maybe I only saw the worst of the worst, but I don't think so.

I think it is cyclical in nature and people come and go...People are not patient enough..

I think let the clients decide the quality irrespective of which country the writer belongs too.

At those very low rates of pay, the quality of the essays are going to be so poor that only those who don't care at all about their grades are going to be buying them.

Top writers take on few clients but charge higher prices. People who don't write so well have to deal in volume.

True, and this is what Major, above, has shown his concerns about.

The biggest problem arises from the fact that the growing list of writers has meant a great decline in quality. Most of those starting writing have little information on the necessary knowledge and end up tarnishing the name of this novel industry. The truth is i cannot lower my price on the sight of these "wannabes", same prices as earlier, unrivaled quality.

Given that many foreign companies/companies with foreign writers pay in the 1-2 cent/per word range while still charging close to the same prices as companies that pay native writers a living wage, I think this is more an excuse for US and UK-based companies to start cutting pay rates to writers rather than needing to cut the costs to customers. There's greater marketing difficulty with so much competition, but customers are still willing to pay $25+/pg despite the fact that there are cheaper (and usually poorer quality) alternatives.

JohnsMom: I'm not sure I follow your logic that the U.S./UK companies would cut pay rates. Imagine that you run a company. (For all I know, maybe you do.) If you are based in the U.S. and your game plan is to provide high quality, earn repeat business, and generally operate a reputable company, then you need native speakers or, at the very least, near-native speakers, all of whom must be quite proficient at research and writing. This type of writer is in limited supply. The fact that there is a flood of non-native, poor-quality writers really doesn't affect your equation at all. You could hire them for cheap, but they would be a detriment, not a benefit, to your business. You have to pay a premium to get the good writers. Writers who can do what is needed to make your business successful are somewhat hard to find, because such people have other options in life. On the other hand, if you want lousy writers for $2 a page, the world is your oyster. Just don't count on satisfied customers.

If foreign writers begin to approach native writers in terms of skill, companies could easily decide to offer lower payouts to these writers for many orders and reduce payouts even to native writers--it's outsourcing, plain and simple, This is far from the only industry it's happened in.

A good freelance writer ought to be able to find clients anyway, but I sense a coming change in US/UK company business models and their eventual demise.

I would never trust my paper to someone in another country outside North America. There is no way.

No wonder everyone complains on this board about companies, at the prices you are wanting to pay it is obviously gonna be scam.

Each level of writer/editor will have a different level of rates. You can't get PhD quality editing for $0.01/word. I'm guessing that type of quality would be at least $0.03/word.

I to agree with you that writing from home is great, as per me the some people argue that the research and writing are effected but this

problem can be sort out by increasing the speed of internet.
Competition is increasing day by day, as all new writers are coming up with their new quality writing.
By looking through the different factors I must say that the rate would be $0.25 per words.

Get to the spam, already!

Writers who work for themselves definitely do not charge a pittance for their hard work. The cost per page could be as high a hundred dollars for the independent writers. It could be more so the going rate of $0.01 isn't something that will happen to them. However, the writers who are attached to academic outsourcing companies could find that their rates during the slow season could hit this rate, depending upon how sadistic the company they are attached to is. Writers who see their rates dipping to these levels more often than not jump ship and don't look back. The promised rates on their websites are only meant to entice writers to apply to their company. They never intended to have the writer earn that amount per page for an academic paper. However, if the writer is valued enough to be spun off as a worker in some of the company's other services, then his rate will show an improvement. My friends in the industry have told me that the going rate these days is a little less than $ 4 per page. I told them they were taking a pay cut and they were conscious of that fact. However, they don't have any options for alternative jobs so they have to bite the bullet and hope things get better instead of worse for them.

Expect the cost per word to go even lower as these writing companies struggle with the cost of maintaining their servers, paying off their back-end staff, and new companies coming up with new ways to help students write their papers without actually having to hire a writer. The writing companies are fast discovering that they can still make money off their previous clients by simply having the writer constantly rehash the same paper. The push of writing companies these days lean towards having their writers work for slave wages at almost $0.50 per page for "rewriting" and up to $1.00 per page for paraphrasing.

They make it clear to the writers that they will be paid less for rewrites because the paper is already completed and all they have to do is make it even better by combining new research with paraphrasing. If it were me, I would pay the writers more for the rewrites instead. Either way, company based academic writers are sinking deeper into quicksand with every academic year that passes.

Anyone who hasn't dug into rewriting someone else's work will not understand that concept. I'd rather write from scratch over rewriting any day. There are simply too many ways that rewriting can run into complications. Even the best writers cannot read someone else's mind and essentially that is what rewriting is (reading the professor's mind and the mind of the one who wrote the original paper), sprinkled with a few comments or suggestions. Now, don't' get me wrong, a paying job is a paying job (for the most part), but I've taken on rewrites for theses and dissertations and though I successfully complete the order, I wanted to pull my hair out along the way!

Academic writing companies and independent writers who have stared the effects of the pandemic in the face know that they are struggling to pay off their expenses. With the cancellation of in classroom learning and the emergence of online schooling, students are finding that they have more time to work on the papers themselves. So don't expect the third world companies to raise their rates to any level over the next year or so. In fact, I fully expect the writing companies to go under, while the independent writers start to evolve and spin off into other writing fields. Their work in the non-academic fields, which is now a dying industry, will be paid a lot more than simply $0.01 per word.

There are some 3rd world writers who actually charge 5 cents per word these days. That is what they believe is the cost that will help them get hired for the job. Yet, some students still find that rate too steep, even though they are ESL students looking for a writer. They would rather risk having an empty research paper or opinion paper written by AI. These are the students who do not care about their grades, they are just focused on meeting class requirements. Decent writers still charge at least $5 a page from what I have heard. Some, prefer to negotiate with the students that still come to them for inquiries.