Writing colleague has turned into my competitor.

I have a simple site hosted on blogspot providing academic research service for students. I've been working with two of my "colleagues" (that is, when I couldn't complete a project, I forwarded it to them and they paid me a %).

One of them has recently started her own website (which looks much more professional than mine). I think she's stealing my clients and my contacts. What should I do? Is it normal?

Post the company name here and we can ridicule her.

I prefer not to riducle her, but isn't it ridiculous? I was just wondering if it's a normal behaviour and if perhaps I should talk to a lawyer (I didn't have an agreement with her so it's probably not a good idea). If it's normal, then I guess I'll have to move on and be smarter next time.

It probably depends on the person. I only know two other writers and we have always been direct competitors on the company boards and for private clients. We have always referred new potential clients to one another for work out of our respective areas and usually we consider those clients to "belong" to the other writer who does the first assignment for that person. When an existing client needs a specific paper that we refer to one another, we mention that this is from "one of my regulars" (etc) which means we still expect to be writing that person's other work afterwards, unless that client chooses otherwise. Sometimes clients will try to play us off against one another for a lower price, but the three of us charge about the same for most work and we let one another know anytime we get inquiries from customers we've previously referred to one another.

It may be true if you have enough jobs to divide between the three of you. What if you had a limited amount of available projects? Your friendship would suffer fast, I'm afraid :(

Not true. We don't have enough work to "divide" up; it has nothing to do with division of labor. Sometimes I get inquiries for topics that just aren't in my areas or that I just can't squeeze in by the deadline. My choice is to leave the person stranded for a writer or pass it on to one of two writers I happen to know and trust. If it's a new customer, we pass them on; if it's an existing regular, we just pass on that particular assignment and we don't steal work from one another's existing clients, the same way we don't steal clients from the companies we write for. None of us ever gives away any order he can do himself. We aren't even friends in the traditional sense because we've never met and only know one another from this work. So far, the three of us have always conducted ourselves honestly and fairly and it has nothing to do with how much work is available or not available.

Colleagues turning competitors is nothing new...Everyone has to safeguard themselves..

Look its capitalism, just make your product and service better and get some good advertising. End of story.

That quote saved me some time :)

Competition is good for any business.

What I meant - let's say there is only one available project to do and there are three writers wanting to make money. If there're not enough jobs, you are competitors and not friends.

Now I learned it's a stupid idea to give contact information of a client to other people because they won't give you back a project you can do yourself. No friends but back stabbers here.

I understand; and I'm saying it's possible to compete fairly instead of in a way that would violate a friendship. Remember, I descibed my two primary competitors as not even friends, although there's no reason we couldn't be if we had a lot in common and lived in the same region, etc. My wife and I did once make plans to meet for coffee with one of them and his wife when they were in town, but it fell through. In fact, I'd argue the way we compete against one another would go a long way to helping establish a friendship. If you started out being friends with someone who poached all your clients that you developed first in return for the favor of just sharing them to help him get started working, I'd argue that the problem is the kind of person you thought deserved your friendship in the first place and not that it's necessarily impossible to maintain a friendship with any competitor.

You know that :)

Your colleague might not be acting ethically, but it's the essay business and it is inherently not a paragon of virtue. Karen is right. Just put out the best product for a fair price, and market your services effectively. Losing a client here or there to a competitor will not be a significant problem in the long run, because you will have many clients. But it is prudent not to share contact details of your clients with other writers. They are, after all, writers trying to make a living. Don't tempt them.

Bad luck. Improve your work :)

Well, design a system for your operations. Develop a financial system that has reserves for your investments and expenditures that will enhance your company/website business quality. You can hire a developer to make a better website, with more tools to manage your work load, analyze it and develop quality strategies for it.

You can also hire a Business development manager, whose sole responsibility is to market your website, find clients, and ensures them for the quality work.

You can work on the quality of your orders that you receive. So you don't have to worry everywhere, and can focus soley on the quality. My personal experience says, even if you have a blank page but you give a quality services, your clients will give you business. Because quality is all required.

