1st swing at the plate

[krbb91]

1st business venture
Startup began around July 2011 and will launch fall semester
Business: Starting off by providing custom essay samples for college students
- so original and authentic (sarcasm)

Will add features later (forum, database, newsletter, etc.)


Does it pass the 5 Fastlane Commandments????:fastlane:

Need:
This business is the solution for student procrastination. Most students are working on the side to finance their schooling having no time to do their essays. While some are either lazy, lack time management, or can’t write well.
Came from friends, classmates, fellow students complaining about writing essay.
I dislike writing for school as well. Who does????
Complaints are everywhere (social media FACEBOOK…etc.)

Entry:

Website is under construction (outsourced to India using elance.com) and target launch date last week of August 2011 or the first week of September 2011. The site is basically for ordering and customer service.

On the process of finding writers
- Plan to outsource as well
- Domestic Writers: Offer jobs to people looking for extra cash (plenty of college grads can’t find a job) help create jobs fight unemployment LOL

Marketing plan
- Offline
o Flyers on campuses
o WOM referral program
o Friends and FOF
o Extracurricular groups
- Online
o Facebook
o Twitter
o Youtube
o Co-partner w/ related services

Control:

Marketing (above) is the Queen
- Referral program
Product quality
- meticulous editing
- hire qualified writers (college grads)
Pricing
- The type of essay (research, book review, admission, etc.)
- Price increase as the deadline becomes closer
- Number of pages

Scale:

Starting off locally
- Community colleges (students that transfer to university can do WOM and participate in the referral program)
Web based biz, so scale is basically every college student in the whole nation (the whole world would be nice LOL)

Time:

Will be very dependent with Human Resource System
- No involvement with the writing
- Will probably help with editing
Major responsibilities will be marketing, customer service, and managing orders.


Don’t be shy; let me know what you guys think! :smxB:
- Do you find it unethical? :smxE:
- Marketing Strategies
- comments and opinions

 

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[domular]

Seems to me that most educational institutions would consider this cheating wouldn't they? May not be any legal ramifications to you for providing the service but there certainly could be for the students that use it but perhaps I've misunderstood what the business does. I'm of the opinion that if you can't proudly tell everybody what your business does then you probably shouldn't be doing it. Just my $0.02

 

[77startup]

Unethical? maybe. Illegal? no.

I'd say you are in the same bracket as casinos,escort services, and black hat seo.

Technically you are just providing a template which is meant to be heavily altered later on, so I don't think it's much different from a cheat sheet.

 

[Ska2free]

The irony is fairly thick...hiring unemployed college grads to write essays (ahem, samples) for kids too busy working to pay for college to write their own? Its funny (and sad), which is not to say that it won't work.

One thing you may want to figure out early on, I've heard that professors are able to compare submitted assignments to online work fairly easily. (I don't know specifically how, I'm too old to have experienced this, but heard it from a few college professor friends.). You'd hate to do so much work setting up your system, only to have it unusable bc of anti-plagiarism programs.

Can you create a side business selling your list of clients? I'd like to make sure I don't hire them...

 

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[easymoney99]

The irony is fairly thick...hiring unemployed college grads to write essays (ahem, samples) for kids too busy working to pay for college to write their own? Its funny (and sad), which is not to say that it won't work.

One thing you may want to figure out early on, I've heard that professors are able to compare submitted assignments to online work fairly easily. (I don't know specifically how, I'm too old to have experienced this, but heard it from a few college professor friends.). You'd hate to do so much work setting up your system, only to have it unusable bc of anti-plagiarism programs.

Can you create a side business selling your list of clients? I'd like to make sure I don't hire them...

ahahahaH! thats pretty ironic huh


and yea there are a bunch of online tools that profs can use to cross check for plagiarism. the problem with those tools is they can only check what they can find. so if these essays never get circulated ANYWHERE it will be undetectable

 

[ice]

I think student cheating is for scum bags.

Not illegal, but unethical.

 

[77startup]

I think student cheating is for scum bags.

Not illegal, but unethical.

Playing devils advocate here but I think student cheating is becoming the standard. It's either performance enhancing drugs, sharing work via "Group studying" or using software to eliminate mundane tasks.

At what point does a cheating scum bag just become a smart user of time?

 

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[ice]

Playing devils advocate here but I think student cheating is becoming the standard. It's either performance enhancing drugs, sharing work via "Group studying" or using software to eliminate mundane tasks.

At what point does a cheating scum bag just become a smart user of time?

When it's an outright lie. You put your name on someone else's work and you get a grade (reward) for it.

I've had students tell me that if they don't get caught cheating then it's the teacher's fault for not being smart enough to catch them.

I didn't say it was uncommon..... but it still shows bad character.

I keep my dealings with people of bad character to a minimum.

 

[krbb91]

Thanks for the honest feedback!

 

[77startup]

What did you decide to do?

