How good are these "essay writing" services and how do they really make money?

From all of the indications I can follow, these essay writing services seem to be reasonably busy and to generate at least modest revenues.

What I can't figure out, however, is how these modest revenues translate to reasonable ROI.

Most appear to charge about $10/page (give or take). Nobody can really produce much more than 2 decent pages per hour, especially if they want to write in different voices applicable to the content, course level and type of university.

Hell, about half of my income comes from writing. I have written in all formats, for all publications and even written essays for a couple of friends. And I write damned fast. But shit if I could ever write more than 2 decent pages an hour...

So they average $20/hr, then they have to deal with vendor fees, communications (not always so intuitive for non DNM types), and the hassle of transferring bitcoins into dollars. And for what, $60.00?

One saving grace in all of this is that TAs and professors rarely read these essays very carefully. I know that most of my colleagues (grad students/professors) admit to as much. So to this end the material is not necessarily scrutinized as carefully as one might assume.

And of course this being DNMs, I suppose it would be possible to grab an essay from another market and replace some content in a sort of "mad lib" fashion...

Still, this seems like a tough way to make a few bucks.


Comments


[17 Points] WCWTF:

Here's an article from a while back written by one of those paper writers. I found it Really fascinating.

To your question specifically: "It is late in the semester when the business student contacts me, a time when I typically juggle deadlines and push out 20 to 40 pages a day. " & "I will make roughly $66,000 this year."

Also: "It's not implausible to write a 75-page paper in two days. It's just miserable. I don't need much sleep, and when I get cranking, I can churn out four or five pages an hour."

Great read - I highly recommend it. Not surprisingly, it's longer than it needs to be. :)

I didn't realize these writers were also on DNM. Huh.


[11 Points] None:

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[11 Points] DNMespanol:

Some people enjoy writing papers and being paid to do what you like is common thing


[7 Points] None:

I use to hire people in my building to do my work for me. Usually paid with a dimebag or a blotter or two of lsd. They do it, I read over it, I get familiar with it, and I succeed.

And I did.


[4 Points] phreck21:

Essay Writer here- Paper writing is by no means our full time job but we have writers who can knock out 6-8 page papers in a few hours and doing say 3 of those on a Sunday turns out to work pretty well. As far as quality goes I think we get most of our business because of the quality we provide. All of our writers are experienced writing the types of papers they are being given and this has shown with many of our papers getting A's at top universities.


[5 Points] Zoominsquad:

Because they're not all hand written. Most of it is plagiarized. Someone I know, who isnt me, used to write college application essays for $30 each, which are 650 words, but english papers for $20 which are way longer. Why? Because it takes no effort to analyze facts, but a lot more to personalize something, which is inherently impossible in a DNM setting having no background knowledge. tl;dr cause they suck


[4 Points] jahrastafareye:

A team of Orphans bangs it out in about 15 minutes. The ones that finish their pages the fastest get to eat that night.


[2 Points] thebedguy:

Serious Questions, Can i hire someone to take online classes for me... I mean all of them the whole time?


[1 Points] None:

You can find them cheaper on forums like Hackforums / leakforums


[1 Points] polvb:

I was definitely going to check them out to get a good admissions essay for law school.


[1 Points] None:

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[1 Points] randomnumberx:

In "middle school" I'd write other kids' papers by hand, I'd get their handwriting down, they'd buy me lunch. Fun while it lasted.


[1 Points] killa-jarvis:

I got DoctorMomma to write one of my essays (1st Year University) was a cheap service and only ended up getting 45% in the essay which is just a pass. The service was professional in a sense where he/she gave plenty of assistance and asked various questions just I didn't know that much about the topic and I don't think that he/she also much about how to structure it etc. as it was a paper for a UK university which they probably weren't used. But their are services that can be found on the clear-net which do work are a bit expensive but can get you top grades, it's just not that easy to find a decent service provider.


[1 Points] graphophobius:

Academic Ghostwriter here. I know this is late, but... Most of the essay companies that charge $10/page are based in Africa and Eastern Europe. They are scammers. The writers are hacks and the essays are crap. That’s if you happen to actually receive a paper and not get entirely ripped off.

I'm a PhD research scientist who has left academics to stay at home and raise my kids. For a basic/average college writing project I will charge no less than $25 per 275-word page. I can write two to four pages per hour for these lower level subjects and it will be good quality. I charge anywhere from $30 to $55 per page for advanced and graduate level work that requires real research. I've heard of academic ghostwriters making over $100K per year and believe it to be true.

It works out to be a fairly decent rate per hour, especially if you live in rural U.S.A. Bottom line: Folks who are charging $10 per page are either writing very poor quality pieces and/or they are living in places where the average daily income is around $2USD.


[1 Points] None:

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