You can hire more people in your team and can also dedicate one person who has good knowledge and experience as a quality assurance manager. Whose responsibility is to just have the quality check of each order and run for plagiarism.

Now, here you go, these simple steps will improve your business. And there might be a chance that your friend ask you to join back :D

Let me know if it helps

just ignore her and start a new competition

Chances are, your competitor just has more money to burn than you do, which is why that site looks more professional. I would not worry so much about losing clients to that person. Poaching clients is part of the game. Just ask the academic outsourcing companies. That is exactly why they tend to develop various company names under one umbrella organization. I suggest you look into creating multiple profiles for yourself, that is, if you can't start your own academic outsourcing company, and play the game. The writing business is a cutthroat competition and you need to be ready to throw someone under the bus if it means that you can get a step or two ahead of your closest competitor. That is just how the independent writing business and academic outsourcing company business goes. It all boils down to the quality of the work provided though. From the sounds of it, you don't seem highly confident in the final version of the model papers that you have been producing, which is why you are worried about the competition. It is best to just remember this, when your competition ups the game, you don't just match it, you outshine that competitor in the field.

I disagree with this:



There's no excuse for poaching clients or for falsely denigrating other legitimate providers just because they're your competition. I've maintained perfectly ethical relationships with every other legitimate writer who has ever referred work to me (for nearly a decade, now) and none of us would ever throw one another under the bus just to "compete" for one another's clients. Frankly, there's nothing more "cutthroat" about this particular industry than any other types of unregulated industries.

It's only cutthroat for the scam artists who rip off their clients and for providers who think that "competing" against other providers means it's "OK" to make knowingly-false public accusations against them just to try to damage their reputations. The same goes for essay companies who do that to one another and for essay companies who do that to freelance writers in general (and vice-versa) just to try to steer all prospective clients their respective way.

Anyone with the basic understanding of ethics and business will KNOW that poaching only leads downhill. During my time here, I have tried to be as honest and as open as possible with my competitors, even if I know that they share the same pie and we all want as large piece as possible. But, I also know that the only way to get that big piece is by being a good writer, delivering consistent quality and being fair in my dealings with others. And that's what I do, consistently. What you're suggesting is a rotten practice, and I don't know of any reputable writer or company that does that. We all have our little space and try to make the most of it as best as we can.

Companies can easily find out about stealing customers - all they have to do is to add a fake customer information (pretending it's a real customer information) and wait for the writer to 'contact' them. I'm sure there are a good number of freelance writers who might have thought they could get away with poaching clients, but in reality it's a very risky game for them.

@Major: I wrote a paper a few years back about catching hackers by launching a Web site about hackers designed to capture their access data (or something like that). The point I came away with was that in order to prevent unauthorized access or outright theft was to think like a thief/hacker. It is not surprising that former hackers are in big demand in the corporate world now. My recommendation, though, remains be honest and do your best without trying to **** someone over...

If the OP and the one who started a new company were truly friends, then there would not be any competition. They would most likely end up networking and exchanging clients in the process. The OP was just nervous because of his small client base. He probably did not understand the rudiments of networking because of his lack of experience using it. It appears that @Smiley73 was the same way since he thought poaching was the name of the game. Poaching to him is just networking to most. If the client prefers the referred company later on, then the original writer should learn to step up his game. It's all about quality for money, not just cheap services and "okay" papers.

The biggest competition writers have nowadays are not fellow writers, but AI. AI is the writer of choice for the new generation of students. It is the reason why independent writers are struggling and writing companies are going out of business. We should be banding together and united instead of bickering and stealing clients from one another. We need to make a united stand and work together to figure out a way to defeat AI so that academic writing can go back to the writers who can actually do a better job than AI for the students.

Many students are already realizing that AI cites totally fabricated non-existent sources, uses completely irrelevant and academically inappropriate material, and draws inaccurate conclusions from real sources. The more that high-profile stories become known -- such as about this recent "MAHA" report distributed by HHS under RFK Jr. -- the better it is for good human writers who can write circles around any AI program and who use only real, academically-appropriate sources in their work.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/29/rfk-jr-maha-report-citation-errors/83925319007/