Recently, on Feb 6,2024 I have got a message on LinkedIn from someone with name Ciara Allen inviting me for freelance writer position in their company - WriterBay.com. After chatting a few days with Ciara, I have registered on writerbay.com and was asked to go through the so-called application process, which consists of 6-steps - Really? This is not an application to a government service, just a freelance writer position, so even then it seemed suspicious to me, as there were too many obstacles to test the site, but as I got the invitation, I decided to went through all the steps: entered my personal data into the site, uploaded a few short essays, brief version of CV and the most important part: in step 6, I was required to upload any documents such as diploma or certificates - this is important, because after uploading your personal e-version of diploma, you have no option to delete it. So, after completing the application process, I have got a message saying that my application will be considered not more than 14-days or so. The most intriguing part is that after a few days later, I have got a message from *******@writerbay saying that I "have not been approved for the freelance writer position", so I tried to log in into my account to delete any personal data, but got a message "Your account was closed. Please check your email for more details." - that is what I meant, I would like to warn you against the illusion of easy money, because this kind of sites parasitizes on people's desire to earn money while sitting at home. I hope you got the point that after entering your personal data, uploading resumes, including information about your education, employment, etc., not mentioning your e-version of diplomas, think it this way: you are giving away your private data to someone who can later use it for any unknown purposes.
Below, I will attach the above-mentioned letter, so that you can familiarize yourself with this kind of spam/scam messages! Why do I think that it might be a spam or scam? - Simply, because it took me a few days to complete the application process and waste my time for nothing, and scam, because they got my personal data, when requiring to upload my resume, diploma and provided no options to delete it, later just closed my account.
To sum it up, in our modern age of Internet, there are so many scam actors and sites, which parasitize on people's desire to earn easy money while sitting from home by offering to register on the so-called "attractive" websites and share your private data - do not do this without any proper verification and your conscious approach, check these sites for the transparency, availability of information about the owners, reputation and be careful!

Best regards,
Serikzhan

P.S.
Message from so-called Ciara Allen, WriterBay.com >>>
"My name is Ciara, and I'm a recruiter at Writerbay.com, a London-based company that has been offering freelance writing opportunities worldwide for the past decade.

We're currently inviting you to apply for our freelance writer position. Our projects cover a wide range of academic and non-academic topics, including Business Studies, Humanities, Natural, Life, and Applied Sciences, and many more.

Here's what we offer:

Part-time and full-time opportunities with no requirements on the workload
Pay rates of up to $15 per page (275 words) based on the paper type, academic level, and deadline
Regular monthly payments
Access to a 24/7 support team via email, live chat, and phone
A wide range of useful materials, tips, and sources for research
All you need is a high level of English writing skills and a bachelor's degree in any field to get started. Our registration process is simple: join our team, select a project, complete it, and get paid once the client approves.

How to join us:

Register on our platform for free
Read the Academic Writing Tutorial and pass the quiz
Write a short writing prompt and a 275-350 word sample essay
Upload your degree certificate and CV.
Once you complete the application process, we'll review it within two business days. Become a freelance writer with us by registering via the link http://www.writerbay.com/apply.html?writer=******* and take the first step towards a fulfilling career. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

We're excited to have you on board!

Best,
Ciara"

Writerbay are well known exploiters in the writing community. They thrive on exploitation. As a writer, you will only receive 5-10% of what the client has paid. This means that when the client pays $100 for a paper, a writer will only receive $5-10 for the hard work. The rest is pocketed by the company. Now multiply that by the amount of orders that they take in every day, and you will realize the obscene profits they make from their writers. They are completely non-transparent about the actual payment that is available and offered. They are a VERY small team based in India (that use fake English names), and it is part of their business model to heavily lie and exploit in order to maximize their profits.

Are you already a writer at Writerbay? Head on to EssayTigers.com (just one of hundreds of sites that belong to them), type in the details of the order you were assigned to, and compare the price that has been paid by the client and the pay that you have been given. Knowing this, enjoy your hard work and 'fair treatment'!

They will constantly call you in the middle of the night to confirm low-paid orders that you did not apply for, but wont bother calling you in case of urgent revisions. This gives them an excuse to impose fines and take away more money from you once you are late with the revision. I've literally been given revisions with 0 minute deadlines, and then fined as a result.

You can receive a promotion and earn a raise on prices (the increase is minimal - around 10% per order, which amounts to several cents), but they have various rules set in place to make sure you don't. Were you late with that '0 minute deadline' revision? Well, no raises for you!

They have bonuses for positive feedback from clients, but you'll hardly get any. It is up to them if you get to know about the feedback and receive a bonus. They usually hide the majority of positive feedback in order to save money. But rest assured you will receive all negative feedback. One of my clients got caught cheating and gave me a bad grade, even though I wrote him a perfect essay. The essay was simply above the student's level of English, and his professor saw through it. Writerbay fined me 100% of the price as a result. I lost around $100 for doing my job, and doing it excellently.