 

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[krbb91]

What did you decide to do?

I'm doing it.

 

[HenkHolland]

krbb91, apart from the ethics (which as such for me would make it a 'no go'), what about the economics?
College students aren't exactly affluent. Is this a group you want to depend on for your fastlane business?

Another aspect is assuring that you get paid.
Since your customers (the college students) and service providers (the grads) are people who don't have a problem with cheating, why wouldn't they cheat and cut you out.

 

[krbb91]

krbb91, apart from the ethics (which as such for me would make it a 'no go'), what about the economics?
College students aren't exactly affluent. Is this a group you want to depend on for your fastlane business?

Another aspect is assuring that you get paid.
Since your customers (the college students) and service providers (the grads) are people who don't have a problem with cheating, why wouldn't they cheat and cut you out.

HenkHolland,

Prices are affordable and can surely be manipulated if needed.

Customers and writers will be unable to connect as the orders are censored and filtered in order to prevent such thing to occur.

Thanks for your input!

 

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[77startup]

Who is your major competitor? I'm interested to see how this turns out.

 

[FastNAwesome]

Hey, fun idea!

Best of luck with it.

The only possible drawback I can see is student's standard - you have to be very sensitive with prices, and even then, they'd probably share and copy whatever they can.

Maybe a nice backup plan is to try earning off of some CPA offer, say for video games, so when students sign up through your website, you get a commission.

 

[Gymjunkie]

Hey, fun idea!

Best of luck with it.

The only possible drawback I can see is student's standard - you have to be very sensitive with prices, and even then, they'd probably share and copy whatever they can.

Maybe a nice backup plan is to try earning off of some CPA offer, say for video games, so when students sign up through your website, you get a commission.

Definitely add CPA offer from video games, esp. online games that pay for sign up...

Personally I wouldn't start a project like that but there is a need there. Good first business, a big name blogger Yaro Starak started similarly (maybe it was proofreading biz tho)..

Good luck

 

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[krbb91]

Who is your major competitor? I'm interested to see how this turns out.

After doing some research a while back

Competition
1. Samedayessay.com
2. Bestessays.com (Major competitor)
3. Buyessay.org
4. College-paper.org
5. Custom-essay-writing-service.org
6. Customwritings.org
7. Rushessay.com
8. Paramountessays.com
9. Bestessayhelp.com
10. Qualityessay.com
11. Advancedwriters.com
12. Writemypapers.org
13. Masterpapers.com
14. Writemypaper.net
15. Customwritings.com
16. Customwrittenpapers.com
17. Superiorpapers.com
18. Phdworks.org
19. Essayempire.com
20. custom-paper-writing.com
21. affordablepapers.com
22. custom-writing.org

Thanks for following

 

[krbb91]

Hey, fun idea!

Best of luck with it.

The only possible drawback I can see is student's standard - you have to be very sensitive with prices, and even then, they'd probably share and copy whatever they can.

Maybe a nice backup plan is to try earning off of some CPA offer, say for video games, so when students sign up through your website, you get a commission.

Yes, I definitely agree. Pricing is something that needs to be monitored closely.

Thanks for the advice.

Definitely add CPA offer from video games, esp. online games that pay for sign up...

Personally I wouldn't start a project like that but there is a need there. Good first business, a big name blogger Yaro Starak started similarly (maybe it was proofreading biz tho)..

Good luck

@gym junkie, thanks and I'll make sure to look into those features.

 

[AdamMaxum]

i know this idea has been around for many years, and have visited sites that do it in the past.

I'm worried that this area/idea is far too crowded for it to make sense to jump into. You just showed 22 sites that are doing the same thing! Are you crazy? I hope you can differentiate yourself somehow, and in a big way. I briefly read over your CENTS analysis and it sounds like every other type of website that does this.

Another area that will be hard for you is advertising. Colleges are not going to support you advertising this type of business around campus. You may get away with fliers i suppose, but do you think if a school official comes across your flier they aren't going to say/do something? You'll have to rely strictly on online advertising campaigns for the most part, which is fine, but I'm betting the cpc is high on this subject.

With all that said I wish you good luck and success. Make sure you show us your site when it's finished!

 

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[77startup]

Honestly 22 sites is nothing to worry about. There are over 1 billion web pages out there. Mj had twelve competitors who were all bigger than him at the time.

 

[krbb91]

Striked-out and learned on the way. Starting something new, thread is over.

 

[Clayton]

What happened? Let us learn from your failure if we can.

 

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[krbb91]

What happened? Let us learn from your failure if we can.

Nature of the business (college essays), it's seasonal(although classes are offered year round)
Time restrictions (had work and school, business)
Partnership ( I left the company mostly because of the difference in expectations, speed of execution)

The business is still running getting a few orders, pretty much all that is needed is continuous promotion/marketing

 

[Clayton]

Thanks!