For a company that makes obscene amounts of money, they are very incompetent at managing their own site. If a client sends you an important message, don't expect to receive it on time, or at all (it needs to be forwarded by the staff). This will result in more fines for not following the new instructions on time (which is ridiculous, but all to their benefit).

Another issue I have confronted is that they tend to often lower your salary for no reason. They will simply say that it is the maximum they can give you. It is dishonest and makes no sense, but there is nothing you can do about it. Complaining will only worsen your chances of getting additional orders.

Complaining to the management, as they often advise, is a complete joke. You will most likely be communicating with the same person you have a complaint about. Their positions are made up, and the same person will be in charge of several things. Their strategy is to blame their mistakes on non-existent staff with new made-up names. If you ever push it too far, you will be fined for unprofessional communication. The irony is that their own communication is at a high-school level. In fact, you will often feel that you are communicating with high-schoolers.

There are a lot of fake reviews on this site, so exercise caution with your judgement. A previous reviewer here said:

"more orders than you could imagine and for the real writers out there (i. E. not just those doing it for easy money), an opportunity to express yourself every day!"

"Real writers"? "Not just doing it for easy money"? What a load of crap. If you want to express yourself then go write a blog! Writing for an Indian essay mill is not a way to express yourself. The review is either written by a high-schooler who has never had a job or paid bills in her life, or it has simply been fabricated by the company.

You can earn some pocket money by working your butt off, but rest assured that you are being heavily exploited, and it is only a matter of time before you burn out and realize it yourself. Save yourself the time and trouble, and apply for other more reputable companies that will compensate you fairly. I don't want to advertise them, but you will find them easily with a 10 minute google search. I've certainly moved on and I feel sorry for the writers who still endure Writerbay's shenanigans. If you're good enough to get accepted into Writerbay, you're good enough for a bunch of other companies that will pay excellently for the time and hard work you invest.

To current writers - Stop undervaluing your work. You're just incentivizing them to continue exploiting you. $5 is an abhorrent compensation for a one page essay, EVEN FOR THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES. I live in the UK and this type of pay is nothing more than an insult. Others easily pay anywhere between $14-$30 per page.

To Writerbay - You are driving away competent writers just to make a couple more bucks in addition to your enormous profits. You charge your clients hundreds of dollars, and they receive average quality papers from unmotivated writers. Instead of paying for incompetent staff, pay your writers proper wages. This will result in greater work quality, happier returning clients, and more profits FOR YOU! And no, your current rates are not fair, they are criminal. If your company was truly located in the UK as you claim, you would be shut down and sent to court.

A FINAL WARNING FOR CURRENT AND FUTURE WRITERS:
While working with Writerbay, one of my media accounts logged an access from an Indian IP address.
I used the same password for Writerbay and for my media account (which was a big mistake in hindsight).
Writerbay does not use SSL certificate encryption like other reputable sites (displayed as a padlock in the address bar).
Make of that what you will.

I quit working for Writerbay recently. I worked for the company for about 4 years. As far as my experience goes, there was a change in management last year and after that the company introduced several policy changes some of which go totally against the interest of the writers. They have reduced the pay, demoted the writers by creating more layers, prevented all the projects available at the website from writers' view by sending only those projects they want you to write to your queue, they don't extend deadlines even when they deliver the project to the client hours or days after you submit the paper. Also, they have started imposing random fines, sometimes without any rhyme or reason. In my initial three years with the company, I was never fined once and always received positive feedback from the client and the management, but the current management treats writers like a slave. They impose fines every month on slightest reasons. For a 27 page long paper I submitted couple of months back, they imposed a fine on me without sending the paper back for revision once, saying the client wanted a different writer. Then another time, I worked on a nursing project of 10 pages, and then the client changed the project requirements completely and the paper was to be rewritten. They without informing me or bothering to seek my opinion reassigned the paper to another writer. Though it was not my fault that the client changed her project details after I submitted the paper, they did not pay me a penny for the 10 pages I wrote. There are plenty of such other exploitative situations I faced in this website through last one year.

There is an auto fine mechanism in place for lateness. I have faced situations when they sent the paper back for revision at 2 p.m. and the sent the lateness message imposing a fine one minute later. It's a technical glitch, but once the fine is imposed, they will not change the salary to what it was originally even though the late fine was imposed because of a technical glitch and will harass you saying that after the paper gets approved, they will change back the salary to its original payment. In reality, after the paper gets approved, the paper gets archived and you cannot access the paper, and then you need to write to the management to retrieve your money. Basically, they will harass you for every penny. Your job does not just stop at writing a paper, you need to compensate for the poor management and poor support system of the organization by writing lengthy mails to explain your situations.

I left the organization because after working hard in the company for about 4 years, when the new management started treating me so badly, I felt demotivated and depressed. I waited for a year for things to change for the better, but I am convinced that the organization is in bad hands. I just wonder if they treat their old writers so poorly, how they treat their new writers. Unless you are in a desperate financial situation, don't waste your time by joining this site. There are plenty of other academic websites where you can try your luck.

One of the useless site I have come across